LIBERTY TAX SERVICE Franchise Complaints

5,730 thoughts on “LIBERTY TAX SERVICE Franchise Complaints”

• And the hits keep coming.

  http://pilotonline.com/business/consumer/liberty-tax-franchises-face-federal-attempts-to-shut-them-down/article_abf88bd4-4f54-58fb-aaa9-e49822dd2e0d.html

  http://financialjuneteenth.com/beware-many-liberty-tax-service-locations-fraudulent/

• AWESOME!!! Not for the current franchisees, sorry :(
  Next, go after the CEO and his inner circle! YES!
  It’s about time. Better late than never!

  Almost 5,000 posts! Hope our comments have helped, yay!

• I just looked at some of those links. Hewitt is a pathological liar. HE is the reason this is happening now. Not some small group of wayward people looking to rip off the gov’t. Hewitt is the cause of the fraud. LTS admitting to turning in their own franchisees. That’s an important fact that can’t be overlooked. Many of these franchises must have done something to piss him off, like stand up to him, and he calls the feds on them. Nice, huh? That I can prove. It happened to me. So, Mr. Hewitt, not every franchisee that you call the IRS on is a fraudster. It begins at the top with you, my friend. YOU, who needs to pay for what he has done to so many innocent people around the country.

• Liberty Tax creates internal compliance task force following turbulent tax season

  By Kimberly Pierceall
  The Virginian-Pilot

  Liberty Tax says it’s forming a compliance task force to be led by one of the Virginia Beach-based company’s board members.

  The announcement follows a turbulent tax season for the tax preparer’s franchisees that included an IRS raid in Southern California, criminal indictments in Maryland and federal investigations.

  Earlier this month, the company closed one franchisee’s 28 locations in New York days before the tax-filing deadline. It has been in a legal tussle with the man’s business partner in Nevada and California to seize control of 23 other stores they own.

  In Wednesday’s statement, CEO John Hewitt said the company would not tolerate fraud.

  “An extremely small percentage of franchisees are under scrutiny,” he noted, adding that when the company has discovered wrongdoing, it’s terminated franchise agreements and sued franchisees.

  The company said Gordon D’Angelo would lead the task force that would “add a level of rigor and scrutiny to tax preparation done by Liberty franchisees.”

  The announcement doesn’t detail how the company would go about doing so, and a call to the company’s chief compliance officer, Jim Wheaton, wasn’t returned.

  D’Angelo has been a member of the company’s Board of Directors since 2011, a hired consultant and, starting in April 2015, an executive earning $25,000 a month assisting in franchise development and marketing. He worked for H&R Block before becoming a director of Jackson Hewitt, the firm CEO John Hewitt founded before leaving to start Liberty Tax. In between, D’Angelo co-founded the investment brokerage firm NEXT Financial Group.

  Kimberly Pierceall,

• Sounds like harassment by someone making $300,000 a year. They don’t seem to know what to do. At least this all should mean new marketing programs because Baltimore killed cash-in-a-flash. I see new colors, new themes, and re-training for franchisees. Revamp local marketing and spend some real money on advertising.

  Any word on Jackson-Hewitt? Their offices have no visibility in our area.

  HR Block sent out mailers asking tax offices to join them now and sell later. We got three of the letters.

  Just finished best season with Liberty ever. Straight tax prep, and customer service. No paid ads, almost no wavers. Return customers and referrals, but the
  company reputation is very damaged.

• The DOJ, IRS and the various states that have either halted, terminated or raided Liberty Offices this year need to find the real cause.

  I suspect that there are key reasons for this rampant fraud.

  1. Cash in the Flash — The way this program was being marketed by various Liberty Offices and promoted by Liberty Corporate created a great opportunity for fraud. The franchisees use this as a way to get early clients to file tax returns at very high cost. This program adds at least $65.00 per return to the fee plus, if the office is giving out $100.00 bills it adds $125.00 to the return.

  2. Liberty’s lending practices to Franchisees should be really looked at. The various agencies should see how many of the Liberty offices that were closed down, raided or efiling terminated, how many of these offices borrowed money from Liberty Corporate. When an office borrows money from Liberty Corporate they are put on a fee intercept program. Basically all of the offices bank products fees are intercepted to pay towards the loan. This type of lending practice creates offices inflating the price of the early returns, using this money to pay down the debt to Liberty Headquarters. Offices that rely on early clients as their primary base are more likely to file a fraud return knowing that need every client to give them sufficient funds to make it through tax season.

