StartGlobalReviews of startglobal.co

I am feeling very frustrated about how Startglobal.co manages support for tax filing. They keep making me pay hidden fees and are not providing services they have advertised for. I have paid $99 for a registered agent + $99 in full for prolonging my federal taxes because they wait until the day before to come over and tell me that I should pay by tomorrow + $199 for their FULL LLC MAINTENANCE PLAN (which includes registered agent, bookkeeping, tax filing, etc...). Their dashboard is not working when I choose to get my federal taxes done by them (which I have paid for). There is a message that estimates a waiting time of 12 hours to get transactions from the bank account that I have attached. This status never changes, everytime I connect to finalize the filing, it's always the same message: "Wait for 12 hours..." It's been more than 3 month since I have been trying to finalize this filing. They don't respond to my messages. They only wait for the final day by close of business day to tell you that "We have tried to reach but you never responded, tomorrow is the last day to pay". But when you try to pay, nothing works, and they will offer you to pay in order to postpone the deadline. Their contact phone number is not ringing AT ALL. They are not responding to give email support. It's like I am doing business with a GHOST. This looks like a scam to me. I am being threatened of pursuits by the US Federal Government, while I AM PAYING EXPENSIVE FEES FOR TAX FILINGS TO A PROVIDER THAT IS NOT PROVIDING THE SERVICES THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO PROVIDE!!!!

Short version: 1. services have significant deficiencies 2. seller partially refuses to perform the promised services 3. seller refused partial refund due to non-performance 4. seller refuses full refund under his "100% money back guarantee", although the deficiencies from point 1.) entitle to a full refund. Long version: I contacted the company StartGlobal in December 2022 to form an LLC in the USA. The company StartGlobal offers all services related to the formation including registration, compliance and tax advisor services. Since it was December 2022 I agreed with the company StartGlobal that the company should not be registered until January 1, 2023. In the incorporation package for $599, according to their homepage, all incorporation services are included, including name check, registered agent, registration with filing with the state, applying for EIN number with IRS, mailing address, phone number, etc. Compliance, State Taxes and Federal Tax are also included in this cost (see home page "This is the cost to maintain your business from second year. First year cost is covered in the one time fee above."). The application was then filed with the State of Wyoming as early as December 2022 by StartGlobal with an effective date of January 1, 2023. Until this point everything was okay. The next step was the registration with the IRS/application for the EIN number. Here the company StartGlobal made a fatal mistake and stated that the company already became active in December 2022. I did not notice the error until there were severe delays in issuing the EIN number. I then hired another service provider to contact the IRS and expedite the process. This also revealed the error made by StartGlobal. This error leads to the fact that I am obliged to prepare a tax return and have to keep books for the year 2022 (even it's only a few days). Of course, I immediately reported the error to StartGlobal. As a result, I was offered to prepare the tax forms for 2022 "free of charge" (although according to the offer description, this is explicitly included in the one-time fee the entire first year). However, the tax forms (form 5472) contained errors. For example, Form 5472 did not show the real activity of my company as activity, but rather the activity of the company StartGlobal. Also, the corresponding mandatory fields were not marked or were marked incorrectly. I then complained about this and asked for an improvement. I was denied the improvement, so I requested a partial refund in the amount of $299 (which is the second year's federal tax document fees). The partial refund was also denied to me. Rather, I then received the wrong documents again with the indication that I could simply adjust the documents myself. In all likelihood, however, I guess the tax advisor registered with the IRS (who is indicated on the form) was not informed of this procedure at all. Also, the offer includes not only the preparation of (incorrect) tax documents, but also their submission via appropriate specialized personnel (see homepage). Since a solution was no longer possible in the normal way, I checked the offer descriptions again. StartGlobal offers a comprehensive 100% money back guarantee on its homepage. I also received an email (before accepting the offer) with this guarantee. Quote: "Hello StartGlobal offers a 100% money-back guarantee for your business formation, EIN, and bank account. For example, if we cannot open a bank account for your business or it gets rejected, we offer a 100% refund. We will NOT deduct any state fees or any service charges. If you paid $599, you get $599 back." Accordingly, I am entitled to a full refund of $599 due to the incorrect EIN application. However, I was also denied a refund under the money back guarantee by the seller. Even contacting them again and also point out that they removed from their homepage the part with the extensive guarantee... Quoute: "100% money back if we can't deliver. No questions asked If we can't get you registered or deliver on any of the promises, you get your enitre money back" ... led to no refund. Instead I received another arogant e-mail from the CEO of startglobal taking no responsibility cause I signed the incorrect form (cause I trusted them). What should you say to this? You hire this company to fill the forms for you correctly. They make multiple misstakes and they take zero responsibility. Even you give them multiple possibilites to correct their misstakes, they just refuse to finish the agreed work (remember: at the end the refused to correct and fill the federal tax form 5472 in my case - they only sent me the last incorrect version). I will certainly not order there a second time and can not recommend this company to anyone.

