Are Tax Surplus Finder Fees Legal?
If you’ve heard that you can reap huge search fees with tax surpluses, you haven’t gone astray. Unlike state funds, such as old bank accounts, stock dividends, and utility deposits, tax surpluses often represent large amounts of money and are not publicly posted on the state’s website. They are the best kept secret in the “found money” business. But are tax surplus search fees legal?
If you’ve studied your state’s code, you probably came across a section titled “Unclaimed Property Law” or something like that. It describes what happens to abandoned property, who is holding it, how long they have to hold it, etc. He also outlines the restrictions for those who act as money seekers, helping claimants find their lost funds and charging a fee for their services.
Most states limit what money seekers can charge between 5 and 15%. This would seem to indicate that tax surplus search fees of 30-50% are violating the law. Fortunately, not everything is what it seems.
The state code wording only applies to funds held at the state level. If you read the code carefully, it will describe what exactly constitutes “abandoned property” and therefore what those 5-15% limits apply to. Tax surplus search fees ARE legal, because they fall outside of this definition (for a while).
What this means is that the restrictions imposed on fees and search engines Do not do (in most states) apply to finders working on tax surpluses. Since there is a time when they are not considered “abandoned property”, during that time the finder fee caps do not apply and neither do the requirements on who can work with the funds.
Anyone interested in becoming a money seeker can get around these state restrictions by working off tax surpluses. Due to the high rate of foreclosures, there are a lot of funds to claim, and once you tame the tax surpluses, you can move on to the huge surpluses created by foreclosure and also by lost inheritances and heirs. There is no end in sight to the creation of these funds, and you can safely and legally get paid 30-50% as a finder of these funds.
