The CaliClaw Collections Defense Cohort — 3 weeks, 6 live sessions, 10 California practitioners.
You know your stuff. You handle IRS cases. You're good at it.
But the moment a client calls with a bank levy from Sacramento, something shifts. FTB moves faster than the IRS. The rules are different. The windows are smaller. And the practitioners who treat it like an IRS case — same approach, same timeline, same response protocol — get their clients destroyed.
This cohort exists to close that gap. In three weeks, you'll have a working FTB Collections Defense playbook, built live, tested against real fact patterns, and ready to deploy the next time CaliClaw shows up at your client's door.
For
You're an EA or CPA practicing in California who already handles collections work — but FTB cases make you hesitate.
You've taken an IRS case through a Revenue Officer standoff and come out the other side. You know how to triage. You know how to stabilize. But FTB operates on a different clock. The bank levy notice window is shorter. The wage order hits before you've pulled the POA. The intercept shows up with no warning at all.
You're not a beginner. You're a competent practitioner with a blind spot. This cohort patches it.
Not For
The Reality
FTB is not the IRS with a state seal on the letterhead.
The IRS has procedures. There are timelines, rights, Collection Due Process hearings, and enough bureaucratic friction that a skilled EA can usually find room to work.
FTB does not work that way.
FTB can levy a bank account with a 30-day notice window that most clients miss entirely. They can issue a wage order and have an employer withholding before your client tells you it's happening. The Taxpayer Advocate is real, but most practitioners don't know when or how to use it. And the Offer in Compromise rules are different enough from federal that practitioners who assume parity make expensive mistakes.
Every week you go without a working FTB collections process, you're either turning away California cases or taking them without a playbook. Both cost you.
You can Google FTB procedures. You can read the statutes. You can find a seminar that covers state collections in a half-day slide deck.
None of that gives you a playbook you can actually run.
What practitioners need isn't information. It's a process built from real California cases — triage steps in the right order, response timelines mapped to actual FTB notice sequences, and a decision framework for when hardship is the right angle versus when an installment agreement is the play versus when to call the Taxpayer Advocate.
That process doesn't exist anywhere you can buy it. Until now.
Curriculum · 6 Sessions
You will stop reacting blind. This session gives you the mental model: how FTB collections actually move from first notice to bank levy or wage order, the key deadlines that matter, and what the timeline looks like from your client's file. You'll leave session one knowing exactly where you are in any FTB collections case.
The "I don't have a playbook for this" feeling dies here. You'll build your own intake script and triage checklist during this session — notices, balances, bank status, wage status, other agency exposure, POA reality when time is short. You leave with a first-call process you can run on any new FTB case.
This is the scariest territory in FTB collections. You'll learn exactly how bank levies and Orders to Withhold work, how much wage garnishments take and for how long, and the step-by-step play for getting a levy or garnishment released or reduced. You'll draft a one-page bank levy and wage order response sheet you'll use on every case.
Collections defense is about creating breathing room fast and picking the right long-term lane. This session covers financial hardship arguments, installment agreements, when Offer in Compromise is real versus a stall, and how to use the Taxpayer Advocate when behavior is unreasonable. You'll leave with a decision tree you can run against any open case.
No hypotheticals. Real anonymized files, run live through the new playbook. Triage, timelines, recommended moves, and how to scope and price the case going forward. This session turns frameworks into reps.
Where FTB collections clients actually come from — referrers, local attorneys, inbound panic — and how to position yourself as the California person so other practitioners send state cases to you first. Every participant leaves with one concrete outreach plan and a deadline.
This is your working playbook. Not a PDF you download and file. Tools you build during the cohort and use the following Monday.
Instructor
Carlos Samaniego is an Enrolled Agent and NTPI Fellow. He is the founder of Tax Debt Consultants LLC, operating nationally as The Tax Debt Detective, with over two decades resolving IRS and California FTB collections cases. He authored CaliClaw — the practitioner-facing guide to FTB's aggressive collections behavior.
Carlos is not an academic. Every session is pulled from real cases, real clients, and the real decisions that had to be made under pressure.
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"[Practitioner testimonial — specific result, named EA or CPA, real case outcome. Placeholder to be replaced before launch.]
Pricing
Ten seats. No exceptions on the cap — the live case lab in Session 5 requires a small enough group that every participant gets time on the hot seat.
One average FTB collections engagement covers this cost. If the playbook helps you take one case you'd have otherwise turned away, it pays for itself in the first week you use it.
If you attend the first two sessions and decide this isn't right for your practice, contact me before Session 3 and I will refund your enrollment or apply it toward a future cohort.
What I won't refund: not showing up, not doing the work, and then asking for money back at the end. You're a professional. Treat this like a professional commitment.
No. This cohort assumes you already know collections work generally. It's specifically built for the gap between "I handle IRS cases confidently" and "I have a working FTB process." If you're turning away California state cases or taking them without a real playbook, this is the right level.
One last thing
You'll know the timeline. You'll know who to call. You'll know whether hardship is the angle or whether an installment agreement buys more time. You'll run the triage checklist you built in Session 2, pull the decision tree from Session 4, and move.
That's what this cohort produces. Not information. A playbook. Yours.
Enrollment opens soon. Join the waitlist to be notified first.