Ramon Liriano Jr.
Co-founder and Managing Partner at Elevated Tax Strategies. The front-of-house at the firm — Discovery calls, client engagement, operations, the bookkeeping team, sales, marketing, brand, partnerships. If you've talked to ETS, you've probably talked to me.
The front-of-house. Six lanes.
- Client engagement. Every Discovery call. Every engagement intake. The relationship with every client from day one through every quarterly check-in.
- Operations + SOPs. How the firm actually runs — Basecamp workflow, monthly close discipline, intake mapping, Round N preparer review handoff, tech-stack integration.
- The bookkeeping team. Hiring, training, quality control, and the working relationship with Kick. Our bookkeeping practice is the foundation everything else runs on.
- Sales + marketing. The Tax Discovery → Tax Analysis → engagement pipeline. The website voice. The content engine. The Hormozi-direct mechanics behind every page.
- Brand + content. Articles, scripts, deliverables, design system. If it has the ETS name on it, it goes through my hands.
- Partnerships. Kick, Relay, Bluevine, Gusto, Ramp — the tech stack relationships. The partners on /partners. The criteria for new ones.
Two-partner role split. I run the front. My partner runs the back.
ETS has two partners. I run the front-of-house — everything client-facing, operational, marketing-driven. Our managing partner runs the tax practice itself — every tax position, every Round N preparer review on every return, every IRS representation matter, every advisory tax decision.
The split is what makes the firm work. When you book Discovery, I'm the one on the call. When you engage, our managing partner is the one signing your return + standing behind the tax positions. Neither of us delegates our half to associates. That's the entire pitch of the firm — you get the partners, not the associates.
The short version.
Husband. Dad. San Antonio resident. Lift heavy four days a week. Read more about operations and how good teams actually work than about tax law (I leave that to our managing partner). Built ETS to be the firm I would have wanted to call when I was on the other side of the table.
Long version is in the articles below — and in the From the Operator Seat category specifically. I write that lane in first person about how the firm actually operates.
6 articles from me
Most-recent published first. I write across all seven Resources categories — though I'm most active in From the Operator Seat (operations, brand, firm philosophy) and the operational lanes (Tax Planning, Bookkeeping, Operating a Business).
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Switching Accountants Without Losing Anything
Most people stay too long with a preparer who stopped serving them, because leaving feels complicated and they are afraid of losing something. The list of what you actually need is short, and the main risk is timing the switch badly rather than the switch itself.
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Year-End Tax Planning: What Still Works in Q4
By the time you are filing in April, the year is closed and almost nothing can be changed. Q4 is the last window where decisions still move the number, and some of the highest-value moves have deadlines well before December 31.
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IRS Audit: What Actually Happens and What to Do
The word audit conjures agents at your door. In reality the overwhelming majority are correspondence audits: a letter asking you to substantiate one thing. How you respond in the first week matters more than almost anything else, and the most common mistakes are ignoring it and volunteering too much.
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Moving to Texas: Establishing Residency for State Tax
Texas has no personal income tax, which is why people move here. But your old state decides whether it still has a claim on you, and it decides using facts about your life rather than the date on your lease. The move year is the one that gets audited.
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The S-Corp Late Filing Penalty Multiplies by Shareholder
Owners assume a return with no tax due carries no penalty. For an S-corp or partnership the opposite is true: the late filing penalty is charged per owner per month regardless of tax, so a two-shareholder S-corp six months late owes real money on a return showing zero.
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Form 1099-K: The Threshold and the Gross Amount Trap
The 1099-K threshold has moved so many times that most business owners are working from a number that is no longer the rule. Worse, the figure on the form is gross payments before fees, refunds and chargebacks, so it will not match your revenue, and the mismatch is what draws a notice.
The Discovery call is where I do my best work. 15 minutes. Real conversation.
If you're considering engaging ETS — or just want to know if we're the right fit for your situation — book a 15-min Discovery. I run every one personally.
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