Membership Agreement

Effective October 2, 2023

Preamble

Guard Dog offers services based on membership level. The difference between the membership levels is which services are included in the monthly payment and which are charged an extra fee. All memberships include our proactive monitoring service of all tax years and spouse coverage.

1. Your Acceptance:

By clicking “I Agree” or equivalent term, accessing our Site, or using Guard Dog services, you agree to be bound by this Agreement and our Privacy Policy. We may amend this Agreement post notice of such changes on the Site. Your use of the Site or Guard Dog services following such amendments will constitute your acceptance of the amended terms.

If you disagree with the amended terms, terminate your membership immediately.

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THIS AGREEMENT CONTAINS RECURRING BILLING, ARBITRATION, AND CLASS ACTION PROVISION THAT MAY AFFECT YOUR RIGHTS.

2. Definition of terms

2.1. We, us, and our refer to Guard Dog, a trade name of CryptoTaxAudit LLC, a Delaware entity. You and your refer to the members using our services. IRS refers to the Internal Revenue Service which is part of the U.S. government. Guard Dog is not associated with the Internal Revenue Service or the U.S. Government.

2.2. You are a member if you have made an initial membership payment, are current with your membership payments, and have completed the onboarding process, including signing IRS Form 2848, and have been accepted by the IRS. A spouse is included as a member if they have completed the onboarding process, including signing IRS Form 2848.

IRS Form 2848 authorizes one or more persons to represent the member before the IRS. The extent of this representation is limited to monitoring of the member's IRS transcripts unless an engagement letter is signed. This form must be accepted by the IRS and registered on their Central Authorization File before we can obtain IRS transcript files.

The membership acceptance date is when we receive your initial payment for a periodic (monthly or annual) membership. If periodic payments lapse, the date the payments restart is considered the new acceptance date.

2.3. An audit, also called an examination or review by the IRS, is a formal inspection of a member’s books or records to determine the correct tax liability. A collection or enforcement letter is not an audit.

2.4. An audit flag occurs when the IRS places transaction code 420, 424, or 922 on a member's IRS Account Transcript.

3. Membership

3.1. Membership Levels: There are four membership levels: Proactive, Advisory, Represent, and Full. A member selects a membership level when initially signing up or later changes. The periodic (monthly or annual) membership payment determines the member's level.

3.2. Individual Membership: Coverage for Members who are natural persons applies IRS Form 1040. and related schedules and forms. Coverage applies only to the member’s individual tax return. Business activity reported on Schedules C of Form 1040 is covered. Partnerships, corporations, trusts, non-profits, and other entities in which a member may be involved are not covered under the individual membership.

3.3. Business Membership: Business membership only applies to the legal entity identified on IRS Form 2848. The coverage is only for the entity’s income tax return and forms and schedules required to be filed with the income tax return.

4. Available Services

The following services are available to all members. The cost of these services is either included in the monthly membership fee or offered for an additional charge for current members without a pre-existing issue exclusion.

The Fix, Audit, and Appeal services require a separate signed engagement letter to address specific matters.

4.1. IRS Monitoring

The IRS monitoring service (monitoring) pulls the member’s IRS transcripts weekly. A monthly IRS account status email is sent out summarizing the health of the member’s account. An email will be sent out when a new audit flag is detected in any year.

The onboarding process requires that a member sign an IRS Form 2848 to authorize us to retrieve your records from the IRS. The IRS usually takes two weeks to register Form 2848 information to the IRS Central Authorization File.

The monitoring service pulls the past twenty years of transaction history. Only IRS transcripts are monitored, not state or other jurisdictions.

Members may register their spouses for monitoring purposes.

4.2. Consultation

Phone or video consultation allows discussion of your tax situation.

4.3. Fix Services

We will represent you concerning the collection of payment of income taxes, asserting taxpayer rights, and other IRS issues not provided through Audit and Appeal Services. We will represent you through the initial administrative level of the IRS Collections Division, including conferences with Revenue Officers and managers, as appropriate.

We will negotiate with the IRS on installment agreements, currently non-collectible status, offers-in-compromise, penalty abatements, claiming credits and refunds of overpayment, relief from federal tax liens and levies, identity theft remediation, retrieve IRS electronic transcripts, including wage and income transcripts, and determining tax debt subject to a bankruptcy filing.

4.4. Audit Services

We will represent you before the IRS during your federal income tax audit. Our representation will include communicating and negotiating with the IRS. Understandably, we cannot guarantee any results since the IRS has substantial discretion in deciding whether to accept information presented to them.

We will represent you on income tax audits at the state level. Audit representation includes collection due process or equivalency hearings, injured spouse relief, and innocent spouse relief.

4.5. Appeals Services

4.5.1. Digital Asset Services: Recalculation of digital asset income is provided at the start of an audit of digital asset income. We will provide forensic accountants to analyze the auditor’s digital asset calculations. We will also provide for Tax Court an expert witness in digital assets if required.

4.5.1. Audit Appeals: We will represent you in the appeal of the Revenue Agent's determination (Notice of Determination) that you owe additional tax, penalties, and interest. Our representation will include a review of the agent's findings, such as investigation and review of the underlying facts as we, in our sole discretion, deem appropriate, preparation and filing of the protest, and negotiation on settlement of the Case with the Appeals division.

