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ackermanusa2019
Community Member

Tax Fraud Scammers seeking Free Lancers

Please stop destroying my professional reputation by scam artist seeking advise or request to break Federal and State Tax laws. These bottom feeders hire you for professional services, once the hire is done, they want you to break the tax laws, and if you don't agree they give you a 1 star reputation. This is rediculous. Why are you rewarding crooks, and destroying the reputation of licensed business professionals.  The last 3-4 contracts have been scammers. When the contract ends, my reputation dropped from 99% to 88%, if no solution, i will not be engaging any more new clients on Upwork, i can't afford it. **Edited for Community Guidelines**  was the lastest scammer.

3 REPLIES 3
prestonhunter
Community Member

David:
I do not doubt that you have been disappointed by some of your experiences while using Upwork.

 

You are seeking a solution. I am not sure if there is a universal solution which will really solve your problem. But let's discuss this...

 

Obviously you know that Upwork does not intend to "reward crooks" or "destroy the reputation of licensed business professionals."

 

And yet... You HAVE faced problems. You are apparently facing problems in numbers that other freelancers, such as myself, do not face, and you are apparently facing problems the type of which other freelancers, such as myself, do not face. Why is that?

 

There is a substantitive difference in the type of service that you provide compared to the services most freelancers provide. For example, if a nefarious client asked an artist to draw a cat, but make that cat really evil-looking, the freelancer could do so without breaking any law. A client could hire me to design a database, and no matter what kind of design I created, it would not violate the law. State and federal governments do not regulate the names of database tables and columns, nor do they regulate the datatypes, comments, varchar lengths, or nullable column states within schemas.

 

Your post indicates that you feel you have been hired by clients who are asking you to behave unethically and/or break laws. Then, when you do not comply with the requests of these clients, they are so disappointed in the service you are providing to them, that they retaliate in the feedback they leave you.

 

This suggests that there may be some disconnect between the services you wish to provide and the services that a significant proportion of the clients who are hiring you wish from you.

 

(If anything I have said here is inaccurate or can be worded in a better way, please provide a correction.)

 

I think the first thing to understand is that Upwork is not a tax advice or tax preparation website. It is a general-purpose website, which allows freelancers to use to offer services in many different job niches. This means that there may be "omissions" in Upwork's overall system which seem simply inexcusable to you, but which can be explained by the fact the site's creators never had tax preparation in mind when they created the platform.

 

Upwork works well for many types of freelance job niches. But it doesn't work as well for all such niches. You may be practicing in a job niche which is not currently working out well for freelancers. On the other hand, there may be other freelancers who are succeeding consistently in this job niche. Maybe there are things you can do differently within Upwork's current infrastruture.

 

Is there way that you can change your profile page to indicate more explicitly which type of of tax advice and preparation you provide? Is there some step or information you could add to the "onboarding" process with clients that would screen out clients who are seeking services you don't provide?

 

You yourself have not suggested a solution. Do you have any suggestions?

BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Sorry you're having issues with your Upwork clients, David.

 

I see that you've sent a message to our support about the similar issue before and they followed up asking for more information so that they could investigate. I'm referring to the ticket number 25475423 that you can access here. If you have more information or any new details you could provide to help our team with their investigation, could you please send it as a support ticket?

 

Thank you!

~ Bojan
Upwork
mtngigi
Community Member


David A wrote:

Please stop destroying my professional reputation by scam artist seeking advise or request to break Federal and State Tax laws. These bottom feeders hire you for professional services, once the hire is done, they want you to break the tax laws, and if you don't agree they give you a 1 star reputation. This is rediculous. Why are you rewarding crooks, and destroying the reputation of licensed business professionals.  The last 3-4 contracts have been scammers. When the contract ends, my reputation dropped from 99% to 88%, if no solution, i will not be engaging any more new clients on Upwork, i can't afford it. **Edited for Community Guidelines**  was the lastest scammer.


David.

 

Preston is right - most of us never see or get jobs from the kinds of clients you are working with. I can't see your profile, so it's hard to advise. But if you don't have it, perhaps add in your overview and on your proposals what services you will and won't do, most importantly, breaking tax laws.

 

And if by "bottom feeders" you mean cheap, stop working with cheap clients/small budgets ... they are invariably the worst clients imaginable, and should be avoided at all costs. With experience, it's fairly easy spot people like this during the interview process. Maybe try vetting a little more carefully. Good luck.

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