Optima Tax Relief Reviews

Original Review: Nov. 23, 2025

Optima Tax Relief is a scam. I paid 5k for them to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for me. I am facing garnishment and they haven't done anything to stop it. If that's not a scam then what is. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone.

For years now they have allowed the IRS to confiscate every return I would file for each year I was filing during this time only to reduce the debt I owe. Now they want me to sign off on a monthly payment plan I can't afford. Optima has done nothing to help me and charged me over $8000 to help me increase the penalty and interest on the debt the IRS claims I owe. DO NOT USE OPTIMA TAX RELIEF!

I regret hiring Optima Tax Relief because employees of Optima Tax Relief gave the impression that they could get my tax bill to CA lowered. Their results were really disappointing. I paid Optima just over $3100, but Optima was unable to obtain for me anything other than a monthly payment plan that I could not afford, which is what California offers to anyone who owes back taxes. There was NO offer of reducing the tax debt. Once Optima was informed of this by California, they weren’t interested in listening to me explain my concerns about the payment plan being too expensive or my preference for a lowered lump sum payment. My specialist at Optima, Marvin **, wasn’t aware of the statute of limitations that would have reduced my collectible tax liability by thousands of dollars. I had to explain it to him after I learned of it.

Soon after, Mr. ** became unresponsive to me. Although I explained to him that my job did not allow me to have a mobile phone with me when I was working for days at a time, there was a limited window for us to speak by phone during the week. So I simply got voicemails from Mr. ** saying that he was having trouble reaching me to call him back. Eventually, I took out a loan to repay the tax debt. I recommend you don’t waste your money and contact your tax creditor directly.

3. They had NO RECORD of a payment plan being negotiated or agreed upon.

When presented with these facts communication basically stopped. Optima refused to give any more information on the supposed payment plan or proof they could deliver on it. They also denied all requests/demand to speak directly with their "tax professional" that held the POA over our account. Their excuse? "Optima stops work on your case" when a refund is being negotiated/offered. Also because "our tax professionals don't interact directly with clients." They also ignored all attempts for a copy of the POA paperwork (that we can't find despite it supposedly being on the client portal) to see EXACTLY where it says we're not allowed to talk to our POA even if our account is "paused". We finally got fed up and fired them.

In order to receive our refund our case has to be "fully closed". Had to email someone at the BBB to say that Optima "have addressed your concerns". Optima said they "also ask that you update or remove the negative review with Consumer Affairs so we can fully close out your complaint on our end." So fine, here's the update as requested. Never said we had to make it positive, and I'm not going to lie to make you look better.

Original Review: We hired them in 2023 to help with our tax debt. The "salesperson" who pitched their services to us PROMISED that we would not have to worry about any late fees or penalties being added to our IRS debt. This was a FALSE PROMISE!! They also promised it would be resolved "promptly". It has been over two years. We paid on time. We are out over $8,700 that we paid them and have accrued a little over $27,000 in late fees and other penalties on our tax debt. Trying to work with them has been horrible. We have gone through several "representatives" responsible for our case. Only the most recent one would even talk to ME. The others said they could ONLY talk to my husband, even though we filed jointly, because it was his name on the Optima account/case file. This was frustrating as my husband's schedule varies depending on when he's needed most.

They would not take my phone number and would only contact him. That was IF we could get ahold of them at all. The first line almost never answered and on the rare occasion they did, when they tried to transfer us to our representative they were "unavailable" 90% of the time. Their main excuse was (due to the time difference) they were either not in their office yet or on lunch break and would call us back. Guess what, they almost never did. Even if they were the ones calling us, my husband would either be put on hold immediately or put through a robo menu. Both options resulted in the call being dropped by them. We were told once we reached the "resolution phase" we wouldn't have to worry about liens, collections, late fees, or stuff like that.

We have been in "resolution" for almost the entire two years. We have gotten multiple lien warnings over the past few months that we have uploaded to Optima. They were obviously ignored. We just got a notice of Levy. If that lawsuit against them was still open I'd join. I want a freaking refund. I'd love to make them responsible for the 27k in late/penalty fees their foot dragging has caused, but I doubt that's possible. Obviously getting sued over these shady business practices has taught them nothing.