WealthAbility Team as tax strategist - Worth It?

Question

Has anyone used WealthAbility? Worth the money? Did you get good advice? Thoughts? Any other tax strategist referral?

Florence Sullivan · Answer

They quoted me 29K for the service and that doesn't include what the CPA would charge. I'm having a hard time with that so I'm looking at other options.

Samia Moughanni · Answer

@Florence Sullivan

Where do I begin? Tom Wheelwright’s WealthAbility is a full-on SCAM with shoddy ‘business practices’ that needs to be investigated for consumer fraud! Let me first provide you with an accurate and honest one-liner to summarize what to expect if you decide to work with WealthAbility followed by a detailed account of my own personal experience with the company.

Quick Summary: WealthAbility acts as a middleman, a go-between, that pairs you with a CPA. That’s it! They will charge you $25k to connect you with a CPA who is not a WealthAbility employee, they are contract workers. These CPAs have their own companies and are taking a pay cut working with WealthAbility in the hopes of gaining wealthy well-vetted clients.

Of note, there is a clear difference between tax strategy planning and tax preparation and the $25k paid was claimed by WealthAbility to cover both. We believed that the main portion of that fee would go towards the tax strategy portion where your designated ‘tax team’ would help you create a customized ‘tax strategy plan’ to minimize your taxes moving forward, while the tax preparation for a simple portfolio like ours was thought to cost no more than $2k of the total fee. We were okay with that fee aslong as they delivered on their claims.

Detailed Summary: In June 2023, WealthAbility swindled us out of TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS with the use of deceptive practices, false promises, and largely inaccurate claims of providing a "full-service" detailed and customized wealth and tax strategy plan, guidance for plan implementation, tax preparation and filing, and much more with a rigorously vetted CPA and support team. Grandiose claims that we initially read on the company website and then had repeated to us by Kirt Bassi, the client relationship manager, over the phone. The ethically correct thing to do would have been for Kirt to communicate to us during our initial consultation that we were not a good fit for the program given that we were already too advanced. We already had a strong financial foundation with a clear focus in real-estate investing. We did not need help in deciding what our investment niche would be; we needed help in creating and implementing a tax strategy plan for a married couple composed of a high-income earner and a real estate agent and business owner.

A few weeks after paying the $25k, we set up our first meeting with our assigned CPA and started the so-called “advanced tax courses” provided, which are generic modules that only vaguely introduce financial concepts, topics, and terminology. These courses are NOT advanced in any sense of the word. They are elementary at best and NOT tailored to the clients’ specific needs or interests which should have been conveyed to us at the beginning. Tom Wheelwright’s books contain more detailed information than the online courses do. After completing 3 of the 10 courses from the Road Map Courses, we started to express our concerns and dissatisfaction with the program to our CPA, who talked us into ‘giving the program a chance’ and continuing with the coursework and the meetings. We tried to stay positive and hopeful that we would see the value in the program and that it would be worth our time and money, but we were just kidding ourselves. Nothing changed and nothing got better.

WealthAbility inaccurately claims to thoughtfully pair their clients with an elite, well-trained CPA, and tax strategy team - but we were not given a team, just a poorly vetted arrogant CPA who was late to almost every session and who never took notes on our financial situation making us feel as if we were meeting him for the first time every time. On multiple occasions he had us wasting our time looking up unnecessary tax forms online because he wasn’t well versed in tax code. Even when pressed for customized tax planning advice, he could or would not deliver. Instead, he used our one-hour sessions to review and repeat the exact same useless generic information contained within the online modules and to sell us on buying his whole life insurance policy he sold on the side. In hindsight, we should have been paired with a CPA who specialized in tax code for real estate investors - our assigned CPA was not. Honestly, we should have been easy clients - we came to him with a plan in place wanting his help on claiming REP status, setting up a cost segregation for a rental property bought and functioning in 2022, so that we could file for 100% bonus depreciation for that tax year. He kept avoiding our requests and said we should claim it in our 2023 taxes instead… The last straw for us was when he tried to charge us another $7.5k to file our taxes which obviously ended our relationship instantly. That’s when we reached out to client services and expressed our dissatisfaction with the company in August 2023 (only 2 months after starting the program). Funny thing is that both Brad Doran and Alan Kirkham mentioned to me over the phone how they both knew that our CPA had a reputation for being disliked and having problems with multiple clients, but yet that CPA was still working with WealthAbility and was still being paired with clients! Since our 2022 taxes were due in October 2023 (CA extended due date), we knew that we wouldn’t find another CPA to do our taxes in time, so we allowed Brad Doran and Alan Kirkham to match us with another ‘WealthAbility CPA’ to complete our tax prep and filing, while they worked on coordinating a refund for us… a refund that was promised to us repeatedly, but still has yet to come to fruition.

