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Updated 9 months ago, 02/28/2024
Wealth Ability- formerly ProVision - Tom Wheelwright
I'm looking into some better guidance into tax planning and a new CPA as I grow my real estate business. Has anyone worked with Tom Wheelwright's ProVIsion or now Wealth Ability? I had a consultation with them and have read Tax Free Wealth and think they would definitely be able to help me. Sounds like its a $4k tax planning fee and then they do your taxes as well for an additional fee. Looking for experience with these guys or other suggestions to look into.
Quick Bio:
I live in Iowa and currently have an LLC with rental properties, farm, sell insurance, and have a w-2 job so I just feel as if I'm in need of some good tax planning but also a CPA that has had experience with farmers.
Thank you @Eamonn McElroy @Lane Kawaoka @Tom Wheelwright on the prompt response. I invested 3 syndication deal in 2019 as a passive investor (not Gp, Lp or KP). One Gp told me I can offset since I am a Full time realtor qualify as real estate professional but my cpa who suppose specialize in real estate tax and she told me I can’t.
For the past years, i am whole time work in real estate. So definitely spending more time than other activities. I am a realtor so I work for clients and myself as an investor (own a few singles, and few smaller apartments, also developed condos (sold), now pending develop single house and apartment with partner). but my cpa and cpa friend told me even I am real estate professional, I can’t offset the passive loss from syndication deal because it is passive loss. Passive loss can only offset passive gain. I may keep investing as passive investor and find my own deal. but in order to passively invest, the motivation would have to offset my ordinary income (majority from commission). I did some research and ask around, Gp said I can, my cpa, cpa friend said I can’t. If any of you know I can, I need a right cpa who say yes and do the tax for me correctly and legally.
@Tom Wheelwright
I have talked to wealthability few months ago, Brad told me I may but not a guarantee which I understand. But this is the main purpose to sign up the program for offset the passive loss to my ordinary income and tax saving of course. Can you please help and clarify this for me.
#4 Tax, SDIRAs & Cost Segregation Contributor
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- Atlanta, GA
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#4 Tax, SDIRAs & Cost Segregation Contributor
- Accountant
- Atlanta, GA
The issue isn't whether or not you're an RE pro. You likely are based on your description. Most of the recent posters are missing this point.
The issue is what capacity you're an investor in the syndications, and the interplay thereof with IRC Sec. 469, as an interest as a limited partner, or the functional equivalent of an LP, generally raises the bar under 469 to take the syndication losses as non-passive.
You claim you're "a passive investor (not Gp, Lp or KP)", but this statement further muddies the water, not clarifies. I don't know what a "KP" is. Nor do I understand how you can be neither GP nor LP, unless the syndication is organized as an LLC, at which point we'd be using and discussing different terminology.
Your best bet is to ask your current professionals, unless their knowledge or ability to advise in laymen's terminology is lacking, at which point a change may be in order.
Their are many professionals active on this sub-forum at a variety of price points.
Quote from @Tom Wheelwright:
The question is really what you want to accomplish with your CPA. I used to do tax planning the everyone else does it. When a client had a question or a transaction, I would respond with an answer. Over the years, I discovered that many business owners and investors would like a partner in helping them with long-term tax planning and wealth strategies. So we created the WealthAbility process. We now have over 40 CPA and tax advisory firms using this process with their clients. If you just want quick answers, I would recommend against WealthAbility. We are at our best when we are partners with our clients and speak to them on a monthly basis. I hope this helps with some understanding of what WealthAbility is about. Please let me know if you have any questions at all. I’m happy to respond.
I signed up and payed the $15K about 5-6 years ago. My tax situation is VERY different than what it was at that time. Do I have to pay another $15K to do this again or is there any other kind of fee structure for returning clients?
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.
While we are not allowed to promote as accountants on BP, I will say we offer a very similar service but are more hands on as we are not at the size they are. We also do it for much less cost right now.
(copy/pasting from other thread full disclosure - sorry always seems odd to me not doing original composition LOL)
@Samia Moughanni - Hi Samia! I disagree with your version of events but your feedback and experience with us is relevant.
This was beyond our 30 day full guarantee and satisfaction policy when we were informed by you of your demand for something outside the contract well after that period. You had one desired outcome that was outside of the parameters of what we were able to make a reality. Those are the only facts I will share in this case and anything outside of that would be unprofessional.
I can assure you the employees involved in trying to help are good people that were doing their best to try and help solve the problem and didn't have any malicious intent. I should probably give some highly corporatized reply or something, but honestly seeing Alan and Kirt's names drawn into a public forum is hurtful to me. If nothing else I take responsibility for that and will work to improve our communication systems between our franchisees, client success and sales team that's valid.
As I have done before I'm a big fan of transparency and this forum, and will happily talk to anyone that has concerns about how we do business. In addition to that I love accounting and tax and love helping people and pointing them in the right direction even if our model isn't a fit for them hit me up any time! FYI we've changed our approach entirely and have lower fee initial entry points to avoid the challenges of long term project based arrangements so we can catch issues much sooner. This situation surely would have benefitted from this indeed.
All the best!
#bringback100%bonusdepreciation
Quote from @Account Closed:
While we are not allowed to promote as accountants on BP, I will say we offer a very similar service but are more hands on as we are not at the size they are. We also do it for much less cost right now.
1. You can disagree with my version of events, but I have emails to back it all up. Funny how you and Jonathan both were cc’ed on Alan’s last email on 1/26 that said, “someone within our company will get back with you on our proposal.” But neither YOU nor Jonathan or anyone else for that matter has reached out to us with a refund proposal, but yet you quickly respond to my comment on a public BP forum within hours.
2. If company policy dictates firm adherence to the contract, then why did you and Alan keep me waiting on a refund proposal for 6 months? Again, I have multiple emails to prove that. You also ran into my husband at the BuiltHow expo in Phoenix in 11/2023 where you told him the same thing you told me over the phone about knowing that the CPA we had been paired with had a bad reputation and a history of problems with multiple clients. You also promised to follow up with him and I, but never did.
3. Good people do not knowingly scam others out of 25k.
4. New business practices or not… any amount of money paid for their services is a rip-off. Just read Tom’s book!
5. For anyone who isn’t sure who to believe - please, do your research. Read the 2 complaints on the Better Business Bureau and all the one-star reviews on google (all have same detailed complaints). All the 5-star reviews on google claiming to be working directly with Tom are lies - you need Robert Kiyosaki riches to be working directly with Tom.
Thank you for responding, Brad!
Quote from @Samia Moughanni:
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.
dang sorry to hear you went through that, I had a similar experience with Anderson advisors, they got me got about 3500 up front and 35/month for a year and half smh I couldn't ever get anyone on the phone, its was nightmare
To be fair with WealthAbility, I wanted to provide an update for the BP community - Within a couple days of my initial WealthAbility post on the BP forums I was contacted directly by WealthAbility. After a lengthy zoom call, I can finally say that I felt heard and cared about by the company. We were able to reach an agreement that was fair and favorable to both parties. I feel content with the outcome and am thankful for their recent efforts made towards rectifying the situation.
I am glad it worked out. Did you choose to stay with the company?
