EMpowering your life through tax and the law
OUR Purpose
IQMOP provides strategies for individuals, families, and businesses in need of in-depth, innovative and custom solutions for a range of lifetime events: tax filing and tax planning, retirement and estate planning, crisis health planning and advocacy involving Medicaid, veterans’ benefit planning, situations involving elder physical or financial abuse, and special needs planning for neurodiverse populations, such as those with autism and traumatic brain injury.
our mission & Philosophy
Mission: To provide high-quality, customized, and valuable legal and taxation services related to retirement, estate planning, nursing home & long-term care planning, special needs trust planning, and all matters related to a lifetime of milestones.
Firm Philosophy: High-quality service and customized solutions founded upon integrity and compassion for Iowans interested in achieving the milestones that make life worth living.
Our Fundamentals
IQMOP Consulting, LLP, is more than a law firm—it is a tax and legal hub for the community, with valuable services aimed at every stage of life. We offer four branded and highly synergistic services: Retire In Iowa®, DrTaxRefund®, Care Eligible® and IQMOP™. Whether you are a parent of a child recently diagnosed with autism, a young professional trying to file your taxes, a proud Iowan choosing to spend more time with grandchildren or follow the open road, you will find an ala carte tax or legal service that matches your goals. Our goal is to empower your life through tax and the law.
Your Values
At IQMOP, we strive to make you feel valued through compassion, dignity, and transparency. We want you to become just as much of an expert on your own legal and taxation needs as we are. Empowerment is more than equipping our clients with documents–it is giving them the confidence that they are capable of achieving their goals. Too often, professionals act as gatekeepers of privileged information. At IQMOP Consulting, we want to put the decision-making power back into the hands of the people who are the heartbeat of the community. As a firm, we are here to inform, guide, and empower you to know and exercise your rights and to achieve your lifetime goals. The more empowered you are, the more empowered our entire community will be. Your empowerment is our legacy. Once you are our client, feel free to contact us anytime to understand your best options.
Transparency
Too often people stall their own efforts to make meaningful changes and put off decisions that may affect them for a lifetime because they are afraid of “bothering” an attorney. We distinguish ourselves from nearly every other law firm by posting our prices; and offer discounts to those who need to bundle four or more services. There are too many unknowns in our daily lives to allow fear to stop us from making better and more informed decisions about our lives. That is why IQMOP Consulting works hard to inform our clients and community about their needs and what to consider in order to have the most prosperous and abundant futures. Through videos, blogs, printable worksheets, and an integrated website, clients and the community can begin the process of changing their lives on their own schedule. Then, moving ahead with an action plan is as simple as calling our office.
Compassion
We understand compassion to mean putting ourselves into the shoes of our clients. Each of us faces obstacles that feel insurmountable when we are alone. At IQMOP Consulting, when you are a client, you will never be alone. We believe in clients for a lifetime. Our services may come to completion, but our commitment to you and our community does not end there. We give every client the option for lifetime service options–meaning that they can return to us anytime, and we will make changes as the circumstances of their lives continue to change. That is because we recognize that life is dynamic and circumstances change. That is why we educate every client in their legal rights and help them to exercise those rights effectively.
In addition, we are members of the diversely-abled community and have lived through the chaos of changing laws, administrations, and healthcare options. We rise as a business when our community is empowered. When you work with IQMOP Consulting, you are taking the first steps to empower your life through tax and the law.
IQMOP?
You, your colleagues, and your friends are each a wealth of information and talent. When we share, listen, educate, think, and respond professionally and civilly, we create synergies that advance our personal growth and professional development. All of that shared information might as well add up, figuratively, to a few IQ points. All of those IQ points need to be gathered somewhere. Our brains, like mops, soak up what's around us. This is true if you live in Des Moines, Iowa or Richmond, Virginia. The name is easy to remember and makes the process of learning fun: IQ + Mop = IQMOP.com.
About Attorney BRAD BIREN (HE/HIM/HIS)
MR. BRAD BIREN, J.D., LL.M.
Juris Doctor & Master of Law in Taxation
Deep down, my goal is to make a life by helping people appreciate the very act of living. It is hard to live when one is fearful about the future. Life is too precious to waste brain space on fear and worry. Serving you and the community is my way of paying rent for living.
