A Brief History of TravelTax

TravelTax was a name given to us by one of our clients when he expressed relief that someone understood these “travel taxes.” Before that, there really wasn’t a name. It was just: That Traveling Respiratory Therapist Guy Who Happened to Also Have an Accounting Degree And Could Do My Multi-State Tax Return. A little too long to be a good company name, but it does serve as a description of how it got started. What started as a guy helping a few traveling friends morphed into a well-respected tax consulting firm that not only provides tax preparation service to mobile clients but also assists the staffing agencies that hire them, with multiple services in between.

Our company represents several dozen audited returns annually. That is why we feel safe in defending any return we have prepared at no charge. Most of the audits and tax disputes we handle are not “our” returns, but new clients coming to us after they have received either state or IRS notices. To our frustration, many of these were prepared by paid tax preparers who focused more on giving their clients big refunds, rather than filing accurate returns. Oftentimes, we see errors like incorrectly reported deductions, even though the client has already received tax-free reimbursements (double dipping), incorrectly filed state returns because the preparer was only familiar with their own plus a border state. We also tend to see travelers who were misled by well-meaning friends or recruiters to believe that their permanent residence was the same as their tax home, only to find that they have no tax home. AS a result, we place a lot of emphasis on education. We realize that the more you know ahead of time, the easier our job is.

You may now be thinking I’ll learn everything I can, so then I can do my own returns. We don’t deny that you can, but is it worth it? Even with the right knowledge base, preparing the federal return would probably take longer than you expect, make you consume a whole bottle of ibuprofen, and then there would be each state return, and figuring out how to make them get along and play nice…. And did you really do it all correctly? (Insert evil, maniacal laugh here)

If you haven’t caught on by now, open honesty is our policy, and we do have a slightly odd sense of humor. So, all we can say is: Try us, you’ll like us!

This is the cliff notes- for our full history, we would be honored if you read the walk down memory lane in our Blog linked from the home page.