About Michael Muslovski

It started with a 1040EZ

My mother ran a childcare business out of our home, and she did her own taxes. When I was starting out, she told me there was no reason I could not do mine. She sat me down and showed me the 1040EZ.

That was the first tax return I ever prepared, and the lesson underneath it stuck harder than the form did: this is learnable. The people who tell you it is too complicated to touch are usually the ones charging you to touch it.

The Navy years

I joined the Navy in October 2003. About a year in, my Master Chief told me I needed a volunteer opportunity on my evaluation, something to set me apart. On the base message board I found a United Way tax course for the VITA program: free tax preparation for people who could not afford to pay for it. I took the course, learned the software, and started filing returns for sailors and families. I kept coming back to that table for the next twelve years of my Navy career. Nobody made me.

There is a particular satisfaction in sitting down with someone who is worried about a form, working through it, and watching the worry leave. I never got tired of it.

Coming home

When I left the Navy I came back to Texas and went back to school: University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, accounting and philosophy. I worked tax seasons at the big retail prep chains while I studied. Then full-time at a local Belton tax office, where the owner gave me the room to grow into the work. Then several seasons at a full-service law firm in Temple, where the returns got serious: partnerships, S corps, K-1s, payroll, franchise filings.

The accountants taught me. The attorneys sharpened me.

Two years inside the IRS

Then I did something most tax preparers never do. I joined the IRS as a revenue officer and spent two years working collections. I know exactly how the IRS pursues a tax debt, because pursuing tax debts was my job. I know what a revenue officer can and cannot do, what they look for in a financial statement, which cases they push and which they close, and where the exits are built into the process.

I also learned that the collector's chair was not my chair. I sat in it long enough to understand it, and then I came back to the side of the table where I belong.

When I tell you where you stand with the IRS, that is not a guess. I have stood on both sides.

Why this practice runs the way it does

Here is the honest version. I do not like sales. I tried selling things between the Navy and now, and I never liked asking for the money. What I like is being good at something, being asked for advice, and doing the job well. So Live Oak is built to demonstrate expertise, education, and discipline, and not to monetize fear.

The people who call me are often the people least able to afford help. I am not serving them by billing every form and every phone call at a premium. If your problem has a free fix, I will point you to it. If you can do it yourself, I will tell you. And if you need someone in your corner who knows the terrain, that is exactly what I do.

Rooted in Texas. Built on trust. That is not a slogan I bought. It is the only way I know how to run this.