  3. Liberty’s new $750.00 loan program — another way to do bank loan products to the clients, except for the franchisee pays for the cost of the $750.00 loan product. The franchisee then adds this cost back into the tax preparation fees. Even though word was put out not to. The cost was $45.00 per $750.00 product. A franchisee would add $60.00 back to the cost of the product to cover the loan fee, the additional royalty and advertising fees that this product would generate.

  4. Liberty’s marketing program is a joke, It is left up to each office to market on their own. There is no standard marketing between franchisee owners.

  5. Liberty’s conference calls, most of the franchisees that were closed down or raided were Liberty’s top offices. They use these offices on conference calls and promote what they are doing. Two of the Franchisees that were shut down this year where part of Liberty’s Elite 18 Group and the remainder offices were Top Gun stars. Other franchisees seek out these top performers and try to duplicate what these offices are doing.

  By now there are nearly 100 Liberty offices that have been terminated, shutdown, or efiling suspended. There must be a common denominator and the common denominator is Liberty Corporate and John Hewitt. These offices were spread from the East to West coast across the entire United States.

  Creating a new department will not solve or resolve this problem. Instead this hired gun will be looking on how to shift the blame further away from Liberty Headquarters and John Hewitt. Shifting the blame and responsibility to the Area Developers and Franchisees. Liberty Corporate runs like a dictatorship, those franchisees that follows what Liberty Corporate wants are rewarded those franchisees that don’t are harassed, thrown under the bus, and provided no support.

  If Liberty Headquarters really wanted to solve this problem they would need to bring in an outside agency. Allow them to have full access and come up with some recommendations.

  As of today Liberty Corporate has not made any announcements to the Franchisees of this new department that has been stood up.

• “Instead this hired gun will be looking on how to shift the blame further away from Liberty Headquarters and John Hewitt”

  I believe D’Angelo is a long time and big time investor in Liberty Tax. He’s no doubt taking on the role to try to limit his losses. Hewitt has no authority on fraud, so the job must be turned the job over to someone else. Probably needed an inside hire because anyone from the outside might begin to note the rot in corporate.

  Yes, they will blame ADs, franchisees, and anyone but themselves. Millions are on the line here. It’s about to get real. Expect to see more shutdowns over the summer. They will seek out the big boys first who have filing patterns similar to the Baltimore, NY, LA, and Las Vegas operations, then go after the small fries.

  Slightly shady Liberty franchisees will be cleaning up their acts in the first half of 2017. They essentially are on notice.

• Well, if John and his people don’t know by now, they have a shot over the bow of their personal Titantic. DOJ are going to down the food chain. I am glad to be out and not have that pressure of writing as many tax returns as possible. No time to talk to people to make sure they ACTUALLY qualify for any of the credits.

  People have to realize, only the “top dogs” got the kudos. If you are writing perfect tax returns, offering excellent personal service and not causing letters to be spewed out weekly from the IRS, you are a nobody with any franchise but especially this franchise.

  AD’s will only harass the little people like me and give great praise to the ones writing junk and defrauding the government which if people are not aware are us taxpayers.

  H&R does the same thing, just they have a larger book to go through. I still see junk coming from them.

  If it is happening at LTS it is actually happening everywhere and is a systemic problem within the tax code.

• looking like a bad year for everyone

  https://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/Filing-Season-Statistics-for-Week-Ending-April-15-2016

• I think return growth should bounce back once this year’s filing deadline stats are included. The 4/15 stats cover 2015’s deadline but not 2016’s deadline.

• It will improve but won’t be surprised if there is a decrease because of non filers because of the ACA.

• News for Liberty has been bad all year. Losing these franchisee’s to fraud and closed offices impacts their revenue. The cost for internal controls will affect their profit too.

  Good news is they can write off the losses. John is probably very depressed these days.

  This is not the time to be investing in a Liberty franchise.

• Agree on return bounce-back. Still think more returns out there with people who are not going to file until next year. They owe or think they owe due to low withholding or ACA. We had more owing than priors. All on payment arrangements.