4.5.2. Collections Appeals: We will represent you at IRS Collections Due Process (CDP) or Equivalence hearings, Fast Track Mediation, and Fast Track Settlement programs.

4.5.3 Tax Court Petition: If the issue cannot be resolved with the Appeals Officer or if IRS Appeals refuses to accept a case without an extension of the Statute of Limitations, we will provide a pro se petition (the most common form) to resolve your case at U.S. Tax Court. We can discuss the merits of your case with the IRS lawyers, draft motions and documents, and litigate on your behalf. If your case goes to trial we will provide a lawyer for limited representation.

5. General Membership Service limitations

The following service limitations apply to all memberships.

5.1. Preexisting issue exclusion: If a member requests audit or offer-in-compromise representation and the need for the representation predates the membership level start date. In that case, we reserve the right to request a one-time Initial Response fee or to decline the representation. The Initial Response refers to our activities after a member provides us with an audit or examination request from the tax authority. The Initial Response activities are considered completed after we deliver the initial documents to the tax authority.

5.2. The following services are not provided under this Agreement: resolving city or local tax issues, appealing state, city or local issues, trust fund recovery issues, or qualified retirement plan issues, forwarding IRS written communications, or providing tax planning advice.

5.3. We are not responsible for detecting an Audit Flag until a week after the IRS adds the Form 2848 authorization to their Central Authorization File.

5.4. If you have referred to or are under investigation by the IRS Criminal Investigations Unit (CI) at any time during a Case, we will terminate our representation services and advise you to seek legal counsel. For any Case that we are defending in which CI enters the Case, we will cease working on that Case.

5.5. If we notify you that a conflict of interests exists in any representation activity, we require informed consent, given in writing, to continue representation. When a conflict of interest exists between a member and spouse, we will represent the member-only unless both parties give informed written consent to representation despite the conflict. If a conflict of interest arises, as described in IRS Circular 230, we must communicate the conflict to all parties and receive authorization to continue the representation of parties. Debt resolution and audit defense services apply to spouses only when no conflicts of interest exist.

5.6. We will not reconcile checkbooks, organize or summarize other records, or do record-keeping or bookkeeping for our members.

5.7. We are not responsible for paying any taxes, interest, penalties, fines, liens, levies, or garnishments assessed against you.

5.8. No membership plan includes the cost of preparing a tax return for any year in which an original return has not been filed. No membership plan includes the cost of amending a tax return or calculating the cost of digital asset income unless that year’s tax return is under IRS audit.

5.9. Our Services are limited to income-related taxes. Matters related to other types of taxes, such as payroll taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, and highway taxes, are excluded.

5.10. You acknowledge that we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone and to cancel user membership at any time.

5.11. The IRS has significant challenges maintaining its computer systems, processing taxpayer information, and staffing. Our ability to notify you of Alert Flags or resolve tax matters depends on the quality and performance of these systems and staff. You agree that we are not responsible for delays and difficulties caused by the IRS' operations.

6. Client Responsibilities

6.1. You agree to furnish all necessary information to address your tax issue. You are responsible for properly maintaining your records, safeguarding assets, and substantial accuracy of the financial records.

You must thoroughly communicate facts and documents that would have a bearing on the audit, including any prior written or oral communications with the tax authorities, thoroughly searching and providing all relevant documents. These documents must be provided promptly and in electronic format and organized chronologically.

Our professional standards require that we inquire about any information you provide that seems unusual or inconsistent with other knowledge we have of your situation. We may furnish you with questionnaires to help you gather and organize the necessary information for us.

6.2. As a general rule, we require that all information be provided to us at least seven calendar days before the date requested by the tax authorities. Be aware that if you submit your information after the expected date, we may be unable to deliver by the date expected by the tax authorities. Although we will try to extend the due date, ultimately, you may be subject to additional IRS penalties, interest, or loss of appeal rights because of delay.

Promptly schedule a call with us upon receiving official IRS audit letters. If you contact the IRS yourself, anything you say can and will be used against you.

Time is of the essence in providing all documents requested by the tax authorities. The IRS interprets procrastination as being uncooperative. Being characterized as uncooperative can hurt your chances of a favorable decision before IRS Appeals or the courts. We reserve the right to discharge you as a client and terminate your membership for being slow or incomplete in responding to document requests.

6.3. The client must pay our reasonable and actual travel expenses if needed to attend an auditor visit to your premises.

6.4. If we represent you in an open audit or a collections-related IRS problem, you must sustain your current membership level payments otherwise, our representation obligations will immediately cease. Reinstating your membership and our representation will be at our discretion.

7. Termination

We reserve the right to terminate your Membership on the breach of any material provision of this Agreement. If you fail to cooperate with our reasonable requests for information, misrepresent information or facts to us, or refuse to disclose information we advise you to disclose it, we may immediately terminate your membership and withdraw from this engagement without completing our representation.

We will stop representing you if you insist on protesting income taxation on economic, religious, legal, or constitutional grounds or other frivolous claims as defined by the IRS.