This is false advertising, I have never had a bank account, I could not make useful this company that I created. They promised a refund in case of failure but nothing. I am really disappointed.

I hired this company to open a business for me, which they did pretty fast. After that, I started realising that the registration wasn't done correctly for multiple reasons and that the potential mistake could cost me a lot of TAX money. Keep in mind that Start Global is promoting guiding trough the decision-making process on their website as one of their company's assets. I decided to ask for an advice on the business structure from two different CPA's and they both confirmed-registration was done completely wrong. I started researching more about the company, and I realised that the CPA listed on their website wasn't a CPA at all. I checked the person with the CPA verify tool and realised that he is not a CPA at all. I contacted the person listed on the website and he confirmed that he is not a CPA and demanded immediately to be removed from their website, so you will not be able to find his name on their website any more. But his name is Marcus Marcial. Which leads us back to the beginning of the story-their support manager was not legally allowed to provide accounting advice because they are not qualified for that. I provided sensitive data to this company and we needed to take multiple security actions and safety measures to protect ourselves from the potential fraud. Lying about being a CPA, or providing CPA services is highly illegal. Besides illegal practices, this company failed to deliver a sufficient level of professional care and caused material damage to my business-which is defined as "negligence in professional services" by law. Besides this, there are more irregularities that I found out about. The website is full of misguiding practices and information, half-truths and lies. A lot of visibly listed assets on their website, allegedly provided with the purchased all-in-one plan, are later on explained in some hidden places as "not provided" with some kind of explanation. To cut the story short-after we asked to at least give us our money back they cut off the communication, stopped responding and never reached back to us. Not to mention giving us the money back (which is also being promoted as a convincing factor for people to hire their company). Be careful, because you can't trust this company. Also, paying 600$ only for the business registration is ridiculous. They filled out 2 forms for me (incorrectly). It seems like you're getting more, but you don't because as soon as they register the business for you, they introduce you to the maintenance plan that is an add on and not included into that price. I need to go trough the registration process all over again and my company can't operate until this is fixed, which costs a lot of money.

I wouldn't recommend their service to anyone. Cons: - When you register your LLC with Start Global your registered agent is actually Harvard Business Services. Start Global is just a (useless) intermediary adding significant markup to all services provided by HBS. All they provide is web dashboard, which looks nice, but quite often doesn't work as intended (ie. certain tabs become unavailable until you reach out to them to fix it). - When I was getting started with registration, info on their site made me think that they have an in-house CPA that will be available to help when needed. Instead he's just an external CPA that you have to pay for and that they just recommend. From what I saw in other reviews CPA wasn't even aware that he is presented like this by Start Global which is supported by the fact that he's info could no longer be found on their site. You can go to Way Back Machine and check snapshot of their website on 4th of November 2021. Look for the page called "CPA profile". You can judge it by yourself. - Their fees changed without any proper communication. When I registered my LLC price for the first year was $600 and maintenance for each year thereafter was supposed to be $700 but then they started pushing their "Maintenance Plan" subscription at a price of $99 per month. Benefits of which compared to single yearly payment weren't clear. They also added "Bookkeeping fees" ie. I had to categorize all the payments that my LLC had in the previous year by myself and their dashboard just used this data to print a PDF file. They charged me $50 for this "service". - When I couldn't pay for a Federal Tax filling because my business wasn't profitable they sent me email that said: "...I noticed that you haven’t filed the Federal tax in the US. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. The FINAL due date is April 18th and StartGlobal will be closing tax filings TODAY. I would urge you to start the process if you haven’t already. The fines can be up to $25,000 DOLLARS if you don’t file taxes on time. If you have any questions, feel free to email me for an immediate response. If you’d like to see a walkthrough video, please search “StartGlobal federal tax” on YouTube!". I understand that they would be worried about me not being able to pay for this filling on time, but instead of helping me figure out what to do when I don't have enough money to finish the fillings they actively made the situation worse by sending this email, wording of which sounds like they are talking to a child. Also, I couldn't confirm that fine is actually $25k for not filling on time. All I can find online is that fine is % based on how much you owe. - State filling took a lot longer than i expected. I was later informed that this is because it was the end of the year, which made sense but it wasn't communicated in advance. Instead of taking 20-30 days as promoted, registration took 3 months. - Support before the registration was great. They were constantly available through live chat and happy to answer any questions, but after my LLC was set up I could only access them through email (having to wait 2-5 business days for each answer). When I asked them to help me close my LLC they just answered with a short email telling me that that would cost $699. When I started asking some basic questions about some formalities of this procedure support couldn't give me detailed and precise answers to any of them and at some point person told me that they would have to consult with their team about my questions and that they'll get back to me when they get answers, which they never did. Pros: - Their dashboard is very user-friendly and clear. Everything is in one place and your bank account is connected to it. - You can generate invoices and add client info to the dashboard and save it there.

Been in and out for over two months and unable to get open a bank account so its nothing that has been advertised