• Liberty just hit a yearly low today! Liberty has an audit committee of 100% insiders!! It’s the thief auditing the fox. All the auditors are EIC millionaires. Without EIC many of them would be working at a used car dealership down the road peddling high interest loans on beater cars. Do not approach this company it will be a financial and emotional drain and you won’t be able to get out without losing your investment. Liberty=Ponzi all the money gets to the top leaving employees and franhises with scraps. Some make money like the top 18 elite commiting fraud every day of tax season willingly or negligently. How do so many of these top offices do 500 to 1000 returns before mid February? Sch C EiC Fraud that’s how. They get $500 to $800 if they can produce a refund of $3000 to $6000 and all the offices know how to get there. Do a legit return get paid $0 do a fraud return get $600 which do most top zees and employees pick? Bablu, Balki, Maryland, South Carolina, Detroit, Vegas, Los Angeles, Black Enterprise, DOJ, Google these names and places with Liberty and see what you find.

• We all know Liberty corporate has had a bad year. All the bad publicity had to pull them away from counting their money to spending their energy on making it look like they had nothing to do with the “rogue franchisees.” I am worried about the zees who weren’t closed and had their business affected by the horrid publicity. I imagine that stores in and around Maryland had their clientele disappear, and since MD is so small the local news probably affected stores in neighboring WV, VA, and PA. Has corporate done anything at all to help you weather the storm?

• No, corporate has done nothing to help. In fact John has been incredibly invisible. He’s said nothing for most of the season, which is how I knew the year was bad from the start. He usually is his whole blowhard self touting BS numbers that are spun however he wants. Not this year. He’s not lying now, he just says nothing at all about what is going on. It is a rudderless ship at the moment, and is sad for all of us stuck and unable to get out. They won’t help, you can’t sell, you can’t walk away, corporate won’t go under as they are sacrificing the franchisees to save their skin so DOJ doesn’t take them down. There is nothing good happening. Sure some people still make money, even in this system, but I’d tend to bet that even those that are were down this year due to the mess corporate allowed to happen.

• Out in 2012, thank god!!! Its been all profit since I left the Liberty machine!

• SaraEA you are correct there has been no response from Liberty Corporate.

  The Zees from Maryland, Northern Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania should get together and organize a lawsuit against Liberty Corporate for failing to protect Liberty’s name. These owners should be compensated for the loss in value of their offices. These offices should be compensated for the loss in value of their franchise.

  If there is any Zees that are organizing this or a law firm reach out to neighboring Liberty owners. Individually Liberty Corporate can snuff us out, but as a group we may stand a chance.

• Right now there are at least 5 or 6 sets of attorneys representing different groups but everyone is not united. If Admin can help us get organized we can all team up with the same attorney. I recommend we go with one that has experience dealing with franchisors and franchisees. Who is going to take the lead to get this organized?

• Admin & Bill:

  You guys know best. Is Jonathan Fortman the right Attorney for this? I know work is being done behind the scenes. Is there anything that can be shared here?

  What happened to Uphillbattle? She/He seemed to have tons of info. on this……..

• More bad news for the fastest growing tax service.

  Liberty Tax Service Reports U.S. Tax Results Through April 22nd

  VIRGINIA BEACH, VA — (Marketwired) — 04/27/16 — Liberty Tax, Inc. (NASDAQ: TAX) (the “Company”), parent company of Liberty Tax Service, announced today that for the 2016 tax season, from January 1 through April 22, the number of returns prepared in its U.S. offices declined by 3.9%. The decline in U.S. assisted returns reflects a challenging season, along with the Company’s efforts to ensure that returns prepared are compliant with company standards and the law.

  As previously announced, the Company recently created an Executive Compliance Task Force tasked with seeking to ensure that franchisees meet its high standards.

• ^^^^Ha.

  Their newly created ‘Executive Compliance Task Force’ should begin with a sweep of the upper management including dumbell himself and they should all be released of their services, fired without pay, pension, severance, etc. Stock was down a lot today too, awww.

  Can you spell F-R-A-U-D???

• Screwitt is taking a beating today in share value!!! At this rate he is going to have to sell the whorehouse, I mean beach house!! TAX (ticker symbol) is down about 12% as I type this wonderful message!! HEWITT HOW DOES IT FEEL TO LOSE LOTS OF MONEY LIKE THE FRANCHISEES THAT INVESTED IN A FRANCHISE WITH YOU???????

• The problem Mike is that he was given his shares. He is just loosing profit, not money being invested.

• The demise of Liberty is a slow crawl. Where o’ where did Barilla and the few pro-Liberty commenters go to? There is nothing good to say!

