Attorney Bill Breck spent two years developing a two-day seminar, only to see it fall flat with a resounding thud when he introduced it to attorneys and certified public accountants.
Undaunted and believing all the more that he has an asset-protection plan that taxpayers will find useful the Reno attorney is taking a page from the pharmaceutical companies.
Instead of selling his plan directly to professionals, Breck next month will begin a series of seminars aimed at laypeople.
If they're sold, he figures they'll head back to their attorney and tax professional and ask the professionals to begin working with Breck.
The system Breck pitches in his seminars is fairly straightforward: He advises taxpayers to create a series of limited liability corporations to protect their assets against a litigation-happy society.
At the bare minimum, he says, a taxpayer should create one corporation to own his home and another to own passive financial investments.
A business owner, he says, should create corporations that own the franchise the intellectual property of a business, along with separate corporations to operate the cash-flow business and hold the capital stock of the business.
Yet another limited-liability corporation, Breck says, can be created to manage all the other business-related corporations.
And by the way, Breck says, taxpayers who create these corporations have the possibility of dramatically reducing their tax bills.
A corporation needs a headquarters, right? Why not lease the taxpayers' home? Bill the corporation when its leased headquarters building needs a coat of paint.
Write off the food served at meetings of the executive committee.
Annual meetings of the corporation can be at Disneyland or Paris.
Make the kids directors of the company it's a learning experience and make sure they attend annual meetings.
The Internal Revenue Service has flatout forbidden creation of corporations that exist only to reduce the tab paid by taxpayers.
Breck contends that ruling doesn't apply to his plan because it's developed primarily to protect taxpayers' assets.
Any tax benefits are merely a happy windfall.
At the same time, however, he says that his company believes that taxpayers in most instances will save at least twice as much on their tax bill as they spend on creation of the plan.
ProTAP Planning Group, the company Breck created to market the asset-protection plan, figures to make money one of three ways: * By teaching two-day seminars to attorneys and accountants who are required to take continuing education courses.
The company has been accredited by the bar associations and CPA associations in Nevada and California to provide continuing education.
* By selling the materials CPAs and lawyers need to make the plan a reality for their clients.
The 1,500-page stack of materials provided to those who attend the
company's continuing education seminars stands about 8 inches high.
A CD containing all the material prepared by Breck over the past couple of years is priced at $5,000.
Annual updates run another $2,500.
* By providing professional guidance to attorneys and CPAs who are working with the ProTAP system.
The company's initial marketing plan was this: Get attorneys and CPAs to attend one of its two-day seminars, then watch as they spread the word to clients.
Despite a heavy direct mail pitch to attorneys in Nevada and throughout most of northern Nevada, however, response was light to ProTAP's first seminars in late 2003.
That brings Breck to his current plan a consumer-driven push that will begin with a free May 4 introduction to his plan.
(The event at the Best Western Airport Plaza begins at 7:30 p.m.) Later that week, meanwhile, he'll make another effort to reach the professional crowd with a seminar for CPAs.
The primary competition for his assetprotection plan, Breck says, comes from tax-planning professionals who believe instead in the creation of offshore trusts.
Offshore trusts, he contends, involved heavy amounts of paperwork and carry greater risk of IRS scrutiny than the ProTAP system.