Known as DrTaxRefund, Brad Biren is well-versed in a multitude of subjects. Mr. Biren is a first-generation American, LGBTQIA+, Jewish, and autistic person, and the grandson of Holocaust survivors. With a background in elder and tax law, and a passion for crisis Medicaid planning, he has an extensive knowledge base within the law. He specializes in assisting people with special needs and diverse talents who are overcoming sudden adversity. He shares his inspiring personal story of overcoming catastrophe and uses it to help motivate others in the community to pursue their goals.
Brad Biren was born in New York City and attended Cornell University, where he studied both design and botany. Soon after, he fell in love with the people of Iowa after moving to the Hawkeye State to attend the University of Iowa College of Law, where he earned his Juris Doctorate degree (J.D.). Later, Mr. Biren enhanced his expertise by earning his LL.M. in taxation from Washington University in St. Louis. Mr. Biren is passionate about working with businesses to show that their most underutilized pool of untapped employee talent exists among the autistic and neurodiverse communities - especially those on the spectrum who are frequently overlooked by conventional hiring practices. When you work with Brad Biren, you partner with an ardent advocate for dignity for those who are diversely-abled.
Brad also loves to share stories of his therapy horse, Tivio, his support dog, Oliver, as well as his love of travel. He studied at Beijing University in high school, was a special education teacher, and is a trained plant scientist and award-winning landscape architect. He taught Spanish and Mandarin simultaneously in a private school in New Jersey, published his first scientific article in high school, and had a patent-pending in eighth grade. While living in New York, he taught English Language Learning to Spanish, French, and Portuguese-speaking employees of Walmart, in the employee break room twice a week.
Brad’s first job was as a zookeeper at the Staten Island Zoological Society, where he helped care for small mammals including lemurs, wallabies, otters, a black bear cub named Ursula, and even a baby sheep named Mozart. Mr. Biren loves life, people, travel, and the natural world. Prior to a motor-vehicle accident in 2020, he was a hyperpolyglot, a person with functional proficiency in eleven languages. But since then, his brain changed during healing and he now finds himself a polymath, a person whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects. To explain how his mind works, he fondly quotes Steve Hartman of CBS Sunday Morning that describes autistics and polymaths as, “People who find overwhelming joy in the most underwhelming minutia.” That may describe a unique guest at a cocktail party, but it also makes for a thoroughly gifted attorney. For him, life is a new adventure every day, and one he is grateful for, especially after sustaining a broken back and brain trauma.
Community Involvement
Proudly serving the communities of des moines and beyond
IQMOP consulting is proud to be heavily engaged with the aging, immigrant, LGBTQIA+, and autism communities.
We make time to speak to older LGBTQ Iowans on navigating the complexities of aging in America. We provide services, advice, consultation, and education for those unfamiliar with the importance of planning for today and our later years. Similarly, we publish and present a wide variety of topics through the Iowa State Bar Association’s magazine’s continuing legal education, and public education program series. Our goal is to inform and empower others to achieve their goals: barrier-free.
In addition, we offer scholarships to diversely-abled students wishing to seek job-training skills and higher education. We seek to lessen the barrier of financial need and pursue one’s purpose. We also offer a similar scholarship, “The Third Act,” named after Jane Fonda’s TED talk describing the 50% increase in life expectancy we have compared with our great-grandparents (about 34 years). We want to empower retirees and those who have already enjoyed a career to pursue other endeavors in the community.
Our attorneys are neurodiverse and offer mock interviews to people who have not had the experience of an interview. Many young people graduate from our state’s institutions of higher learning with incredible degrees but have had no experience in an interview setting. We provide 20-30 minute interviews followed by 20-30 minutes of positive and solution-based feedback. Oftentimes family members will accompany these young people for the feedback portion and also learn how to better support and prepare their job seekers. Feel free to contact us if you are interested in setting up a practice interview for yourself or a loved one.
Most recently, we’ve added public financial literacy classes and seminars. These educational offerings will be available at the Evelyn K. Davis Center beginning in late 2022. The nonprofit is affiliated with Des Moines Area Community College and offers services, programming, and resources for new Americans, immigrants, and people starting over. We recognize how hard it is to begin again, and so we do our part to help others achieve their own American Dream.
Contact IQMOP to learn more about these service projects and our other community work.