  Today the IRS reported 2016 Filing Season Statistics as of 4/22/2016. Tax Professionals had a small 0.5% Change in E-filing receipts by the IRS. This means that Blocks 5.8% decrease in filings and Liberty’s 3.8% decrease in filings were significant reporting’s. I keep harping on these IRS numbers because it shows that the tax filing consumer is either going to Jackson-Hewitt or Mom and Pops. The consumer has wised up to the fact that the prep fees charged at Block and Liberty are way out of line. This is bad news if you are trying to sell a tax franchise to potential franchisee’s.

  Anyone who invests in a tax franchise today is not wise. The trend of market share going elsewhere continues. Hey, what happened to the baloney that the Affordable Care Act was going to mean more business for these firms? It did not happen and it will not happen.

  So, what can Liberty use as a selling point; We are the fastest growing tax fraud company ever?

• Out…has his market cap value of his company crumbled and most importantly trust in him by investors has obviously been lost which means that he can’t spin this POS as the “FASTEST GROWING EVER”……EVER AGAIN nor will he have any success in selling future franchise territories??? Now more than EVER will the current franchisees be EXPECTED to expand to make up the current and future decreases in return count? Also and most importantly to me, anytime he has lost ANYTHING isn’t it a good day for those that have been duped by the sales cons, all in my humblest of opinions:)????

• Fraud is the right word in describing Hewitt and Liberty. He has to be quiet this year because he is acting as the informant on his franchisees. Maybe Wall Street finally recognizes this system for what it is: A complete scam. I can’t believe that the DOJ is going to rely on this crook to turn in other crooks. I think that is why Trump has so much traction. People see and believe our tax system and government are corrupt and pander to people like Hewitt. How else could have the company survived all this time with the government fully aware of the fraud surrounding Liberty?

  Trouble is, he hasn’t lost any real money-he has just lost value in the stock he did not pay for. If you look at the insider trading statements, it is quite evident that Hewitt was planning on the bad financials as early as last summer when he exercised and sold (privately!) a huge number of shares. I’d be curious how many shares his family members unloaded in the last few weeks. Still smacks of inside trading, anyway.

  I would like to think that the market is catching up with this bum. Somehow, he manages to escape punishment, criminally and financially. Let’s hope this is the company’s demise.

• Sad but true, your analysis of the IRS efile stats is spot-on. Just about all paid tax professionals are under mandatory efile, so when that industry is down .5% and Liberty and HRB are down way more than that, it indicates that taxpayers are leaving the chains and going to other tax pros. (Not to JH–they aren’t publicly held so don’t have to announce their numbers; I suspect they are down just as much as the other chains.) This is different than other years when the increase in self-prepared efiles was much higher than it was for paid tax preparers. Looks like the self-prepared growth has leveled off and taxpayers are choosing CPAs, EAs, and mom and pops–anyone who isn’t a chain–instead of trying it on their own. So maybe the ACA has helped the paid tax prep industry, just not the chains with their high prices.

  Is anyone else here suspect that Liberty’s return count is down only 3.8%? With the highly publicized scandals about the company, occurring at the height of filing season, I would have guessed that returns would be down much more. Was there pressure to increase the number of free returns? Something smells here….

• No. The bad news effects the cities were it happened. No reporting at all about other states in my state. Overall the customers dont care if it didnt happen in your store.

• Just so people know, there are still zee’s that are drinking the kool-aid. I know of one that has purchased 11 company stores. The zee has steadily been gaining stores.
  The crazy thing is that the zee signed the deal with corporate 3 weeks before the end of the season. Why would you buy the stores until closer to next season?
  I wonder if Corporate wanted the stores sold before the end of the season so that they could get out of any possible fraud? If that is so, the zee could be on the hook for being shut down.
  Does anyone else know of company stores being sold to zees before the end of the season?

• Out and Glad,

  It did happen last year in Baltimore. When Vanessa Dickens was terminated and later arrested, her stores were offered to other zees in April. Some fell for it and bought the stores not realizing they were full of fraud. This season they were suspended right away by the State Of Maryland, probably for spite because of what Vanessa Dickens had done.

  Corporate is acting stupid like they had nothing to do with it. Also, because they pissed off the Comptroller, who is a clown himself, they suspended 28 total offices in MD. Total BS from Corporate and this idiot comptroller who has no idea what he is doing but is just angry and feels like Corporate just changed the name of on the EFIN and kept the stores open. Seems like everyone got screwed except corporate.

