If you’ve heard that you can charge huge search fees on tax overages, you haven’t gone astray. Unlike state funds, such as old bank accounts, stock dividends, and utility deposits, tax overages are often for large amounts of money and are not publicly advertised on the state’s website. They are the best kept secret in the “found money” business. But are tax overage finder fees legal?
If you’ve studied your state’s code, you’ve probably come across a section called “Unclaimed Property Law” or something like that. It describes what happens to the abandoned property, who owns it, how long to keep it, etc. It also outlines the restrictions on 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 the 30-50% tax overage search fees are breaking the law. Fortunately, not everything is what it seems.
The wording of the state code only applies to funds that are held at the state level. If you read the code carefully, it will describe what exactly constitutes “abandoned property” and therefore what those 5% to 15% limits apply to. The tax overage finder fees ARE legal, because they fall outside of this definition (for a time).
What this means is that the restrictions imposed on rates and search engines no (in most states) apply to search engines working with tax surpluses. Since there is a time when they are not considered “abandoned property,” during that time finder fee limits do not apply and requirements about who can work with the funds do not apply.
Anyone who is interested in becoming a money seeker can get around these state restrictions by working on tax surpluses. Due to the high foreclosure rate, there is a large amount of funds to claim, and once you get good at tax surpluses, you can move on to the huge surpluses created by foreclosure and also missing estates and heirs. There is no end in sight to creating these funds, and you can safely and legally raise 30-50% as a finder for these funds.
