We may receive a commission if you sign up or purchase through links on this page. Here's more information.
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.
-
Clear Start Tax- Basics: Clear Start Tax has the cleanest complaint record in this batch of reviews: seven BBB complaints closed in three years against roughly 509 customer reviews, the ten most recent all five stars.
- Pros: Only 7 BBB complaints closed in three years against roughly 509 reviews, a low ratio for this industry.
- Cons: No fee amounts published at any stage.
- FREE CONSULTATION:
Yes
- YEAR FOUNDED:
Not published
- BBB RATING:
A+ · 4.87/5 (509 reviews)
- GUARANTEE:
Promoted; terms unverified
Clear Start Tax has the cleanest complaint record in this batch of reviews: seven BBB complaints closed in three years against roughly 509 customer reviews, the ten most recent all five stars. What holds the scores down is not customer harm but opacity: no leadership page, no named staff, no founding year, no price at any stage. And the local news coverage you find when you search the name is paid press-release syndication, not reporting.
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
Clear Start Tax At a Glance
| Free Consultation | Yes |
| Fee Structure | Two-stage: investigation fee, then a resolution fee that “varies.” No amounts published. |
| Money-Back Guarantee | Investigation fee only, and only if the company determines no viable resolution exists |
| BBB Rating | A+ letter rating; 4.87 out of 5 from about 509 reviews, August 2026 |
| Year Founded | Not published |
Who Clear Start Tax Is
The brand appears as both Clear Start Tax and Clear Start Tax Relief. The BBB lists the entity as Clear Start Tax Inc; trademark records show the registrant as Clear Start Tax, Inc., which filed both marks on June 15, 2023.
The BBB gives a business start date of August 28, 2020, corroborated by SuperMoney; the company’s own site never says when it was founded. Headquarters is 3 Park Plaza, Suite 1800, Irvine, California 92614, and the firm serves clients “throughout the entire United States.”
Leadership is where it thins out. The BBB profile names Vivian Yip as CEO. The company’s own site has no leadership page, no team page, and names no executives or staff anywhere.
Staff are described only as “an experienced team of tax professionals, attorneys, enrolled agents, and CPAs,” with enrolled agents said to have “over a dozen years of experience” and preparers described as “licensed and bonded CTEC personnel.” No names, no headcounts, no license numbers, and so nothing you can verify.
Services Offered
The published menu is standard for the category:
- Tax consultation, resolution, and preparation
- IRS Fresh Start Program work, including offer in compromise, installment agreements, partial payment installment agreements, penalty abatement, and currently-not-collectible status
- Audit representation
- Unfiled returns
- Wage garnishment relief
- Innocent spouse relief
- IRS tax discharge
- State tax relief
One gap: the state tax offering names no specific programs or states. If your problem is with a state, ask what the firm has done in yours.
How Does Clear Start Tax Work?
Stage one: the free consultation
The first call costs nothing. Treat it as the sales call it is, and use it to extract what the website withholds: the name and credential of whoever would handle your case, and both fees in dollars.
Stage two: the investigation
A smaller upfront fee buys a diagnostic phase before resolution work begins. The company does not publish the amount. This is also the stage the refund promise attaches to.
Stage three: resolution
If the firm sees a path forward, a second and larger fee covers the work. Get the scope in writing first, including whether preparing your unfiled returns sits inside or outside the quote.
Clear Start Tax Cost
The honest answer: nobody outside the company knows, and the company will not say.
What is published is the structure, not the numbers: a free consultation, then a smaller investigation fee and a resolution fee that “varies.” No dollar amount at either stage, no flat-versus-hourly designation, no retainer terms, and no published minimum debt requirement to tell you whether your balance even qualifies.
Third-party sites float fee estimates, but they are unverified, contradict each other, and are unconfirmed by the company. The consequence: you cannot comparison-shop this firm before committing to a sales call.
The guarantee, read closely
Clear Start Tax has promoted a refund tied to the investigation fee: in substance, if the company determines that no viable resolution options exist, the investigation fee is refunded in full. Two limits are built into that promise, and both matter.
- It covers the investigation fee only. The larger resolution fee is not covered.
- It triggers on the company’s determination, not your satisfaction. The refund is owed when the firm decides there is no viable path forward, not when a client dislikes the outcome or changes their mind.
