Howard Makler: Innovation Refunds CEO

Identity and role

Howard Makler is co-founder and chief executive of Innovation Refunds, LLC, a West Des Moines, Iowa company that prepares Employee Retention Credit claims for small businesses. Its Form D, filed with the SEC on September 13, 2023, gives 2021 as the year the company was formed and lists him as chief executive and a director. The company's leadership page lists him as chief executive.

Before the ERC

According to a 2017 SEC proxy statement, Makler was co-founder, chairman and chief operating officer of Excess Space Retail Services from 1992 through 2005, a firm that disposed of and renegotiated leases for retail chains. The firm now operates as ExcessSpace, a Newmark company. In 2005 he founded Howie's Game Shack, a chain of networked gaming centers, and was still its chief executive in 2017.

Rich Uncles and the SEC order

In 2013 Makler joined the adviser to the Rich Uncles real-estate investment trusts, a crowd-investing venture that Raymond Wirta and Harold Hofer had revived in 2012. The Orange County Business Journal described the three as partners in 2015, with Makler "focused on marketing and Web design and technology." The 2017 proxy lists him, then 50, as president and chief marketing officer of Rich Uncles Real Estate Investment Trust I. At a September 22, 2016 investor open house, filed with the SEC as a free-writing prospectus, he introduced himself: "I'm one of the founders of Rich Uncles." His last SEC ownership filing as an officer is a Form 4 dated May 14, 2018.

On September 26, 2019, the SEC entered a settled cease-and-desist order against the adviser, by then BrixInvest, LLC (formerly Rich Uncles, LLC). The order found that BrixInvest acted as an unregistered broker: it marketed the REITs through radio, social media and in-person presentations, handled investor funds through its website, and "took 3% of gross offering proceeds." It also found that BrixInvest "ran thousands of radio endorser ads that did not comply with the prospectus requirements of the securities laws." BrixInvest paid a $300,000 civil penalty without admitting or denying the findings. The order names BrixInvest alone and states that its findings "are not binding on any other person or entity." Effective December 31, 2019, the REITs merged and bought out their external adviser, and the surviving company became self-managed; it renamed itself Modiv Inc. in 2021.

Pandemic-relief role

The Employee Retention Credit, created by the CARES Act, is a refundable payroll-tax credit. Firms like Innovation Refunds prepared claims for businesses and were paid from the refunds. In a December 13, 2022 release, Makler warned that "several ERC mills have been taking advantage of small, vulnerable companies by charging exorbitant fees for ERC verifications and by taking huge percentages of the credit funding upon its approval and issuing." He said Innovation Refunds had "conducted hundreds of verification checks since the launch of the ERC program, never once having charged a small business for said service," and that it had "helped over 60 community banks educate their clients on ERC."

NBC News reported in April 2024 on one Innovation Refunds client, a Missouri audio-visual business owner, who said she received $13,000, paid the company 25% of what the IRS sent her, and later had to repay the credit because she had not qualified. The same report said Innovation Refunds had reported two rounds of layoffs at its Des Moines offices in the previous two months, according to state labor records, and had spent $720,000 lobbying Congress in 2023, according to OpenSecrets.

Their own relief

No PPP or EIDL loan to Makler personally appears in the public record.

Legal status / controversies

The 2019 SEC order named BrixInvest, not Makler. No enforcement action against Makler individually appears in the public record.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

Innovation Refunds' leadership page lists Makler as chief executive.

Howard Makler