Key Takeaways
- Tax Goddess screens new clients with a one-hour review of past returns, followed by a check of more than 900 line items.
- Tax Goddess maps each client’s finances around tax position alone, then evaluates and ranks legal strategies based on the client’s preferred level of aggression.
- Three flat-rate tiers, from $10,000 to $350,000, replaced hourly billing so Tax Goddess clients know the full cost before work begins.
When new clients come to Tax Goddess, the process starts with a one-hour consultation. The team reviews past returns to determine whether the firm can generate significant tax savings. If not, they state it transparently. Once a client signs on, the team conducts a detailed review that covers 900 line items, including income, entities, property, and long-range plans. In return, the client receives a full map of their financial position. The firm builds that map strictly around tax position and lays it out like a chessboard.
Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA, MTax, CTC, CTP, CTS, founded the practice in 2004. Since then, she and her team report more than $2.35 billion in documented client savings and an average client tax rate of 6.92 percent. Those figures place her among the top 1% of tax strategists, according to the firm. She is one of only 15 of the 660,000 CPAs in the United States who hold that designation.
Reengineering the Traditional Accounting Model
Shauna spent years building her expertise before she opened her own firm. She earned a Master of Taxation and a series of specialist designations in addition to her CPA license. She then sharpened that training at major accounting and consulting firms, including KPMG. From there, she grew her own practice into a custom consultancy for entrepreneurs. Today the firm serves both High-Net-Worth (HNW) and Ultra-High-Net-Worth (UHNW) families across the country. She rebuilt the practice around a single principle. Compliance work, meaning the filing of returns once the year has closed, only tells owners what they already owe. Planning done ahead of time changes the number itself. That principle also produced the firm’s flat-rate pricing, which replaced hourly billing.
The firm launched that structure in July 2026, marking its 22nd anniversary. Clients select the level of strategy work they want at the outset. The $10,000 Foundation Strategy helps larger businesses that want a do-it-yourself approach or need immediate savings. The $65,000 Custom Build serves established owners with over $1 million in taxable income, covering three years of hands-on strategy and implementation. At the highest tier, the $350,000 Empire package serves UHNW founders with net worths exceeding $50 million. That work focuses on complex income and estate planning, built to hold wealth together across generations. Each tier is priced upfront, so clients know the full cost before any work begins.
The Chessboard, the Dragon, and the Eight Out of Ten
Every strategy is placed on the Aggression Scale™. A zero means the IRS never calls outside a random audit. A nine, in Wekherlien’s description, is Al Capone territory, where a taxpayer bends the rules and hopes to avoid detection. A ten means jail. Clients rate their comfort level from 0 to 8, and the firm strictly caps every plan at Level 8. An eight remains fully legal, though it demands complete documentation to withstand an audit.
“Extreme tax savings are never one-size-fits-all,” Shauna explains. “I sometimes call myself a red-headed fire-breathing dragon sitting on top of a pile of gold coins, where each gold coin is a strategy that we can utilize to help a client in the appropriate situation with the appropriate facts and circumstances.”
Structural Engineering for the Top 1 Percent
Shauna draws a sharp line between her practice and newer tax firms, which she says spend more on marketing than on technical depth. Tax Goddess points to 22 years of ongoing training and a working list of more than 1,800 active tax strategies. That range, the firm argues, is what allows a strategy to be matched to a client’s exact situation rather than applied from a template.
At the top 1%, tax optimization is a form of structural engineering. It requires leveraging corporate, trust, property, and partnership law across multi-entity and multi-state frameworks. For Custom Build and Empire clients, this extends into advanced entity structuring utilizing 831(b) Captive Insurance companies, Optimized Gift Trusts, and Section 1202 (QSBS) maximization.
Shauna has taken that approach to national outlets including Forbes and Entrepreneur. Her latest book, The 6% Life: 7 Strategies That Successful Entrepreneurs Use to Reengineer Their Life to Consistently Pay Less Than 6% in Taxes, serves as a blueprint for the firm’s legally aggressive approach. The firm extends that work beyond the book through regular webinars, free reference guides for owners and real estate professionals, and a scholarship fund for students. Twenty-two years in, Shauna has the credentials, the global team, and the $2.35 billion record to back the work she does for clients.
About Tax Goddess
Guided by the mission to CRUSH YOUR TAX BILL: Tailored Tax Solutions for Successful Business Leaders, Tax Goddess is led by Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA, MTax, CTC, CTP, CTS. Nationally known as the Tax Goddess and featured in Forbes and Entrepreneur, the firm specializes exclusively in advanced, proactive income and estate tax planning for business owners and High-Net-Worth individuals. With over two decades of experience and more than $2.35 Billion in documented client savings, Tax Goddess focuses on legally aggressive tax mitigation, entity structuring, and long-term wealth preservation. For more, visit: https://taxgoddess.com/
