Bulletproof Dental and Dr. Peter Bolden

Are you looking for the best tips and tricks to run a successful dental practice? You’re in the right place. Welcome to Bulletproof Dental Practice, interviewing some of Today’s most successful dentists with your host, Dr. Peter Bolden and Dr. Craig’s Spodak.

Okay folks, welcome back to the bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast. I have to say that I’m sorry for the delay in some of my publishing. I’ve been doing some traveling, enjoying some time with my family and it’s been great break, but now I’m back at it and today I am super glad to have Craig Cody and he is a Certified Public Accountant and certified tax coach.

Today we’re going to talk about kind of some tax mistakes that some business owners make and really I’m going to give a little background here on Craig. It’s an interesting background, Craig, and I will say that you were a New York City police officer for 17 years on the force in addition to being an account for the past 17 years. He’s also a Certified Tax Coach and as a Certified Tax Coach.

Craig belongs to a select group of tax practitioners throughout the country who undergo extensive training and continued education on various tax planning techniques and strategies to become well certified. With this organization, Craig has co authored an Amazon best selling book called The Secrets of a Tax Free Life and recently authored a book of his own called The 10 Biggest Tax Mistakes That Cost Business Owners Thousands.

I’ve been reading these books. I have both of them in my possession and I have to say that it stimulated a lot of questions from that, Craig. I’m super glad you’re on the bulletproof dental practice podcast and I know that the listeners will get tremendous value because it’s something we all pay a lot of attention to as dentists and small business owners. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me here. I’m really excited.

I need to make a quick disclaimer to everybody that this is the bulletproof disclaimer, is that this is not…Do not take this as any kind of guidance, as official guidance or advice. This is really just you and I having a discussion for the benefit of people to generate ideas so that they can either A, reach out to you or B, reach out to their certified tax planner, but do not take this as hard and fast advice and just start going off rogue without either talking to Craig or someone who’s qualified. Agreed.

Most definitely because sometimes-

That’s the disclaimer, everyone has to have their own legal disclaimer. Personally, I’m excited about this discussing stuff with you Craig, because believe it or not, I’ve had five CPAS in the past. I think probably seven years. I think I told you in and that would make me look like the nightmare. If a dental patient came in and said that to me, I’ve had five dentists in the past seven years, I’d be like, well, guess what? Keep searching because I’m not the one for you. Right?

That’d be a huge red flag, but I don’t think that I’m a terrible client. I just think that a lot of accountants that I’ve worked with in the past under pro should … They over promised and under delivered because I was literally seeking someone who was proactive and I know that’s a big ten of one. If your books is strategic tax planning versus just filing your taxes and I couldn’t find someone.

Ironically I should’ve found you earlier. I couldn’t find someone to literally sit down with me and have face to face time or get on the phone and actually strategize as opposed to just like, oh, here’s what happened this year. That’s why I kept switching. It wasn’t because we had big issues. It was really because I was switching and so I’m sure that a lot of listeners out there have some of the same issues that I had or if they don’t, they really should be seeking someone more proactive. Do you see this a lot in your industry?

I mean we see clients that come to us and when they have multiple CPAS over the last five, seven years, 10 years, and then we started asking questions and we find out it’s basically, there was no communication. Everybody was real good at putting the right numbers in the right boxes, but they weren’t being proactive. There was no planning been done and it’s all about keeping more of what you make legally.

Right, and I think that was the most frustrating part for me is that by the time we realized some things that we could do, it was too late. It’s too late You can amend your tax returns and go back and do that. Like to me that just kind of defeats the purpose. Anyway, I love that you are a proponent and ambassador kind of the pro, the small business and I think a lot of dentist, or I should say a lot of my colleagues actually seek out what are called dental CPA’s.

I don’t know if there’s a bonafide profession for that or a specialty, but for some reason I have a lot of colleagues who gravitate towards that thinking that there’s probably some benefit to kind of be economies of scale and I have learned that’s kind of … I’ve dealt with a couple of those and I’ve learned that that is a myth. Would you agree? Or?

Most definitely, I agree. You come across that in the industry and people are usually when they say they’re a specialty, you’re a specialist. It’s because they have a lot of clients that happened to be in that field, but for the most part in accounting and tax planning, there is every business as far as what works tax wise is fairly similar. I mean you have restaurants with tips and stuff like that, that’s a little bit different, but for the most part the dental practice, the medical practice, the legal practice, what you’re allowed to do legally is pretty much the same.

I mean small business as an overarching theme is business is business. Yes, Some of us are in service industries and yes, some of us are medical like you said, but the 30,000 foot view is that is that we’re all small business.

Exactly, we all have kind of the same problems.

You have a lot of. Even though you’re not, you don’t put yourself out there as a dental CPA. You do have a lot of dental clients as indicated.

Yes we do, but I don’t consider myself. I wouldn’t term myself as a dental specialist.

I’ve been reading your book and really I liked the shorter book that you’ve published. The Top 10 Tax Mistakes or The Top 10 Most Expensive Tax Mistakes and I really liked that. That resonated with me, number one, because I have a small, it’s a shorter book and I have a shorter attention span and it was very succinct and to the point and I loved that it was just filled with a lot of stuff that I was like, Huh, this is good stuff.

I think a good topic or a good we need to jump into is really going over like the top tax mistakes that you see either from a dentist standpoint or small business as we’ve kind of identified. Those are very similar or aligned. Are you OK with that?

Most definitely yes.

This is really your wheelhouse. I love it. Obviously you published a book about it, but let’s go over some of the top ones and if we have time I’d like to go through them, but I’m sure we will. I will have questions and follow ups on some of them so I might not be able to get all of them that you have the top 10 mistakes. But let’s hit the lowest hanging [inaudible 00:06:47]

Sure that’s great. Do you want to start or do you want me to start listing?

Well I can kind of guide along and really I can go like the failing to plan and we kind of touched on that. I think it’s appropriate. Let’s talk about the fail of plan and a little bit.

It’s really failing to plan is the biggest mistake we see because everybody is kind of looking in the rear-view mirror instead of looking forward and when you don’t plan. People spend all this time looking for a new car, researching a car and everything go into consumer reports. When it comes time to plan for their taxes nobody’s really taking the time to do that.

CPA’s, clients then are communicating on a regular basis and if you don’t communicate, you don’t know what you don’t know. Most of the accountants typically think planning is Okay, we touched base with you in December and we figured out how much tax you need to make a payment by January 15th and had some tax planning.

When if you talk with people and you figure out what they’re doing, you could show them ways to do things sometimes a little bit differently, but to take advantage of the tax code. Failing to plan is the number one issue that we see because people are busy and they’re not communicating.

They’re too busy kind of running their business to stop sometimes to think about like they’re too busy in the day to day minutia granular movements to think about like what should I do to kind of strategize my business. Right? I think that’s almost silly. It’s almost falls into the working smarter not harder kind of thing.

Exactly, and when you realize when you actually have a plan done for you and you realize how much money you can save, then it’s Kind of the light bulbs go off and you realize, we really need to do this. We need to communicate because it is a lot of money.

It is, especially when you’re talking about you mentioned the medical or dental there’s a lot of top line revenue that’s going through these practices and it’s not so much like someone told me it’s not so much how you make, but more of how much you keep.

Exactly, It’s definitely about what you keep.

Absolutely.

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