ERC Mills: Firms That Sold ERC Claims for a Cut

This page covers the model and three firms: Bottom Line Concepts, ERC Specialists and Omega Accounting Solutions. Innovation Refunds, the largest advertiser, has its own profile. The pattern (market a relief benefit, take a cut, distribute through partners) is the one PPP facilitators such as Womply and Blueacorn used, applied to a tax credit.

The program and the mill model

The Employee Retention Credit was a refundable payroll-tax credit created by the CARES Act for employers whose business was fully or partially suspended by a government order, or that suffered a significant decline in gross receipts, during 2020 and 2021. The credit was claimed retroactively on amended payroll-tax returns, was worth up to $26,000 per employee, and turned on a technically complex and fact-specific eligibility test. That made it a retroactive refund worth marketing.

The ERC-mill model that grew up around it has a consistent shape across firms:

Pricing is a contingency fee: the firm takes a percentage of the refund, reported at 10% (ERC Specialists) up to 25% (Innovation Refunds), with promoters taking "as much as a third of each payout," according to NBC News. The IRS's moratorium release said that "a promoter can collect a contingency fee of up to 25% of the ERC refund."
Marketing runs on volume: television, radio, social, and referral advertising, often with celebrity faces (Ty Burrell for Innovation Refunds; Kevin O'Leary elsewhere in the sector per NBC), plus TikTok saturation and referral gift cards.
The pitch is urgency, a "shot clock": the window to claim will "expire gradually by late 2024."
Distribution runs through partners: bank co-branding and trade-association funnels reaching thousands of small businesses at once.
The liability stays with the business. Firms position themselves as marketers or documentation packagers rather than the party that signs the return, so the business carries the repayment risk if the IRS disallows the claim.

In the IRS release IR-2023-169, tax professionals told the agency that "95 percent or more of claims coming in recent months are ineligible," while promoters advertised that most businesses qualify.

The firms

Bottom Line Concepts

Bottom Line Concepts (BottomLine Concepts, LLC), Miami-based and run by founder Josh Fox, was described by NBC News as "one of the heaviest advertisers" in the sector. NBC reported that Fox "boasted online of millions in earnings for his clients" and pitched politicians, and did not respond to requests for comment. In a July 13, 2022 partnership announcement with the National Content & Technology Cooperative (NCTC), Fox said "Since 2009 BLC has been helping Fortune 1000 companies right down to businesses with five employees" and described the ERC as "a refundable tax credit – a grant, not a loan." Under the partnership the firm supplied "dedicated experts" and the association promoted the offer to its members. The company's own contract terms are examined in The Bottom Line Concepts Contract. A separate March 2, 2023 release using the "BottomLine Concepts" brand came through an affiliate marketer ("Plentisoft," with a referral link), not the firm's newsroom, and is not confirmed as a company statement. It offered "Claim up to $26,000 per employee... even if they have already received PPP loans," with "no upper limit on funding" and money that "never require[s] repayment."

ERC Specialists

ERC Specialists, LLC, headquartered in Orem, Utah, describes itself on its own About page as "tax service specialists exclusively dedicated to understanding and maximizing the CARES Act Employee Retention Credit." It claims "40-plus years in the tax business" and offers a three-step funnel: an eligibility questionnaire, filing "your information with the IRS," and "a check from the IRS in 4-6 months." The same page carries a disclaimer that the firm "does not provide legal or accounting advice." NBC News reported that an ERC Specialists client, Scott Volner, paid a 10% fee and received a $330,000 credit. He was later found ineligible because his state had no mandatory shutdown, and must repay it; the firm "didn't respond to requests for comment." Its funnel language ("we file your information with the IRS") claims a more hands-on role than the no-advice disclaimer on the same page.

Omega Accounting Solutions

Omega Accounting Solutions, an Irvine, California firm founded in 2007 by Jay Woods, paired ERC claim-processing with an in-house lending arm. Omega Funding Solutions (OFS) launched in 2022 as a "third-party lender offering short-term bridge loans to those organizations anticipating ERC refunds." A March 30, 2023 self-issued release announced a "#1 Best ERC Company" ranking from Merchant Maverick, a comparison review site. OFS advanced cash to both Omega's own clients and businesses that had filed with other processors. After the September 2023 moratorium, Omega repositioned itself as a documentation-first, compliance-focused processor distinct from "ERC Mills." In a September 15, 2023 statement quoting the IRS moratorium language verbatim, Woods said "we substantiate each ERC claim, through diligent documentation of eligibility," and criticized firms that "may have overclaimed credit amounts or qualified companies that didn't meet the criteria." Omega marketed an "ERC Compliance Review" service reviewing other firms' filings and continued to offer OFS bridge loans during the freeze.

The September 2023 moratorium and the criminal investigations

In IRS release IR-2023-169 (September 14, 2023), Commissioner Werfel ordered an immediate moratorium on processing new ERC claims through at least December 31, 2023. He said "we could no longer tolerate growing evidence of questionable claims pouring in" and urged businesses to "seek out a trusted tax professional who actually understands the complex ERC rules, not a promoter or marketer hustling to get a hefty contingency fee." Per that release, the IRS had received roughly 3.6 million ERC claims, more than 600,000 of them unprocessed at the moratorium. Processing of existing claims would take 180 days or more instead of 90, and the IRS was working with the Justice Department on fraud "fueled by aggressive marketing." IRS Criminal Investigation reported, as of July 31, 2023, 252 investigations involving more than $2.8 billion of potentially fraudulent ERC claims.

NBC News (April 2024) reported that Congress had projected the program at roughly $55 billion and that cost estimates had climbed toward $250 billion. It counted "thousands of audits and at least 400 criminal investigations," six promoters charged criminally, roughly $3 billion in false claims under criminal investigation and $500 million recovered. Werfel described promoters who "got rich" and then abandoned the businesses left to repay: "The promoters got rich... the promoter is gone. They're abandoning you." NBC also noted that the largest celebrity advertisers had not, at that point, faced charges, and that Congress was weighing repeal of the ERC amid lobbying to keep it running. Congress did not repeal it outright. Section 70605 of Public Law 119-21, signed July 4, 2025, barred credits and refunds under Section 3134, the credit's second-half-2021 version, unless claimed by January 31, 2024. It also set a $1,000 penalty for each due-diligence failure by an ERC promoter and extended the IRS's assessment window to six years.

Innovation Refunds — the sector's flagship ERC intermediary (full profile)
Womply — PPP-side aggregator with the analogous marketing-driven, funnel-to-lender model
Blueacorn — PPP-side facilitator with the analogous fee-split, high-volume model
MBE Capital Partners — PPP lender-of-record whose founder was convicted
Bottom Line Concepts — full profile of the firm
Danny Werfel — the IRS commissioner who ordered the moratorium

Sources

Primary / external references

ERC Mills