If you read his message board, he will definitely answer questions, but only those which can be completely answered based on information given. He is not going to give an opinion on whether you qualify for trader tax status without seeing all your information, meaning you'll need to hire him. He's nice enough to answer general tax questions, but he's also running a business so you can't expect him to give away his services for free (legally he also might run into issues if he did). He does give general guidelines -- if you meet all of them it's likely you do qualify. If not it's probably worth spending the money to consult with him -- compare that expense to the price of an audit later.....(remember to factor in the "price" of worrying about the audit)