Many firms in this category offer nothing at all, so a refund promise of any kind is worth something. But it is far narrower than the phrase “money-back guarantee” suggests to most people.
One caution, and it is why the guarantee scores no higher than a 5. When we checked the company’s own homepage and FAQ page in August 2026, we could not locate this refund language on either one. The homepage instead carries a disclaimer stating that Clear Start Tax “does not guarantee that clients’ federal IRS or state tax obligations will be managed to a specific degree, reduced by a specific amount or percentage, or resolved within a specified timeframe.” Those two things are not strictly contradictory, since one is about outcomes and the other about a fee. But a refund promise you cannot find on the company’s own site is not a promise you can rely on. Get the refund terms in writing, in your service agreement, before you pay the investigation fee. If a representative describes a refund on the phone and it does not appear in the agreement, it does not exist.
Clear Start Tax Complaints and Customer Reviews
Three separate metrics matter here, and people routinely mash them into one. From the BBB profile, August 2026:
- BBB letter rating: A+, accredited since October 21, 2020.
- BBB customer star rating: 4.87 out of 5, from approximately 509 reviews.
- Complaints closed in the last three years: 7. In the last 12 months: 5.
- No government actions and no alerts listed.
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.
The complaint count is the standout: seven in three years against more than 500 reviews is low for this category.
What customers say
Positive reviews cluster on communication and respect. Angela R., BBB profile, 07/28/2026:
“Everything was precise and very clear. I was treated with respect.”
On the other side, I would rather be straight with you than manufacture balance: verified negative reviews were scarce. The only critical material this research surfaced was an anonymous forum post about fee sticker shock, thin and unattributable. The absence of an unhappy-customer trail is a real point in this firm’s favor.
One caveat: nearly all verifiable review data sits on the BBB. No matching Trustpilot profile was found, two aggregators’ Google review counts disagreed by roughly nine times, and Yelp searches resolve to a different company with a similar name. So this review publishes no Google, Yelp, or Trustpilot numbers. A rating resting on one platform is narrower evidence than one confirmed across three.
Is Clear Start Tax Legit?
We searched the Federal Trade Commission, the California Attorney General’s office, general lawsuit and attorney general queries, and consumer complaint forums. Those searches found nothing, and the BBB profile lists no government actions or alerts. But “we found nothing” is not “there is nothing”: CFPB records and court dockets could not be checked. Call it an absence of publicly visible action in the places we looked, alongside a low complaint count. Reassuring, not a certified clean record.
Why this company looks like it is constantly in the news
Search the name and you will find what looks like an avalanche of local news coverage: client success stories headlined “$X in tax debt reduced to $Y,” plus a “2024 Top Workplaces” announcement, on the sites of TV stations and newspapers all over the country. None of it is independent reporting. All of it traces back to press releases Clear Start Tax paid to distribute through wire services, principally AccessNewswire and Newswire.com.
How paid wire syndication works
Understand this once and it will help you evaluate every company in this category.
A wire service is a distribution company, not a newsroom. A business writes whatever it wants to say about itself, pays a fee, and the wire pushes that text out to a network of partner websites. Many partners are local news outlets carrying a syndicated business feed, and the partner site publishes the item automatically. No editor read it. No reporter called anyone. Nobody checked the numbers.
The output looks exactly like coverage: a real outlet’s domain, that outlet’s page template, sitting next to that outlet’s actual journalism. But the company wrote the words, paid for the placement, and decided what they said. It is an advertisement wearing a newspaper’s typography.
This is legal, common, and not evidence that Clear Start Tax did anything wrong. Reputable businesses use wire services routinely. The problem is on the reader’s side: it is easy to mistake dozens of syndicated releases for dozens of independent endorsements, and that impression is what the money buys.
How to tell a paid release from real reporting
- Check the byline. Real reporting carries a named journalist at that outlet. Releases have no byline, credit the company, or list a PR contact.
- Look for the wire credit. A wire service name, a “Source:” line, or a distribution disclaimer is the clearest tell.
- Search the exact headline in quotation marks. Identical text on dozens of unrelated sites means a wire.
- Read the tone. A reporter quotes someone besides the company and would ask how a large debt came to be settled for a token amount. A release states the result and moves on.
This does not mean the success stories are false. It means they are unverified claims from the seller, so weigh them as you would any ad. A stranger’s result tells you little about yours.
