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For business owners, investors, and advisors looking to lower their cost of capital. Subscribe for delivery straight to your inbox ๐Ÿ‘‡

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This Gets CPAs Fired More Than Anything Else ๐Ÿ—‘๏ธ

Tax meetings are stressful to plan for. As advisors, we only have a few deliverables each year and planning / strategy meetings are a big one. So early in my career when the client told me during one of these meetings that, "this was the biggest waste of time I've had in a while" - it's one I took home and really thought about. Why It Sucked For starters, I didn't appreciate where I fit in as a tax advisor in the finance team - and I think most CPAs still don't. ๐Ÿ”„ But let me lay the...

Saving small business and real estate owners on tax is one the best ways I fulfill my personal mission - which is lowering the cost of capital for decision makers. Today, we're going back to school ๐ŸŽ’ with the 5 biggest tools SMB and RE owners should be using to do just that ๐Ÿ‘‡ An S-Corp Somewhere ยง469 Aggregation Cost Segregation 199A QBI Optimization Operating Agreement Planning But first... ๐Ÿšจ The Plug is now on YouTube! ๐Ÿšจ I'd appreciate a like, comment, and follow over there if you're into...

Ask your accountant, and they'll tell you "It depends." Ask your attorney, and you'll get a novel of an email and a $1,000 invoice. But all you really want is someone to tell you how to set up your business to get started without stepping on a landmine. ๐Ÿ’ฅ If you feel this, today is your day. We're going into the structure I advise in a lot of entity structuring and planning calls I have (if you want one customized, just reply to this email to get set-up). This design includes the best parts...

More unnecessary tax is paid from bad accounting than bad tax planning. ๐Ÿซณ๐ŸŽค Bad structures or missed elections can cost a few percentage points on the tax paid on the income. But bad accounting can create phantom income or missed deductions that become unrecoverable - it's something no level of tax planning can help you with. ๐Ÿคท To illustrate - today we're digging into a few real life examples I've seen over the years: Losing Money on Real Estate Owned When you build or improve assets yourself,...

Just. Start. Doing. It. That's the best advice for any small business owner who feels like they don't know what's going on in the finances of their business. ๐Ÿซจ When scaling a business, an owner usually obsesses on the following in this order: Sales Quality of Delivery Hiring Anything else Accounting While new sales, quality, and hiring will get you a nice paying self-employed living - good accounting will always hold you back from breaking through and building a business. And good accounting...

Growing a business with acquisitions of competitors (horizontally) is additive โž• - increasing profit through increasing market share and sharing costs. But growing a business through acquisitions of customers or vendors (vertically) is multiplicative โœ–๏ธ - it collapses gross profit making every dollar spent on sales that much more valuable. Today, we're talking about how business owners use the tax code to do the same thing - turn expenses into assets or tax deductions and lower their overall...

Tax Stacking: A Powerful Strategy for High-Income Taxpayers When most high-net-worth individuals think about trusts, estate planning comes to mind first. Moving assets out of your estate, protecting wealth for future generations, avoiding probate - these are the traditional reasons wealthy families use trusts. ๐Ÿ’ฐ But trusts offer another powerful advantage that many overlook: income tax benefits through a strategy called "stacking." While the IRS phases out many deductions and exclusions for...

Early in my career, I audited the financials of an energy trader. The line the CEO always repeated was, "no such thing as a bad trade - you just run out of time." In other words, if you don't get the timing right, nothing matters. ๐Ÿ•ฐ๏ธ I see this all the time in taxes. A young taxpayer reads a few subreddit forums on taxes, follows some influencers and before he knows it has 5 trusts, 1 S-Corp, and 10+ Wyoming LLCs to maintain. They may all be good ideas, but most of the time it's way too early...

[Welcome to our new subscribers from the most recent webinar on the One Big Beautiful Bill - remember that any time you want to unsubscribe, there is a link at the bottom of every email. But this email brings practical tax and accounting alpha, so we hope you stay and enjoy.] I don't consider myself a fast learner - if I need to learn something I have to obsess over it until it makes sense. So when I changed career paths from being an audit partner to learning tax, I had my work cut out. It...

Okay, so I had planned on a third part to our Energy Trader Tax SNAFU series. But the biggest tax bill in (checks notes) 5 years ๐Ÿ™„ was signed on July 4. So we'll deviate from the plan and run through the provisions. ๐Ÿ“บ But first - with 100% bonus depreciation back on the menu, loss allocations will be easier than ever to screw up. If you prepare or approve K1s for investors, you need a professional to review your operating agreement and K1s to get them right. Reply to this email or visit...