• Company is only down 3.8% because John opened dozens of cluster offices around the company in the hopes to resell them to existing zees this upcoming year. With those offices factored out the Average store is down 10 to 15 percent return count. Corporate is probably up in total Revenue because of the $45 RAL fee charged to every franchisee for the $750 easy advance. The Zees had to eat that cost by increasing fees to all of the clients.

• It is not only Liberty Corporate practices that should make you run away from investing in a tax franchise but also the tax prep industry trends.

  Let me explain; buying a Liberty tax franchise is a big investment. Chances are your ROI will never happen because your year to year losses will just make it impossible to achieve an ROI. Your starting costs for just 1 location will be at least $60k and more likely in the range of $80k to $100k. Guess what, unless you buy an existing location, you have ZERO customers on your 1st day of opening your doors. Guess who spends all of the money to acquire clients? You! I can go on and on about the yearly royalty and ad fees and a bunch of other negatives. At the end of all your expenses for investment, running the business, etc. – NOBODY will buy your business from you. That is so abnormal a business process because normally a business that builds clients can sell it. Trust me, you will be miserable if you decide to buy into Liberty.

  As for industry trends, Block and probably Jackson Hewitt (along with Liberty) will go the way of the dinosaur. It is not just Liberty that is struggling. The tax consumer is smart, why pay $400 to $500 for your return when you can go to a Mom and Pop for $150 to $200 for the same return. The game is up on these guys. The Block guy on the plane with all of the money better have a parachute and jump before the plane crashes. As for Liberty, if you like taking your chances by swimming with sharks, you have nobody to blame but yourself for your failure. Even the successful franchisee’s are getting hosed at 19%.

  Finally, just patiently waiting for it all to fall apart for Liberty and Block!

• Despite all the bad news, fraudulent returns, IRS shutting down stores, Liberty reporting a drop of 3.8% return count. Enterprise Magazine comes out and says that Liberty Tax is best of the best in the financial services section for franchises.
  They base it on years in business and start-up cost. What a crock! In the same press release Liberty talks about being named a “Top Tax firm” by Accounting Today. We know someone is being paid to publish this crap be nice if an insider at one of this publications came forward with just how these rankings are set.

  In January Liberty had less then $2m in cash on hand but that didn’t stop JH from declaring a dividend of .16 cents per share to be paid in late April. Here is a company reporting a drop in sales of 3.8% and always has cash flow issues justify paying a dividend? But then I remembered that JH doesn’t get a salary anymore so he needs these quarterly payments.

  Buyer Beware!!!

• Yes, Buyer Beware!!

  It is franchise selling season for Liberty. I would love to see the P & L’s for every location and the number of free returns they did. Potential buyers, entry into market is even less costly if you go it alone. Funny, Liberty Goodwill is not mentioned, why? Because after their fraud filled season there is none.

  Top tax firm? Maybe in number of returns as a whole (all franchisee’s) but not in reputation or quality of service.

  Don’t drink the kool-aid. This company is toast. Look at there stock price slide!

• Bill – The cash flow issues of corporate have been scary lean fore some time the delay of monies next year could be devastating to them. If creditors loose some faith in them based upon bad press and .etc which would be vary plausible they could run out cash next year.

• It’s been so long since I’ve been to those conventions. When is it this year? Already happened? Did anyone go that can report here? Wonder how the mood was. Yes, doom & gloom all around. How much of the ‘free’ stuff did they cut out? I went way in the beginning where they actually gave you free stuff and good food! I’m sure that’s all been cut out now-days. Does Danny still participate? Is he still part of this dump? Do they still even have the conventions anymore?

  It is all a big ‘entertainment’ show to get you to part with your money. It worked for a long, long time. It sounds like the tides may finally be turning, thank goodness.

  For anyone just reading this forum for the first time: my advice:

  Save your $$ and back away. After almost 5000 posts, the largest on here, it seems, the overwhelming message is that it’s a rip-off company at it’s best. Almost 100% of the posters here say it’s not worth it. Less & less new franchises each year means that it’s hit it’s peak and it’s all downhill from here. YES

• I looked on the Va. Beach Convention Center. Liberty Tax Convention was not listed.

