Texas Democrat James Talarico says he’s running for Senate to make “the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of taxes.” And yet, one week after launching his campaign, he quietly formed an LLC whose registered agent is a high-profile Austin accountant known for helping the wealthy “escape” taxes. Talarico could use the arrangement to lower the tax burden on the advance and royalty payments he will receive as a part of a book deal with the publishing giant HarperCollins he signed in March.
Talarico registered the company, Nine Banded LLC, with the Texas secretary of state on Sept. 16, 2025, one week after he officially entered the U.S. Senate race in Texas, business filings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show. Its registered agent is Eric Pierre of Pierre Accounting, according to the filings, which list the firm’s Austin office as the LLC’s principal address.
Pierre “provides sophisticated tax and financial stewardship for high-net-worth individuals” through “advanced tax strategies” and “bespoke wealth preservation planning,” according to his website. In other words, he helps the wealthy lower their tax bills, as Pierre has discussed in interviews and in his book, The Great Tax Escape: Why Making More Money Doesn’t Mean You Have to Pay More in Taxes. The book tells the story of a business owner, Mark, who “hit it big” before “feeling guilty about his success” and concluding he should pay the IRS “whatever they say” because he doesn’t “want to be one of those rich guys who doesn’t pay their fair share.” Pierre rebuts Mark’s sentiments before outlining the tax strategies he deploys to help clients “keep hundreds of thousands of dollars more each year.”
“I hear this kind of thing all the time,” Pierre writes, referring to Mark in a section titled “The Guilt Trap.” “It’s like we’ve been programmed to think that minimizing taxes is greedy or irresponsible. But let me tell you, that view isn’t just wrong—it’s potentially harmful to you, your family, and, believe it or not, to society as a whole.” In a November 2024 episode of The Influential Advisor Podcast, meanwhile, Pierre referenced clients “who will post, ‘Oh my gosh, pay your fair share in taxes,’ but then they’re contacting my colleagues like, ‘Hey man, I made $3-400,000, I don’t want to pay 40 percent.'”
Talarico fits the profile. His campaign platform includes calls to “create a fairer tax system” by making “giant corporations,” “billionaires,” and “the wealthiest Americans” pay “their fair share in taxes.” It also calls to raise Social Security taxes “on those earning over $400,000 a year” and create “a special tax on corporations that pay their top executives more than 250 times their median worker’s salary.” Pierre, by contrast, has noted that “the top 50 percent of earners pay 97 percent of taxes in this country, so they are actually paying their fair share.”
The precise purpose of Talarico’s LLC, the formation of which has not been reported, is unclear. Talarico identifies himself as its “managing member” in his latest personal financial disclosure, which states that the company “has no value and was inactive during reporting period.”
Talarico is also not a particularly wealthy man—the disclosure lists modest income from the “equitable education” consulting firm MAYA Consulting as well as various mutual funds and other financial holdings valued at up to $305,000. That could change, however, thanks to Talarico’s book deal with HarperCollins. Talarico inked the agreement in March, six months after forming his LLC, and it includes “advance and royalties based on customary and usual terms,” according to his disclosure. Talarico has not received income from the book—which is untitled and has not been publicly announced—as of August 13, meaning the LLC could be inactive thus far because Talarico plans to use it as a vehicle for his book payments.
Neither Talarico nor Pierre responded to requests for comments.
If Talarico does intend to use Pierre and the LLC to lower the tax bill from his book income, there are plenty of ways he can do so.
President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, for example, allows owners of “pass-through businesses”—companies that do not directly pay federal corporate income tax and instead pass profits directly to their owners—to deduct 20 percent of their business income from their taxes. Fellow left-wing Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, who uses an LLC to accept consulting and speaking fees, claimed such a deduction of $26,171 on his 2025 tax return, the Free Beacon reported. Talarico could, in theory, do the same.
Talarico could also elect to have his LLC taxed as an S-corporation, an arrangement commonly used to limit Social Security and Medicare tax burdens. Under such a structure, the owner of an LLC collects a portion of his income as a salary, which is subject to payroll taxes, and the rest as profit distributions, which are not. Democrat Joe Biden did just that when it came to his book and speaking income, which the former president routed through S-Corporations called CelticCapriCorp and Giacoppa Corp. The companies reported more than $13 million in profit distributions in 2017 and 2018 while paying out less than $800,000 in salary, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A third strategy—one that Pierre discusses in his book—involves retirement accounts. “If you own a business, you’ve got another powerful option in your playbook,” Pierre explains. “It’s called a cash balance plan, and you can use it alongside your 401(k). This plan is like strapping a rocket to your retirement savings and lighting the fuse.” Such a plan allows business owners to “set aside $300,000 or more per year” into a retirement account on a tax-deductible basis, far more than the $72,000 annual contribution limit on a self-employed 401(k), which Talarico has through Fidelity, according to his financial disclosure.
In addition to Talarico’s “fair share” tax rhetoric, the Democrat has railed against big money in politics, telling the New Yorker that he would not allow a billionaire-backed super PAC to send him to the Senate by doing his political “dirty work” because “the central belief in my faith is that the means are the ends.” At the same time, his campaign included on its website a page that tacitly coordinated with the pro-Talarico super PAC Lone Star Rising by laying out instructions on where to run ads and what to include in them, the Free Beacon reported. The PAC received $10 million in June from the liberal billionaire and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman.
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