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Licensed Tax Attorneys & CPAs · A+ BBB Accredited · Free Consultation
I'm Logan Allec, CPA — I've reviewed dozens of tax-relief companies, and I founded my own to do it right. If you owe the IRS $10,000 or more, my team will review your case free and tell you exactly where you stand — no pressure, no obligation.
Get My Free Consultation →Free & confidential · Or call 866-8000-TAX
Disclosure: Choice Tax Relief is owned by Money Done Right founder Logan Allec, CPA.
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Alleviate Tax Relief- Basics: Alleviate Tax LLC is a real tax resolution firm in Irvine, California, led by a licensed attorney.
- Pros: Registered California LLC formed in 2018, physical Irvine headquarters.
- Cons: 220 BBB complaints in three years against Alleviate Tax LLC, 74 in the last twelve months.
- FREE CONSULTATION:
Yes
- YEAR FOUNDED:
2018
- BBB RATING:
A · 4.14/5 (355 reviews)
- GUARANTEE:
Badge shown; terms not published
Alleviate Tax LLC is a real tax resolution firm in Irvine, California, led by a licensed attorney. But 220 Better Business Bureau complaints in three years is an order of magnitude above the cleanest firms in this category. The friction is mostly marketing contact and post-sale follow-through, and a federal telemarketing class action settled in late 2025. Get everything in writing before you pay.
Disclosure: Money Done Right founder Logan Allec, CPA, owns Choice Tax Relief, which competes with the company reviewed here. That is exactly why the scorecard above is based on published, verifiable evidence rather than opinion.
- BBB Accredited: A+ Rating
- Owned by a CPA: Logan Allec, CPA
- Free Consultation: 100% Free, No Obligation
- Minimum Debt: Works with $10,000+
Table of Contents
Alleviate Tax Relief At a Glance
| Free Consultation | Yes |
| Fee Structure | Not published; customer-reported amounts span $195 to $22,000 |
| Money-Back Guarantee | Badge on site, terms not published |
| BBB Rating | A letter rating; 4.14 out of 5 stars from 355 reviews (Alleviate Tax LLC) |
| Year Founded | 2018 |
Who Alleviate Tax Relief Is
“Alleviate” is two separate companies. Alleviate Tax LLC and Alleviate Financial Solutions LLC are distinct California LLCs, not one business under two names. They are marketed together under Alleviate.com, which calls them “separate operating entities” and “trusted partners” and says it provides no services.
Alleviate Tax LLC is the tax relief company and the subject of this review. Formed February 23, 2018. CEO George Samuel Baseluos, an active California-licensed attorney, Bar #310758. Headquarters at 5 Park Plaza, Irvine, California.
Alleviate Financial Solutions LLC is a debt settlement company, not a tax firm. Formed February 2, 2018. CEO Michael Barsoum. NMLS #1858463. Headquarters at 4 Park Plaza, Irvine, an adjacent building. It states it does not provide tax, legal, or credit repair services.
Search “Alleviate reviews” and you get both entities mixed together. Every number below is labelled with the entity it belongs to.
Staff and credentials
Alleviate Tax claims “150+ tax professionals (CPAs, EAs, tax attorneys)” but names none of them and gives no breakdown by credential. That sits in tension with an Inc. 5000 listing showing 51 to 200 total employees, and nothing published resolves it. States served are not disclosed by either entity.
Services Offered
From Alleviate Tax’s own website:
- Offer in compromise
- Penalty abatement
- Wage garnishment removal
- Installment agreements
- IRS Fresh Start
- Levy release
- Innocent spouse relief
- Currently not collectible status
All of it is federal, IRS-focused work. No state tax resolution service is advertised, so if you owe a state, confirm before signing that it is included.
How Does Alleviate Tax Relief Work?
Stage 1: The lead, and how the first call gets made
Much of this firm’s business starts with a purchased lead rather than a search you ran yourself. Tax relief companies buy leads — your name, phone number, email, and roughly what you owe — generated by third parties: comparison sites, “see if you qualify” quizzes, and ad pages built to collect contact information and resell it.
Two pieces of the pipeline are on the record. Alleviate Tax’s own site discloses a partnership with Solvable, a lead marketplace. And discovery in a federal telemarketing case produced an affiliate marketing agreement between Alleviate Tax, LLC and an outside marketing firm, plus a subpoena to a dialer platform.
So when you fill out a form promising to “match you with a tax relief expert,” you are not contacting one company. You are creating a lead record that can be sold to several buyers at once. The fine print under the submit button, where you consent to contact by partners including autodialed calls and texts, is why one form fill produces a week of calls. That is legal and standard, and it is the direct cause of the contact complaints below.
Stage 2: The free consultation
This is the sales call, and in favorable reviews it is the high point: intake staff are consistently described as clear and patient. Ask what you will be charged in total, whether that can change, who will handle your case and what credential they hold, and what happens if you cancel.
Stage 3: What comes after, and what is not published
Alleviate Tax publishes no post-consultation process, no fee schedule, and no guarantee terms. Whatever you are quoted on the call is the only version of the deal you will see.
