Philip Wolf (@Wolf10Philip on X, formerly known as Twitter) is a tax, crypto, and white-collar criminal defense attorney in the Law Offices of Steven L. Walker in San Jose, California.
In this article, Wolf interviews Kelly Phillips Erb about her blog, Taxgirl, and her mission to disseminate accurate and relevant tax information.
Kelly Phillips Erb is an entrepreneur who prides herself on being the “tax girl.” As the owner of one of the most influential tax platforms on the internet, she selects tax stories that she believes make worthwhile reading. Her unique take on some of the biggest tax scoops has earned her a sizable audience and even a column in Forbes. How did she blaze her own unique trail as a tax entrepreneur? I was determined to find out.
Philip Wolf: Tell us about your journey in tax and entrepreneurship.
Kelly Phillips Erb: I never went to journalism school, and I never thought I’d be a tax attorney. I just ended up falling into both fields. A few years after law school, in the early 2000s, my husband and I started our own firm. At that time, a lot of smaller law firms had acquired what might be termed prefabricated, dynamic, out-of-the-box websites. Because my husband is a techie from Drexel, however, he designed our website himself. As a working mom, I then used Blogspot to blog about the challenging balancing act of being a mom, wife, and professional tax practitioner. Eventually, I realized that I could use the same platform to post client alerts and updates and that we could link them to our website. So I took the plunge and started my own independent tax blog.
Wolf: How did you come up with the idea for Taxgirl?
Erb: At the time, I called my blog “Intaxicated,” a term coined by The Washington Post which describes the feeling you get when you receive a tax refund, only to realize it’s your own money.1
Unfortunately, someone else already owned intaxicated.com, and although I owned intaxicated.net, I wanted my branding to be more distinguishable. I didn’t want to send people to another site or to have them confused about the title. In law school, the running joke was that I was the “tax girl.” This designation carried into the firm my husband and I ran. His email had a normal name, whereas mine was taxgirl@erblaw.com. I ended up asking myself, “Why can’t this be the name of my blog?” I discovered that taxgirl.com was available, and I purchased it for $500.
Wolf: What were your initial feelings when you purchased the name?
Erb: I felt both excited and terrified. I was not sure the blog would help my business or my clients. At the time, most of the tax blogs were either very academic or highly technical business-to-business blogs (instead of business-to-consumer ones). My goal instead was to disseminate quick bursts of information. I was especially worried that with a name like Tax Girl, other tax professionals (and especially some male tax professionals) might not take me seriously. In retrospect, the creation of the tax blog and the selection of its name were two of the best decisions I ever made.
Wolf: How has taxgirl.com evolved over the years?
Erb: I came to realize that my readers wanted more than just quick bursts of information. They wanted relevant and accurate tax information which was easy to digest yet retained a level of sophistication and nuance. At first, few professionals paid attention to my blog. Then the American Bar Association journal [ABA Journal] notified me that Taxgirl was one of the best “blawgs” in existence, a shoutout which brought my blog a great deal of attention. Shortly afterward, Janet Novack at Forbes wrote to me. Janet had read one of my pieces about the differences between a tax amnesty program in Pennsylvania and one in New Jersey. She found my perspective unusual and unique, and she wanted to know if I would allow Forbes to publish my piece on their website.
Wolf: That must have felt like quite an honor.
Erb: It did! Although my friends were a bit horrified that I would publish on Forbes for free, the piece did well, and now I have a Forbes column. I learned from this experience the importance of establishing myself in a space as a voice who knows what she is talking about. We tax lawyers, accountants, and others in our profession tend to think that we need to have a very defined idea of our brand, but in actuality we need to find our own voices. I’ve since published in Bloomberg, Time, The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, and elsewhere, so I have learned the utility of developing one’s own voice.
Wolf: What is the most interesting story you have ever covered?