Your membership will be terminated if you do not pay the periodic (monthly or annual) membership fee or other service invoices from us on time.

8. Payment terms

Products and services not included in the selected membership plan are invoiced separately and due upon receipt. Some services may involve pre-payment of a retainer.

You agree to pay the monthly membership fee listed on the website upon sign-up. Fees and applicable taxes are charged monthly in advance to your credit card.

You authorize us to charge the applicable membership fee to your credit card at the start of your membership and regularly on each billing date after that until your membership is terminated.

You agree and authorize us to bill you regularly and agree that you require no additional consent to charge your credit card automatically.

Your credit card information will be shared with our third-party payment processor, and you hereby consent to our sharing of that information. By submitting your payment information, you also agree to the terms and conditions of our third-party payment processor. Please be aware that all payment information will be stored and secured by the payment processor and not us, and you must agree with our payment processor’s policies.

As we offer a unique service, we have a no-refunds policy for all memberships and other services. However, if you feel that there are extenuating circumstances that warrant a refund, please contact customer service.

We expressly reserve the right to increase the price of any membership or other services after any monthly billing cycle. We will exert reasonable efforts to notify you of price changes in advance. You acknowledge and agree there is no fixed term for the prices in your membership.

9. Confidentiality

We protect your personal information following our privacy policy.

You authorize us to refer to your first name, state or territory of residence, and a summary of the services provided in our marketing materials unless authorization is denied in writing to our customer service manager.

10. Dispute resolution

If any dispute arises in connection with the performance of this Agreement, both you and we agree to try first, in good faith, to settle the dispute. ANY DISPUTE OR CLAIM RELATING IN ANY WAY TO THE SERVICES OR THIS AGREEMENT WILL BE RESOLVED BY BINDING ARBITRATION, RATHER THAN IN COURT, except that you may assert claims in small claims court if your claims qualify.

The Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of this provision; the arbitrator shall apply Delaware law to all other matters. Notwithstanding anything contrary, any party to the arbitration may seek injunctions or other forms of equitable relief from any court of competent jurisdiction.

WE EACH AGREE THAT ANY AND ALL DISPUTES MUST BE BROUGHT IN THE PARTIES' INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING.

BY ENTERING INTO THIS AGREEMENT AND AGREEING TO ARBITRATION, YOU AGREE THAT YOU AND WE ARE EACH WAIVING THE RIGHT TO FILE A LAWSUIT AND THE RIGHT TO A TRIAL BY JURY.

IN ADDITION, YOU AGREE TO WAIVE THE RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION OR LITIGATE ON A CLASS-WIDE BASIS. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE EXPRESSLY AND KNOWINGLY WAIVED THESE RIGHTS.

To begin an arbitration proceeding, send a letter requesting arbitration and describing your claim to us at 2810 N Church St Ste 274006, Wilmington, DE 19802. The arbitration will be conducted by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) before a single AAA arbitrator under the AAA's rules, which are available at www.adr.org or by calling 1-800-778-7879. The AAA's rules will govern payment of all filing, administration, and arbitrator fees and costs. You agree to have the arbitration conducted by telephone based on written submissions. The arbitrator’s decision shall be final and not appealable, and judgment on the arbitration award may be entered in any court having jurisdiction thereof. This Section shall survive this Agreement's expiration, termination, or rescission.

10. Limitation of Liability

EXCEPT AS PROHIBITED BY LAW, YOU WILL HOLD US AND OUR STAFF AND AGENTS HARMLESS FOR ANY INDIRECT, PUNITIVE, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGE; HOWEVER IT ARISES (INCLUDING ATTORNEYS' FEES AND ALL RELATED COSTS AND EXPENSES
OF LITIGATION AND ARBITRATION, OR AT TRIAL OR ON APPEAL, IF ANY, WHETHER OR NOT LITIGATION OR ARBITRATION IS INSTITUTED), WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, OR ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THIS AGREEMENT, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY CLAIM FOR PERSONAL INJURY OR PROPERTY DAMAGE, ARISING FROM THIS AGREEMENT AND ANY VIOLATION BY YOU OF ANY FEDERAL, STATE, OR LOCAL LAWS, STATUTES, RULES, OR REGULATIONS, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

EXCEPT AS PROHIBITED BY LAW, IF THERE IS LIABILITY FOUND ON OUR PART, IT WILL BE LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT PAID FOR THE PRODUCTS AND/OR SERVICES, AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL THERE BE CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES.

Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of punitive, incidental, or consequential damages, so the prior limitation or exclusion may not apply to you.

12. Choice of Law

The laws and courts of the State of Delaware govern this Agreement.

13. Force Majeure

You agree that we are not responsible to you for anything that we may otherwise be responsible for, if it is the result of events beyond our control, including, but not limited to, acts of God, war, insurrection, terrorism, labor shortages (including lawful and unlawful strikes), communication disruption, or any other event beyond our control.

14. Severability

If a provision of this Agreement is found to be unlawful, conflicting with another provision of the Agreement, or otherwise unenforceable, the Agreement will remain in force as though it had been entered into without that unenforceable provision being included in it.