How to stop the calls
- Say the words that create a record. On a call, say “stop calling” and “remove me from your list.” On a text, reply STOP. Note the date and number.
- Ask where they got your information. Callers often name the lead source that sold your data — usually a comparison site you forgot you visited.
- Revoke consent at that source. Stopping one buyer does not stop the rest, because the same lead may have been sold several times.
- Register on the Do Not Call Registry and keep your log. Contact-after-opt-out complaints only go anywhere with a record.
- Never give financial details to an inbound caller. Hang up and call back on a number you looked up yourself.
- Assume any number you enter on a comparison site will be sold. If you want a specific firm, go to that firm directly.
Alleviate Tax Relief Cost
Alleviate Tax publishes no fees — not a range, not a starting price, not an investigation fee. You cannot comparison-shop this company from its website — precisely the problem.
What we can report is what customers say they paid, from BBB complaints and third-party review sites: reported amounts span $195 to $22,000. Read that as evidence that cases vary enormously, not a price list. Minimum debt is also not disclosed.
The guarantee is the weakest point in the file. A guarantee badge appears on the website, but the terms could not be found on any page, so there is nothing to hold anyone to. Get the terms in writing before you pay; if nobody will, you have your answer.
Alleviate Tax Relief Complaints and Customer Reviews
Alleviate Tax LLC (the tax relief company reviewed here), per its BBB profile as of August 2026:
- BBB letter rating: A. Accredited since July 3, 2019.
- BBB customer star rating: 4.14 out of 5, from 355 reviews.
- Complaints closed in the last three years: 220. Last twelve months: 74.
Alleviate Financial Solutions LLC (the separate debt settlement company, for contrast), per its BBB profile as of August 2026:
- BBB letter rating: A+. Accredited since June 10, 2019.
- BBB customer star rating: 4.6 out of 5, from 931 reviews.
- Complaints closed in the last three years: 187. Last twelve months: 63.
A BBB letter grade is not a customer satisfaction score . The BBB states that customer reviews are not used in calculating it, so the letter grade and the star rating are two separate measures of two different things. Alleviate Tax LLC’s A grade is not a statement that 220 complainants had a good experience.
Elsewhere, Alleviate Tax shows Trustpilot 4.4 from 348 reviews, Google 4.6 from 1,365 reviews, and Yelp 2.9 from 68 reviews. Alleviate Financial Solutions, the separate debt settlement entity, shows Trustpilot 4.7 from 3,348 reviews, Google 4.7 from 8,397 reviews, and Yelp 3.6 from 160 reviews.
The Yelp gap is worth noting. Yelp filters aggressively against solicited reviews, so a Yelp score well below a company’s Google and Trustpilot scores often signals a review-solicitation program elsewhere. That is a general pattern, not an accusation.
Positive reviews cluster on the intake experience: staff who are clear and patient with someone who has never faced IRS collections. Negative reviews cluster on results that did not materialize, poor caseworker follow-up, and repeated calls and texts after the customer asked to be removed.
Is Alleviate Tax Relief Legit?
Yes, in the sense that matters most: a registered California company formed in 2018, run by an attorney with an active bar license, at a physical Irvine address. Here is the record.
CFPB: zero complaints. We queried the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s database directly, by two independent methods, for both names. Zero for either — a clean, reproducible finding in the company’s favor.
FTC: nothing found. A 2025 FTC and Nevada enforcement action in this sector names entirely different companies. State attorney general actions: none found.
One state penalty, and it belongs to the other company. In April 2022 the Texas Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner assessed a $500 penalty against Alleviate Financial Solutions — the debt settlement entity, not the tax firm reviewed here — for filing an annual report late. A paperwork penalty, not a consumer-harm finding.
The lawsuits, stated precisely
There are federal lawsuits, and how you read them matters. Every confirmed case is a telemarketing or debt-collection-contact claim, and not one produced a finding of liability. They settled, and a settlement is not an admission or a ruling that a company did anything wrong.
Against Alleviate Tax: a Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action (Moghadam/Lucombe) that settled in December 2025 and was dismissed in February 2026 — the case whose discovery produced the affiliate agreement and dialer subpoena. A second TCPA case (Ewing) settled in about three weeks. Against Alleviate Financial Solutions: an FDCPA case and a TCPA case, both settled.
The summary is narrow. No regulator has acted against the tax entity, no court has found it liable, and the litigation concerns how consumers were contacted, not the tax work.
Alleviate Tax Relief Pros and Cons
Pros
- Registered California LLC formed in 2018, physical Irvine headquarters.
- CEO is an active California-licensed attorney (Bar #310758), publicly identifiable.
- Verified zero CFPB complaints, no FTC or state attorney general action, and no court finding of liability.
- Alleviate Tax LLC is BBB accredited since July 2019, with an A letter rating.
- Free consultation, nationwide marketing, well-reviewed intake staff.
Cons
- 220 BBB complaints in three years against Alleviate Tax LLC, 74 in the last twelve months.
- No fees published; customer-reported amounts range from $195 to $22,000.