Clear Start Tax Pros and Cons
Pros
- Only 7 BBB complaints closed in three years against roughly 509 reviews, a low ratio for this industry.
- A+ letter rating, accredited since October 21, 2020; 4.87 stars; ten most recent visible reviews all five-star.
- Verified negative reviews were hard to find. A search result, not a marketing claim.
- Free consultation, nationwide service.
- A promoted refund on the investigation fee, which is more than many competitors offer. Confirm the terms in your service agreement.
- No regulatory or legal action surfaced in the searches above.
Cons
- No fee amounts published at any stage.
- No leadership page, named staff, license numbers, headcount, or founding year on its own site. The CEO’s name and the August 28, 2020 start date come from the BBB.
- The refund covers the investigation fee only, and only when the company decides no viable resolution exists.
- No published minimum debt requirement, so you cannot self-screen for fit.
- Heavy use of paid press-release syndication that reads like independent news.
- Review footprint unverifiable outside the BBB.
Alternatives to Clear Start Tax
| Clear Start Tax | 🏆OUR PICK🏆 Choice Tax Relief |
Optima Tax Relief | Community Tax | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
||||
| Free Consultation | Yes | Yes, though no length is published | Yes | Yes |
| Fee Structure | Two-stage: investigation fee, then a resolution fee that “varies.” No amounts 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 | Investigation fee only, and only if the company determines no viable resolution exists | None published | 15-day refund of the investigation fee only. Fees for later phases are expressly excluded | No money-back terms published, only a general satisfaction statement |
| BBB Rating | A+ letter rating; 4.87 out of 5 from about 509 reviews, August 2026 | A+, accredited 5/31/2022; separately 5 out of 5 from 1 customer review; 0 complaints on file | A+, accredited 6/18/2012; separately 4.07 out of 5 from 1,987 reviews; 788 complaints in three years | A+, accredited 7/1/2015; separately 4.21 out of 5 from 142 reviews; 35 complaints in three years |
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.
Notice what the table cannot tell you: not one of these firms publishes an actual price. The category hides its numbers until you are on a sales call, so the only comparables 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, and Optima’s 4.07 rests on 1,987. Those are not comparable samples, and the complaint counts scale with client volume too. Of the alternatives here, only Optima Tax Relief uses the same two-stage model, so your first payment there buys a diagnosis, not a solution. Community Tax instead describes flat, fixed pricing, and Choice Tax Relief publishes no fee structure at all.
Who Clear Start Tax Is Best For
- Taxpayers who weight complaint history most heavily. It is this firm’s strongest data point.
- People who would rather pay a smaller diagnostic fee first and decide about the larger one afterward.
- Anyone needing a standard IRS collection alternative: installment agreement, currently-not-collectible status, penalty abatement, or offer in compromise.
- People who will get every number in writing first.
Who Clear Start Tax Is Not For
- Anyone who needs to compare prices before speaking to a salesperson.
- Anyone who wants their case handler’s name and credential before signing.
- Anyone who reads “money-back guarantee” and expects a refund if they are dissatisfied.
- Anyone whose decision rests on those local news stories. Discount them to zero and decide again.
- Taxpayers who have not yet called the IRS. Some balances qualify for a payment plan you can set up alone.
Final Thoughts
Clear Start Tax comes out of this research better than most firms in the category, for a simple reason: its customers are not complaining. Seven BBB complaints in three years against roughly 509 reviews, a 4.87 star average, an A+ rating, no regulatory action found, and a search for negative reviews that came up nearly empty.
The criticism it earns is about opacity, not harm. A firm that will not name its leadership, will not say what year it started, and will not publish a single dollar figure is asking for a lot of trust before offering much information. Add the paid releases dressed as local news, and you have a company investing heavily in appearing credible while withholding what would let you verify it.
Outcomes in tax resolution depend on your individual circumstances, and no firm can guarantee a specific result. Any promise of a particular settlement figure before your finances have been examined should end the conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Clear Start Tax legit?
- How much does Clear Start Tax charge?
- Does Clear Start Tax have a money-back guarantee?
- What is Clear Start Tax’s BBB rating?
- Are all those Clear Start Tax news articles real?
- Who owns Clear Start Tax?
- How long has Clear Start Tax been in business?
- Is there a minimum tax debt to work with Clear Start Tax?
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.
