Meet Our Owners

Q:   Steve, what inspired you to start Fortress Financial Services?

A:  First and foremost, I really love helping people solve tax problems.  People and businesses who have had the misfortune of winding up in collections with the IRS or a state taxing authority are very often scared, stressed, and vulnerable.  Many of my clients have expressed that my involvement helped them sleep at night and that my work effectively eliminated the biggest problem they had in their lives. It feels great to be able to utilize the skills I’ve acquired as an attorney to touch the lives of people in such a meaningful way.

I started out in the tax resolution industry back in the late 90’s and quickly excelled due, in large part, to the fact that I am a trained and licensed attorney.  A lot of people just don’t get it that a tax collection case is way past the accounting stage in the tax life cycle.  Yet, to this day, the tax resolution field is dominated by accountants. I knew early in my career that the things I learned in law school and as a lawyer, like how to prepare and present a compelling case—both verbally and in writing—were the reasons why I was consistently achieving better results for my clients than my non-attorney peers.

So, the reason I decided to start Fortress was simple.  No one in the industry had a business model where all cases were handled personally by competent, highly trained tax attorneys, and I saw an opportunity to provide a much a higher quality of service than any of the competition. Admittedly, many of our competitors are a lot more profitable than Fortress.  That’s fine with me.  My philosophy has always been that if you provide a superior service and do the right thing over and over again, you’ll build a great reputation and the money will follow.