" Disclaimer: This document isn't intended to be as misleading as it obviously is."

The firm is Ideal Tax Solutions, and I’m sure, really I am, that the people who run it, which include lawyers bound by the professional ethics rules prohibiting them from engaging in misrepresentation, dishonesty, deceit or fraud, are dedicated and well-intentioned. From an ethics stand-point, however, why anyone would trust a company that markets its services in a blatantly misleading way is beyond my comprehension. Someone must; a lot of someones must. Yet the company introduces itself to potential customers by deceiving them.

The letter arrives in an envelope that works very hard to look like it will contain an official IRS document. The mailing stamp has an elaborate eagle and flag logo; a large 2011 is posted in the lower right-hand column. Also there: a statute number TITLE 18 SEC. 1702 US CODE. There is a window in the envelope, and the address that is visible appears on institutional pink paper.

Oh-oh.

Open the envelope, and the document inside also resembles an IRS notice. It says “Tax Lien Notice.” It has official looking numbers in the corner. And there is a Recorded Lien Amount, a large one, along with the “notification date.”  Nowhere is any commercial entity or logo visible. Read enough, however, and it begins to be clear that this is a company that scours public records for people who may have tax issues, and sends them scary-looking mailings to snag clients, who will open the cold sales mailing thinking it is official communication from a government tax agency.

The revelation occurs in fine print at the bottom of the document. Only there does the reader learn that the name of the company is Ideal Tax Solution. This information is buried in a long disclaimer designed to avoid mail fraud charges, and contains one of my favorite lies—favorite, in the sense that it is inherently absurd and intrinsically unbelievable—the old “even though what we are doing is unethical and/or illegal, it now magically isn’t because we hereby state that we are not intending to do what any fool can see that we are not only doing, but doing intentionally, because this disclaimer states our official position that we aren’t doing it, and that this isn’t really what it obviously is.”  For the disclaimer says that its product is “not designed to appear as if it is coming from an agency of the government.” That’s right: it only appears to be an official document by accident, and it’s only a coincidence that you need a magnifying glass to find out that it is really just a promotional mailing. Sure.

Now honestly: who is dumb enough to believe this? If one isn’t that dumb, and we are talking true jump-out-the-window-because-someone-told-you-to dumb, then it is forehead-slapping obvious that this outfit designed a mailer to 1) scare people who owe money on their taxes and 2) get them to open and read a piece of junk mail while they still are under the misapprehension that the message is from a government agency. Then the company states in its disclaimer that it didn’t do what it obviously did.

If a company will engage in that much misrepresentation and deceit just asking for your business, how much can you trust it to do anything else? Not one sub-atomic particle’s worth, that’s how much. It tricked you into opening and reading its misleading materials—that means that the company will lie. The mailing proves it.

Maybe the theory Ideal Tax Solutions is banking on is that potential clients will be impressed by its slipperiness. “Hey, these guys really had me going! They are just the kind of clever double-talkers I want dealing with the IRS!” Interesting theory—who knows? Maybe it works.

For myself, I hold to more traditional professional judgments. If a service will deceive me to get my business, then it is a risk to deceive me while doing my business. Why would anyone in their right mind trust a company that tricks him into opening its junk mailing?

I have no idea.