Tele-Lawyer to Start Giving Tax Advice

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  Tele-Lawyer, the company that pioneered legal-advice-by-phone, plans to launch a new income tax service Monday, again using a pay-per-call “900” telephone number.

Company founder Michael Cane said his new program will enable callers to ask questions of licensed tax preparers, to contact tax attorneys for specializing legal advice, or to request that copies of IRS forms be sent to them by facsimile machine.

Callers will be billed 99 cents a minute for calls requesting tax forms; $2 per minute for calls to the tax preparers, and $3 a minute--the standard Tele-Lawyer fee--for calls to the tax attorneys.

With the 900-line phone service, callers will be billed directly by their telephone companies, which in turn remit a portion of the money to Tele-Lawyer.

The original Tele-Lawyer service--the first in the nation when it was launched in October, according to Cane--now receives an average of 40 calls a day.

Cane said marketing for the new program will be aimed at the 53 million taxpayers who prepare their own returns and don’t have much faith in the official IRS telephone answer service.

Cane said that if bad tax advice costs a taxpayer money, his company will reimburse the individual.

The number for the company’s tax service, which Cane said he intends to operate on a year-around basis, will be 900-InfoTax. Cane said the service will be available from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.