Alan Kirkham is WealthAbility’s client success manager who is amazing at lying about doing things he has no intention of doing like providing a refund. He is also amazing at never following up, never reaching out or providing updates, and stellar at avoiding all communication attempts from the customer. He has promised countless times over several months (5 months to be exact) to come back to us with "a proposal by the end of this week" via email on 11/28/23 and "we will get this wrapped up this week" via email on 12/11/23 - and we are already in the first week of February 2024 without a proposal and without any progress in coming to a resolution. Those promises quoted are only from one email chain of ours - I have record of multiple others I’d be happy to provide to everybody and anybody interested. This severely subpar customer service, lack of timely correspondence and initiative from Alan Kirkham should be unacceptable for a company that claims to be top notch and superior to all other CPA / tax advising firms and charges clients a ridiculous $25k fee for their 'all-inclusive services'. Our last email from Alan confirmed our suspicions that we were getting jerked around by him admitting that it was his fault that the refund process was dragging on because he ‘knew what was in our best interest to do’ and that was for us to relaunch the program instead of giving us a refund. What a joke! What a scam! After giving Alan Kirkham 5 months to right this wrong and come up with a fair resolution, we have been left in the dark with no set plans or expectations and no true point of contact, which is why we have decided to share our experience here.

This whole experience was a huge disappointment, waste of money and time! I would NOT recommend this company to my worst enemy and I hope that I can prevent others from being scammed by WealthAbility by posting my personal experience on as many forums, websites, platforms as possible and by filing complaints to every agency out there that deals with consumer fraud. I encourage all others who have been swindled or have had similar experiences to share them too and to submit complaints to the Better Business Bureau, Department of Consumer Affairs, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, State Board of Accountancy, Federal Trade Commission, Police Department’s Financial Crime Unit, and the District Attorney.

For the potential franchisee owners who are considering this as a business, I would run the other way! And for the companies that endorse WealthAbility, I would think twice about putting your stamp of approval on such a sleazy sham of a business. As a business owner myself, I would not want to claim association with, let alone endorse a low-quality company with deceptive business practices, like WealthAbility – it just reflects poorly.

Tom Fisher · Answer

We are a Wealthability / ProVision client signed-on since September 2020.  With the third of the ten strategy / fact-finding meetings pending,  I wish I'd signed up a year ago.  My wife and I are working professionals and this is my early retirement gambit, so we are pretty serious.   I have 6 single and MF properties with a 7th under contract and have made some tax and business development missteps that they are helping us to manage, plus advising in setting up our entities and accounting based on a deep fact-finding inquiry on their part.    I had run through 4 good but limited accountants before biting the bullet with Wealthability.   You are assigned a crack CPA, with an accounting assistant who are overseen by a ProVision principal.  ProVision is Tom Wheelright's previous firm that he has trained in his paradigm.  So,  you are not just getting good accounting and tax strategy guidance,  you are getting professionals who are assisting in clarifying and focusing your business and wealth aspirations into dollars.

So,  if you are serious and have some experience, you can probably cut a few years off your business development trajectory, and save more than the $15-$20K fee by retaining this outfit.

Bill Hampton · Answer

Florence, I recommend that you speak with other tax strategists to compare services and pricing.

There are 20+ accountants on this site that specialize in real estate taxation. Reach out to a few and see who you like.

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions.

Victoria Cashin · Answer

**AVOID WEALTHABILITY!** We paid their exorbitant program fees, and I have nothing but regrets about it. They assigned us a certified Wealthabilty CPA who filed our taxes incorrectly. It turned out he did not actually have his license and will not return our calls or requests for information. I believe the Wealthability program is a scam. Since working with Alex Sinn, our assigned CPA, we have dealt with many frustrating letters from the IRS. We are now in the process of looking to hire a tax attorney to help us resolve the issues caused by his mistakes.

Ben Trageser · Answer

I'm so sorry to hear that you had to deal with this. If you need a tax attorney recommendation, happy to provide one.

Account Closed · Answer

@Florence Sullivan Hi Florence! I haven't used WealthAbility but have read Tom Wheelright's book on Tax Strategy, I think it was part of Rich Dad Poor Dad book series.

Did come across this post which seemed favorable

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/519/topics/731377-has-anyone-used-wealthability

Moses Harris · Answer

@Florence Sullivan What did you decide to do? I had a call with Wealthability today and was stunned by the sticker price.

Greg O'Brien · Answer

@Florence Sullivan they certainly have a good service. There are a few forums here with people’s experience. Whichever way people go, we recommend finding tax planners vs tax preparers. Tax preparers are those you’ll only talk to once per year.

Look for year round relationships and ideally a firm that integrates asset protection into their services and/or acts as a center of influence among other professionals who are necessary to get you to a tax free life! Beyond Weathability, look for Certified Tax Coaches as well

WealthAbility Team as tax strategist - Worth It?

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