Billy Long worked with Lifetime Advisors, a company that solicited clients to claim a pandemic-era tax credit that the I.R.S. said became a magnet for fraud.According to a report from The New York Times, former Republican congressman Billy Long has been working with Lifetime Advisors, a company that has been soliciting clients to claim a pandemic-era tax credit. This credit, known as the employee retention tax credit, was created by Congress to support businesses and nonprofits that continued paying employees during the pandemic. However, the I.R.S. has stated that the program has become a magnet for fraud.
During a House committee hearing earlier this year, Daniel Werfel, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, testified about how the program had turned into an expensive government boondoggle. He explained that as the public health crisis faded, more and more companies were lining up to claim the credit, encouraged by third-party companies like Lifetime Advisors.
Mr. Werfel stated that these promoters and marketers were taking advantage of honest small businesses by convincing them that they were eligible for the credit when they were not. Seated behind Mr. Werfel during the hearing was Billy Long, who was working with Lifetime Advisors at the time. Mr. Long, who was later named to lead the I.R.S. by President-elect Donald J. Trump, had joined Lifetime’s network of salespeople after leaving Congress in 2023. He was pitching businesses and nonprofits in his former Missouri district, including swimming pool and roofing contractors, on taking the credit.
Mr. Long often wore a hat that said “Ask me about E.R.T.C.” as he sought out business for Lifetime Advisors. The company would prepare an application for the tax credit and keep a portion of the money from the I.R.S. as payment. According to one contract viewed by The New York Times, Lifetime would collect 20 percent of a roughly $300,000 tax credit, with half of the client’s fee due once the claim was submitted and the rest due upon receipt of the credit.
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