On October 27, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) hosted its awards ceremony for the 2022 Torch Awards For Ethics. We’re proud to announce that Boxelder Consulting has won the 2022 Torch Award in the Tier 2 category as Central Colorado’s Medium Business of the Year!
This is Boxelder’s first-ever Torch Awards win, and our second nomination following our placement as a finalist in the small business category in 2019. Without a strong commitment to ethical business practices, our growth as a company would not be possible! It’s why we started Boxelder in the first place.
What Is a BBB Torch Award?
A Torch Award is the most prestigious honor that the BBB can give – it’s awarded to only the best businesses demonstrating an exceptional commitment to integrity and ethical practices. We’re proud to have been awarded this honor for the Central Colorado region in 2022.
The BBB gives Torch Awards to several tiers of businesses based on size:
Tier 1: Small Business of the Year
Tier 2: Medium Business of the Year
Tier 3: Large Business of the Year
Spark Award: New companies between 1 and 5 years old
But what criteria went into the BBB Torch Awards? What makes Boxelder stand out? Here’s how we set ourselves apart in the tax relief industry as a leader in business ethics.
Torch Awards Criteria – Character, Culture, Customers, & Community
An ethical business is honest, fair, reliable, and responsive. That’s why the BBB’s first criteria for nomination is Character. A business with good character will never deceive its clients into sub-optimal solutions to maximize profits. Unfortunately, character is not the norm in the tax relief industry. We founded Boxelder to lead by example with honesty in fees, and a commitment to high character.
Other criteria used by the BBB to determine Torch Awards nominees include Culture, Customers, & Community. How do businesses create a positive work environment for their employees? How do businesses do right by their customers, and make its local community a better place? From our innovative approach to employee training and incentives, our transparent case investigation process, to our charity work with Christ Body Ministries, we’ve made doing the right thing a fundamental pillar of our business.
Here’s a case study showing several of the Torch Awards criteria in action at Boxelder.
Case Study: The professional athlete with a seven-figure liability
We had a high-profile prospective client reach out to us – a famous professional athlete with a seven-figure tax liability. Despite his success, his tax problems were preventing him from buying a home, harming his reputation, and causing major problems in his life. Most “tax resolution” companies see a case like this with dollar signs in their eyes. These companies make empty guarantees to wipe away large portions of tax debt — without also investigating the root of the client’s tax problems.
This client had hired three other tax resolution firms before finding us, but each had failed him. They were billing him thousands of dollars each month in non-refundable fees, without making progress to resolve his case. Unfortunately, this is the standard in the tax resolution industry. Why resolve a high-liability case when you can just keep billing? Even if a tax resolution firm succeeds in negotiating a payment plan for their client, they often make no effort to ensure the client doesn’t fall right back into debt.
We founded Boxelder Consulting to bring integrity back to the industry and provide real tax help to good people. Where other firms see the potential to juice high-liability cases over and over again for continual short-term fixes, we focus on getting their books clean to eliminate future issues and find a long-term resolution. That’s what our clients deserve. We open every case at Boxelder with what we call a “Case Investigation,” no matter the size of the client’s liability. We conduct the Case Investigation for a low, flat fee to gather information from the IRS and discover the root of the client’s tax problem.
In the case of our professional athlete, we discovered several catastrophic accounting errors on three years of prior tax returns during the case investigation phase. All three of his previous tax resolution firms had missed these errors. We were able to submit amended tax returns for each of those three years and eliminate $750,000 in wrongfully assessed tax liability. After setting up a payment plan for the remainder of his tax debt, he signed on as an ongoing accounting client to ensure that he never falls into tax debt again.
The Bottom Line – Why Ethics in Business Matters
Most companies don’t go the extra mile. They don’t dig into prior years’ tax returns for potential errors. Why? Because fixing those mistakes costs thousands of potential dollars in billing. We don’t see our clients in terms of dollars — we treat every client equally whether they owe $20,000 or $1,000,000 to the IRS. We care about them as people and will fight for them no matter what it means for our bottom line. Integrity matters. Honesty matters. Boxelder will never sell a sub-optimal resolution plan to make a quick buck.
For a free, honest consultation of your tax situation, call us today at 303-317-6111.
