This is a copy of a letter I sent to both J Harris and the Better Business Bureau.
Paul Tondreault
(Personal Information Removed)
October 3
JK Harris & Co.
4995 Lacrosse Rd Suite 1800
N Charleston, SC 29406
Attention: Review & Oversight Dept
Re: Customer ID 710784
To Whom It May Concern:
On 5/23 I contracted with JK Harris for advice on my 2005 tax liability. The agreement was for $1,500.00. My check, #489, was deposited but returned for insufficient funds due to my tax debt and income situation. On 8/11, $530.00 was deducted, by JK Harris, from my checking account. The following months I paid the balance and then they started working on my “Financial Plan”. I finally received my “plan” which suggested buying a home and making other financial investments. That would have been helpful if I had money. There was no information in this”plan” to help my tax situation.
Once again I met with a JK Harris representative, after hearing their commercial on the radio again about solving tax problems and helping people pay reduced amounts on their tax debt. My work situation had worsened and my tax debt was growing. We owed approximately $21,000.00 to the IRS and approximately $4,600.00 to the state of RI.
I was told by my representative that because my income was reduced JK Harris could help me prepare an offer in compromise. I expressed my dissatisfaction with the financial plan that was prepared earlier and was told that the new $5,500.00 fee would be reduced by the $1,500.00 that I paid for my useless financial plan. We were also told that our “position of weakness” was now a “position of strength” because the IRS would accept a lower amount because we had little and our expenses were greater than our income. When I asked approximately how much we could expect to pay we were told it could be as low as $1,500.00.
We submitted our information and explained that the remaining balances in our investment accounts were being depleted monthly to pay our living expenses that our income didn’t cover. Any time we had a question and called in, the first rep working on the offer in comprise acted like we were bothering her. When our Offer in Compromise for the just Federal amount due, was completed the first time, the JK Harris recommendation was for us to pay the IRS $23,752.00 with a deposit of $4,751 then the balance of $19,001.00, payable in 5 months after IRS acceptance.
We had contacted the IRS after submitting our 2005 return to set up an installment agreement. We agreed to pay $325 monthly but sent in $400 every month until we met the JK Harris rep in May. He said that if we kept making installment payments the IRS would not accept our Offer in Compromise. He recommended we stop paying the IRS completely.instead we decided to send in token payments of $25 monthly. We had reduced our liability to approximately $19,000 when we received the first offer in compromise.
I was shocked when we received it. JK Harris was suggesting that we should pay the IRS $23,752 within 5 months!!! We have no money!!! If my math is correct, JK Harris was telling us, after paying $5,500.00 for their service & offer in compromise, to pay the IRS $23,752 (over $4,000 more than what we owed for our current balance!!!)
When I called to question this, the response was that we had too much money in our investment accounts. I told our new rep that we explained that the investments were being used to pay our bills and had been reduced substantially. JK Harris made us resubmit our bank and investment information again, with the reduced amounts.in the mean time, both my wife & I started new jobs so we included our new pay statements. After a few weeks of calling in to ask about the status of our accounts and to get a copy of a letter that was sent to the IRS in response to an IRS Notice of Intent to Levy, we got no response. Finally I received another Offer in Compromise letter which stated that we “don’t qualify for an offer in compromise”. “We would qualify if we owed over $32,000.00.” For 1 year we have been waiting for this and now the suggestion is that our JK Harris rep will call the IRS to represent us and ask for an installment agreement to pay the full amount owed, plus interest and penalties. When I asked our rep if I was going to get my $5,500 fee for JK Harris service back she said no. “We prepared documents and sent letters to the IRS for you”.
The documents JK Harris sent to the IRS were a copy of MY TAXES, WHICH I PREPARED (and the IRS already had) and some form letters. That is worth $5,500.00??? Why would I pay JK Harris $5,500 to ask for an installment agreement when I already did that myself, a year ago and it didn’t cost me a penny??? The JK Harris rep from the beginning told me to stop or reduce my IRS installment payment, which has now cost me more interest & penalties and they still expect me to pay them $5,500 for costing me more money and wasting a year’s worth of payments that would have saved me hundreds of dollars in penalties and interest and my time. We have also received a Notice of Levy against one of our bank accounts from the IRS.
We paid $1,500 from our checking account for the useless financial plan.
We agreed to have our credit card billed for the $4,000 balance. To date, we paid the $400 deposit plus $370 per month for 5 months then stopped paying when they told us their plan. (Which was to scam us for $5,500.00). Our total payment that we expect to be refunded is $3,750.00. If I had the time to figure it out we should also be refunded the extra IRS penalties & Interest that were charged over this past year.
We expect a refund of our money. The service that was promised to us, and we paid for, was not delivered and every recommendation from J.K. Harris staff ended up costing us more in IRS penalties and interest. We are very dissatisfied and would not recommend JK Harris to anyone. What a scam!!!
Sincerely,
Paul & Laura Tondreault
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