• I just looked at their website for the very first time and found this, yucch. Someone has been paid off handsomely.

  http://ir.libertytax.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=233197&p=irol-newsArticle&id=2163656

  I don’t know if it’s been posted ^^^ here yet or not. I also didn’t see any indication of a Convention this year. Hope they are over just like I hope the company itself is over.

• Liberty Tax Convention 2016 Agenda

  Dates: June 2 – June 4, 2016

  Virginia Beach Convention Center
  1000 19th Street
  Virginia Beach, VA. 23451

  Wednesday June 1, 2016 (Pre-Convention)

• Oh joy :(
  Thanks for the info. NCHillbilly :(
  If anyone is “fortunate” to go, please give us a rundown when you return! Are there still franchisees out there?! Any that still go to the conventions?! Let us know how riveting it is! Not :(

• These comments are bringing back nightmares of my own experience as a Liberty Tax Franchisee. The Liberty system talks a great talk, they focus on John Hewitt being a “Demi-God”, with purchase this book he wrote, or that book he wrote. They tout the omniscient ability Hewitt has to see into the future … such as Zee’s becoming health insurance brokers … giving other Zee’s the exclusive income to sell the service to train all in the business and help them get licensed.

  From top to bottom, this company is a “Pyramid Scheme” not seen since the Amco days. It is a rip-off from the beginning, with Zee’s that are financed feeling like indentured servants/slaves to Liberty Tax. NO help from corporate or RD’s, just demands and intercepting of funds earned to pay them first, leaving the Zee with barley enough (if lucky) to break even each year. It is a set-up you can’t get out of with any profit, unless you are willing to sign your soul over to the devil himself.

  I will happily participate in ANY class-action lawsuit against this company and John Hewitt, who has played us all as fools. I guess there was a good reason he was forced out of Jackson-Hewitt.

• I heard that knee high boots are required if you attend the Liberty convention this year. With all the bad news this year it will be really deep…….if you know what I mean.

• Just looked at the Nasdaq. Tax is trading at 10.05 per share. So what other news has come out to cause the price to fall $6.20 per share in the last month. I would love to see it trade a $1.05 per share.

• No real news just a bad trend for the refundable credits focused part of the industry and everyone expecting a DOJ announcement!

• ^^^What kind of DOJ announcement??? That’s awesome!

• It’s just my personal hope and opinion!

• Out and Glad – the bad news for Liberty Tax is that it is just a bad investment – buying their stock and buying a franchise. The trading volume for their stock is laughable. Block trades millions of shares a day and Liberty averages under 38,000 shares a day. My point is; there is very little interest in investing in this company.

  Hopefully, the potential franchisee’s whom come to this site will take us seriously. It is no laughing matter to fork over $40k for “the right” to prepare taxes for this outfit. Add the minimum royalties or the 19% of your income, and you are approaching almost $90k in real money paid to Liberty Corporation over a 5 year period.

  For those thinking about buying a territory…save yourself 90k and a lot of aggravation…it is not worth buying into this brand.

• Aw, Darn, T.E.A!! I thought you were giving us some great news!! Your personal hope & opinion is the same for thousands of us. Can’t wait for all the juicy details!!

  Sad but true is 100% correct………save yourself the aggravation & money. Back away. This whole company is a huge scam. Even more than that, they call the IRS on their own franchisees, whether they ‘deserve’ it or not!!! Puuuhhlease What scumballs.

• The fact that Liberty rats out its own franchisees proves that their business model is to sell stores, not build a brand that will someday compete with H&R. Think about it. Say you are a big fast food or coffee shop franchisor (McD or Starbucks). You discover that one of your franchisees is cutting corners, is delivering old or half-cooked food, has failed local food inspections. Do you advertise these problems, or toss the miscreant out, clean up these practices, and get someone else to run it?

  Liberty, which claimed it has the ability to screen every return when the Baltimore fiasco happened, then claimed it had reported these “rogue” franchisees itself (and others in different states where the same thing happened}. It even said it reported them a long time ago and wondered why it took the states/IRS so long to act. If you were interested in building a brand and uncovered shady practices, would you report them to authorities and let them continue tarnishing the brand until official action was taken, or would you boot them out yourself so as not to damage the brand? If there were any doubts, this proves that Hewitt is happy to collect his royalties and advertising fees and sell franchises. He tries to sell the brand to new franchisees (“fastest growing ever”) but doesn’t care at all about the brand. When Liberty goes under, he’ll just start a new tax prep franchise or hopefully retire.