Certified Tax & Business Advisor
WHAT IS A CTBA?
Why choose a Certified Tax & Business Advisor?
The Certified Tax and Business Advisor program, a certification course and professional networking group, helps members understand the distinction between compliance and planning.
Who is it for?
Tax and financial professionals who want to incorporate proactive planning into their business.
What do CTBAs learn?
The CTBA training is different from nearly anything else in the tax and financial services industry.
Why a new designation?
The CTBA designation gives members an immediate conversation starter.
About the Certified Tax & Business Advisor (CTBA) Program
The tax world is full of certifications and designations: certified public accountants (CPAs), enrolled agents (EAs), registered tax returns preparers, United States tax court practitioners, and others. Navigating the sea of tax professionals can be overwhelming and challenging to determine which one is best suited to meet your specific needs. Most of these professionals focus the majority of their time on compliance: getting the right numbers in the right boxes on the right forms. They do a great job telling clients how much they owe. That’s important and valuable work! However, for the most part, they’re so busy with other clients they have to call it a day. They don’t have the time or the specialized training to advise their best clients how to pay less.
After decades counseling clients on how best to optimize their tax plans to ultimately pay less, Edward Lyon partnered with the Excel Empire team to create the Certified Tax and Business Advisor program to fill that gap. The Certified Tax and Business Advisor program, a certification course and professional networking group, helps members understand the distinction between compliance and planning, then use that difference to build their own businesses.
Who is the CTBA for?
The Certified Tax and Business Advisor program is for business, tax and financial professionals, who want to incorporate proactive planning into their business. We’ve trained insurance and financial advisors, accountants and tax preparers, and even real estate professionals. It doesn’t matter how taxes are impacting your clients and customers – If they’re feeling the pain of taxes they might not need to pay, CTBA training can bring added value to your business.
What do CTBAs learn?
The CTBA training is different from nearly anything else in the tax and financial services industry. Participants don’t learn how to prepare tax returns, defend clients in audits, or negotiate settlements for unpaid taxes. Instead, they learn how to identify clients who would be good candidates for customized tax planning, how to approach them with a unique value proposition, and how to successfully connect them with Excel Empire team members to actually prepare and implement in-depth tax plans for high-income, high-value clients across the country.
The program starts by debunking the myth that most accountants actually “take care of” their clients’ taxes and emphasizes how their services are typically limited to compliance.
Once the stage has been set, the bulk of the training consists of a detailed, line-by-line examination and discussion of Form 1040. Participants learn how to read a tax return to identify missed opportunities in eight key areas: business entities and structures; executive compensation; employee benefits; retirement plans; real estate operations; charitable giving; investment portfolios; and exit strategies.
The training also helps participants identify common tax scams that don’t deliver intended savings. Finally, they learn how to identify opportunities to elevate tax planning as a high value, “velvet rope” service, meriting its own discipline and fees.
Why a new designation?
As we said above, the tax world is full of credentials: CPA, EA, RTRP, USTCP, and more. Standing out in that crowded marketplace is hard, especially when most taxpayers don’t understand what most of those initials mean.
We created the Certified Tax and Business Advisor designation to give members an immediate conversation starter. Clients will see the CTBA credentials on a business card, brochure, or website, and ask, “what does that mean?” That question opens the door to a deeper conversation about the role tax planning plays in helping clients accomplish their broader financial goals, and how CTBAs are uniquely qualified to do that.
The CTBA certification sits at the intersection of real-world experience and a deep understanding of the tax code, designed to elevate the expertise of seasoned tax professionals. We chose to make it a certification and community, rather than just a training course, because it provides a recognized credential that signals a higher standard of excellence. Earning the CTBA designation not only validates your expertise but also signifies your membership in an elite community of like-minded professionals. It’s about more than skill-building. It’s about joining a peer network dedicated to growth, credibility, and advancing the profession, while giving you a competitive edge in building trust with clients.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Who is Ed Lyon and why is he qualified to run this program?
Edward Lyon has focused his career on the value of tax planning. He’s built the CTBA course on a foundation of legal training, combined with decades of hands-on work with an expansive roster of accountants, financial advisors, and their clients across the country.
After earning his bachelor’s degree at Hamilton College, Ed began his career on Capitol Hill, working for Representatives Jack Kemp and Dick Cheney. Working on Kemp’s staff while Congress passed the landmark Tax Reform Act of 1986 taught him how Washington shapes the tax code to balance competing interests and, in the process, creates opportunities for taxpayers to shape their income to pay less.
Following his service on Capitol Hill, he returned to his hometown of Cincinnati to earn his law degree at the University of Cincinnati, where he served as Executive Editor of the University of Cincinnati Law Review.
After graduating, Lyon worked for The National Underwriter Company’s Tax Facts division, where he wrote and edited tax-oriented publications for insurance and financial advisors. From there, he worked for a series of financial companies, including Merrill Lynch and Ohio National Life Insurance. These experiences illustrated firsthand how most financial professionals pay lip service to tax planning but rarely follow through in any meaningful way.
During this period, Ed published his first book, The Sixty Minute Tax Planner, leading to a series of national television appearances on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC. Lyon even appeared on The Roseanne Barr Show, earning the moniker “the funniest tax guy in America.”
In 2005, Ed dropped his law license and committed his career to tax planning, launching a new venture, TaxCoach Software (now Tax Master Network). The core of that business was the Tax Architect software, which allowed tax and financial advisors to create written, plain-English tax plans for their clients, a revolutionary option at the time. Over 4,000 advisors – mostly CPAs and EAs – have used his system to add proactive tax planning to their menu of services. Additionally, he has personally coached over 100 of them on both technical tax planning and business development challenges.
In 2023, Lyon partnered with Excel Empire to create the Certified Tax and Business Advisor program, a complimentary training designed to enhance their range of offerings. He hosted the first training in August of that year, and since then, over 100 advisors have participated.
Today, Ed focuses most of his time on teaching, training, and fostering a community of tax and business professionals. He also works hands-on with the real-world clients brought in by Certified Tax and Business Advisors to create bespoke tax and business plans. These range the gamut of financial success: billion-dollar entrepreneurs; entertainment and sports figures; high-income legal and medical professionals; tech startups and transitions; and even blue-collar trade businesses.
Edward A. Lyon
CHIEF TAX PLANNER
What kind of support do CTBAs received after the initial training?
The tax code is always evolving and refining your skill set never stops, and that’s just as true for CTBAs as anyone else. Excel Empire provides ongoing resources and an active community, including a weekly “Excelerator” call for CTBAs every Friday. Topics include technical deep dives, tax policy updates, and marketing refreshers. These calls are also where Excel Empire introduces new services and resources for members to take to their clients.
Additionally, Excel sponsors two annual masterminding sessions, where members can gather with each other and the Excel team. Members themselves set the agendas at those meetings, where they sharpen their marketing and planning skills and learn from each other what’s working in the real world.