Erb: One of the stories was when actor Richard Hatch was accused of failing to report income. That story received a lot of attention, and I wrote quite a bit about it. Someone posted a comment that I didn’t know what I was talking about — and it was signed by none other than Richard Hatch.
I was both shocked and also extremely curious, so I reached out to him. Richard offered to tell me the entire story if I wanted to hear it. I hopped on a plane to Rhode Island and met him for lunch. Afterward, we began a regular correspondence. From Richard, I learned the impact of a narrative. If someone (especially a taxing authority) decides you are a bad person, others will tend to believe the characterization, even if it is not true. Richard and I continued to exchange emails, and he was on one of my podcasts. The experience taught me always to remember who is on the other end of a recording.
Wolf: Which story has impacted you the most?
Erb: During COVID, I received messages from readers that refund checks for veterans and other taxpayers were not going out as part of IRS normal processes. I wrote at Forbes about this matter, and eventually the IRS changed its system. I was not the only person who brought this issue to the attention of the public, but I felt happy that I could play a role in encouraging the IRS to rectify the problem.
Wolf: Which stories have been your most popular ones?
Erb: Popular stories can be divided into two categories: the ones that readers are most interested in and the ones readers most engage in. Readers are interested in factual stories that impact taxpayers immediately, such as when the IRS stopped processing returns in the middle of the season because its computers went down. These stories get a lot of attention. Refund rates and filing dates also make popular stories.
The most engaging stories are ones about which people have strong opinions. People become very spirited about celebrities owing taxes. I wrote an opinion about Beyoncé, which received a lot of attention, but not all of it was positive. I saw a lot of engagement during COVID, when people lost businesses, got divorced, and were laid off. I became a voice for these people to write about what they were going through.
Wolf: How does your current practice at White and Williams help you find good tax stories?
Erb: The writing part keeps me current, and the practice part reminds me of who is impacted. When I wrote about how the IRS struggled with the phones, it’s because I’d sat on them for hours before getting disconnected. When a tax return preparer tells me how frustrated he or she is with the system, I can empathize. I have a taxpayer who submitted something online three years ago, and we still don’t have an answer from the IRS. Writing about tax and working directly with taxpayers reminds me of the importance of keeping abreast of what is going on in tax.
Wolf: We discussed earlier how you owned your own tax law firm. Are there any lessons you have learned from that experience that you use in your tax journalism?
Erb: Running my own firm reminded me how important it is to communicate and always to put the client first. Learning to communicate with clients is important no matter how you do it. It can be in a video, or a letter, or anything. Communication is everything. People sometimes think tax practice is a numbers game, but it is far more. And but for my business, I would not be writing my tax blog.
Wolf: Tell me about the documentary you were involved in called An Inconvenient Tax. What was it like to be featured alongside a former IRS commissioner?
Erb: When I was a new mom, a filmmaker saw my writing and called to ask if I wanted to talk about why tax is complicated. He and his crew came out to my house and we filmed. They asked me a lot of questions about tax. It was amazing when I later saw the full documentary and who else was in it. At the same time, I saw what goes into being on camera and understood that it wasn’t for me. There is too much production time that goes into a few seconds. But the piece itself was interesting, and it occurred during a time when tax law was becoming more complicated due to congressional tax reform legislation.
Wolf: Do you have any advice for tax practitioners reading this interview?
Erb: I love tax work, and I want people to keep talking about it positively, if possible (which isn’t always possible). People need to hear good tax stories to understand that there are wonderful opportunities for them to help people, no matter what the medium and how many people are listening. I hope more people will talk about tax even if they aren’t doing it on TikTok. Tax practitioners can still be a resource and can help people without having to be on camera or being read all the time. I hope readers will consider that.
Conclusion
By believing in herself and being passionate about her mission, Kelly Phillips Erb has become one of the most prominent voices in the tax space. Her unconventional and extremely successful path shows us that sometimes the best bet we can make in tax entrepreneurship is to bet on ourselves. No one will become a second Tax Girl, but each of us in the field of tax has the power to change lives.