- A guarantee badge with no published terms anywhere.
- The “150+ tax professionals” claim cannot be reconciled with an Inc. 5000 listing of 51 to 200 employees.
- No staff named, no credential breakdown, no minimum debt disclosed.
- States served not disclosed; no state tax resolution service advertised.
- Heavy affiliate lead sourcing, with repeated complaints about calls after opt-out.
- Two similarly named Irvine companies make research difficult.
Alternatives to Alleviate Tax Relief
Disclosure: Money Done Right founder Logan Allec, CPA, owns Choice Tax Relief, which competes with the company reviewed here. That is exactly why the scorecard above is based on published, verifiable evidence rather than opinion.
| Alleviate Tax Relief | 🏆OUR PICK🏆 Choice Tax Relief |
Optima Tax Relief | Community Tax | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Free Consultation | Not published | Yes — length not published | Yes | Yes |
| Fee Structure | Not published | Not published; publishes a $10,000 minimum debt, which the others do not | Two-stage: investigation fee, then resolution fee; amounts not published | Describes flat, fixed pricing; amounts not published |
| Money-Back Guarantee | Not published | None published | 15-day refund of the investigation fee only; fees for later phases are expressly excluded | No money-back terms published; a general satisfaction statement only |
| BBB Rating | Not published | A+, accredited 5/31/2022; separately 5 out of 5 stars from 1 customer review; 0 complaints on file | A+, accredited 6/18/2012; separately 4.07 out of 5 stars from 1,987 reviews; 788 complaints in three years | A+, accredited 7/1/2015; separately 4.21 out of 5 stars from 142 reviews; 35 complaints in three years |
Choice Tax Relief is owned by Logan Allec, CPA, founder of Money Done Right; it states that it is staffed by CPAs and tax attorneys and works with taxpayers owing roughly $10,000 or more. Optima is the most heavily advertised firm in the category. We did not independently verify staff licensure at Choice, Optima or Community Tax for this review, so nothing in this table is a credential comparison.
Look at the fee column. Every company in this table declines to publish actual prices — that is the category, not one bad actor. So the only things you can compare in advance are fee structure and guarantee terms. Read the star ratings with their review counts attached: Choice’s 5 out of 5 rests on a single BBB review, while Optima’s 4.07 rests on 1,987. Those are not comparable samples, and the complaint counts scale with client volume too. The same checks run through our writeups on Optima Tax Relief, Community Tax, and Choice Tax Relief.
Who Alleviate Tax Relief Is Best For
- Taxpayers with a straightforward federal IRS problem — an installment agreement, penalty abatement, or a levy or garnishment to release.
- People who will press for a written fee agreement before paying.
- Taxpayers willing to manage the relationship actively and follow up on their own schedule.
Who Alleviate Tax Relief Is Not For
- Anyone who needs a published price before starting a conversation. There is not one.
- Taxpayers relying on a money-back guarantee. The badge exists; the terms do not.
- People with significant state tax debt; state work is not advertised.
- Anyone who wants their preparer’s credentials up front. No staff are named.
- Taxpayers with low tolerance for follow-up problems, given 74 BBB complaints against Alleviate Tax LLC in twelve months.
Final Thoughts
Alleviate Tax LLC is a legitimate California firm led by a licensed attorney, with zero CFPB complaints, no regulatory action, and no court finding of liability. The offsetting facts are just as concrete: 220 BBB complaints in three years, no published pricing, a guarantee badge with no terms, a staffing claim that does not reconcile, and a marketing pipeline that drew a federal class action.
If you hire this firm, get the total fee in writing before you pay, get the guarantee terms in writing, and get the name and credential of whoever handles your case.
Outcomes in tax resolution depend on your circumstances — what you owe, what you earn, what you own, and where you are in collections. No firm, including this one and including ours, can guarantee a specific result.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Alleviate Tax Relief legit?
- Is Alleviate Tax the same company as Alleviate Financial Solutions?
- How much does Alleviate Tax Relief cost?
- Does Alleviate Tax Relief have a money-back guarantee?
- Why did Alleviate Tax Relief call me?
- Has Alleviate Tax Relief been sued?
- What is Alleviate Tax Relief’s BBB rating?
Still deciding who to trust with your IRS debt?
Here's what I'd do: before you hire anyone, get a free case review from a licensed CPA. My team at Choice Tax Relief will tell you what your options actually are and what it should cost — even if you don't hire us.
Get My Free Case Review →For $10,000+ in IRS back taxes · Free & confidential · Or call 866-8000-TAX
Author:
Logan is a practicing CPA and founder of Choice Tax Relief and of course Money Done Right. After spending nearly a decade in the corporate world helping big businesses save money, he launched his blog with the goal of helping everyday Americans earn, save, and invest more money. Learn more about Logan.
Reviewer:
Logan is a practicing CPA and founder of Choice Tax Relief and of course Money Done Right. After spending nearly a decade in the corporate world helping big businesses save money, he launched his blog with the goal of helping everyday Americans earn, save, and invest more money. Learn more about Logan.
