Say No To PPO’s With Jordon Comstock and Ben Tuinel

Hey, folks, we’ve got a great guest. We have Craig Cody. He is a certified public accountant. We thought it was a very good idea to bring on a CPA on the podcast. A couple of weeks ago was business tax day and I scrambled to get all the stuff ready for my CPA here in Lehigh. We have tax where we actually have to pay or actually, that’s what I’m told that I have to pay money when we file the personal taxes here in about two weeks. We got Craig Cody. He’s a certified public accountant, a certified tax coach, a business owner. A really cool thing is that he’s also a former NYPD officer, 17 years experience on the force.

So cool.

In addition to being a CPA for the past 17 years, he’s also a Certified Tax Coach. As a Certified Tax Coach, Craig belongs to a select group of tax practitioners throughout the country who undergo extensive training and continuing education on various tax planning techniques and strategies to become as well as remain, a certified tax coach, which is pretty cool. I didn’t know that. With this organization, Craig has co-authored an Amazon best-selling book called, Secrets of a Tax Free Life …

Nice.

… and recently authored 10 Biggest Tax Mistakes That Cost Business Owners Thousands. Craig, welcome to the program today.

Thank you very much for having me, guys.

Yeah.

I have a question. I want to stick on the New York, the Police Department thing here for a second.

Yeah, let’s do that.

When did you retire? When did your 17 years end?

2000. September 2000.

Wow. You missed 9/11 then. Just this and that year.

Yeah. I was a very lucky person.

Wow. That’s amazing.

Yeah.

A lot of people know on the podcast that I actually used to work for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix, Arizona. Not 17 years, I was there for just a couple of years, and so I have that small police background. It’s kind of interesting in the dental industry. You don’t run into a lot of people that are either reserve officers or that have worked in the force as full time sworn officers. Do you mind sharing any interesting or fun experiences you think the listeners might want to know that you dealt with as a police officer?

But I guess one of the … I don’t know whether other people would consider it interesting. This is going way, way back to when I was a cop in Midtown. This was way before … This was probably in 1986, 1987. I was in the plainclothes-

Jordon, I didn’t hear a whoa, Jordon.

I was just going to do it, Ben.

Oh, okay.

Oh, okay you guys. I’m dating myself, am I not?

Jordon wasn’t born then, or were you born, Jordon?

I was born. I was born.

Just joking. Sorry Craig. Go on.

That’s okay. I was in a plainclothes, anticrime unit and I was on patrol with my partner at the time, Tommy Mullen. We were riding around … We had a New York City taxicab that we drove around in. We came across a group of probably about 75 kids that stretched the block and a half, on I think it was Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. They were just going up to people and just pushing them against the wall and grabbing their wallets and moving on.

Oh wow.

So many of them. We were calling for help from basically from all over the borough, because we wanted to try and get as many of them as we could. We were just going up to people and asking them for their business card after they were robbed. They weren’t getting hurt. They were getting roughed up a little bit, but no one was in grave danger, so we were just trying to contain the whole thing. They even did a priest. Finally, enough was enough and we had to interrupt this thing. We got into a foot chase. They scattered. There was two of us and probably over 50, 75 of them, and they scattered.

Wow.

I happened to be in pretty good shape at the time. I got into a foot chase and I was going after one guy. People saw this huge crowd of people running and stuff like that. I had people jumping out of their car and say, I’m FBI agent. Go get that guy. Finally, I caught up to the guy after I’m putting foot pursuit over the radio, and people telling me afterwards they could hear them running out of gas.

I finally catch the guy in a bodega somewhere. I think it was a Chinese bodega. I’m wrestling with the guy, and like I said, I’m in pretty good shape, and these are all high school kids. I finally almost get control of the guy and some guy walks in off the street and starts giving the guy a noogie, and telling him, you can’t do this, but I can. We wound up arresting about seven of them. We went to trial and they got convicted. But, that was a longtime ago, but that was interesting. I don’t know how exciting it might sound, but it was interesting. It took me two and a half days to process the arrests.

Wow.

Wow.

Well, anything-

What does it usually take to process an arrest?

Well, back then it would take you probably about 16 hours to process an arrest. Remember, this was kind of before there were real computers.

So, I must be using one of those computers today, the old ones.

It seems like that, yeah Ben.

That’s pretty good. That’s pretty cool. My nephew’s in the police academy right now up here. He’s going to be working for the Provo Police Department, but he applied everywhere. I told him, come here. I’m Polynesian, and there’re Polynesian problems all over the State of Utah. He got hired. As a matter of fact, one of my old neighbors, he used to be the Chief of the American Fork Police Department, and he kept asking me to join the reserve program. My wife kept saying, no, no, no. Now that my nephew’s in the police department, I think I’m going to go back and renew and go through the renewal process. I let my certificate expire, and I would love … I just love what’s involved with police work. It’s really fun. It’s not as dangerous as people make it seem. You see all the bad videos on YouTube, and on the internet, but it’s actually very fun employment.

99% boredom, 1% craziness!

That’s exactly right.

That’s funny.

You know what’s so funny, when people ask me … I want to ask you, I don’t know if in New York you did any … Because what we did in Phoenix is we were mainly chasing taillights and just responding to calls from dispatch. But, from time to time it’s so bored, that you chase after the speeders. Did you do any of that? Did you do any street patrol, or what do they call it? 225, is that the assignment? I don’t know if that’s the same.

No. When I first got on, I walked the foot post in Times Square. At the time … This is like when I tell people now, they’re like, there was six of us on one side of the street, between 7th and 8th avenue, and there were six people on the other side between 7th and 8th avenue, and there were still people getting robbed.

Wow.

It was definitely different. My son is actually a third generation police office.

Wow.

Awesome.

My dad was a cop for 33 years, and that’s what brought me into it. My son followed in the same footsteps.

Oh, that’s cool.

What brought you to become a CPA after being a policeman?

Before I became a cop, I was an economics major. I was always kind of into business. As looking forward towards retirement, I said I need to have something to do, make money, support my family. I liked taxes, and I went back to school for accounting.

Right on. That’s awesome.

We like you, because we hate taxes.

Exactly.

It’s kind of all about keeping more of what you make, and doing it legally.

I love that. You’ve got a book, The Secrets of Tax Free Life. I already like the title of it. Before we go on to any other questions, could you summarize what you say in that book, if you have an overview of it?

I co-authored this with about nine other people I know.

Oh, cool.

My chapter was about how to make your child’s cleats tax deductible. One little thing about having-

Child’s cleats?

… to deal with your kids and stuff like that.

That would have helped with my parents, because they had 11 kids. That’s a lot of cleats.

Exactly. My most recent book, which I’m actually going to offer your listeners, if they’d like it free, is, The Ten Most Expensive Tax Mistakes That Cost Business Owners Thousands. There I go into a bunch of different things that could save people money.

That is a huge offer. I’m actually excited to read that because, as a small business owner, you’re paying so much in taxes. You gotta think, gosh.

You have to be strategic.

When you fill up at the gas station, you’re taxed. When you buy groceries, you’re taxed. Everything you do. When you hire an employee, you’re taxed. I was doing the math the other day and I think the money that I spent in taxes in 2016 was over 50% of my income, and over 50% the business income, I think. It just makes me upset that we have to pay so much in taxes. Unfortunately we don’t get too much what to say, other than voting for the politicians that spend the tax dollars. But, it’s just so frustrating.

YOU SHOULD REVIEW THE THE NEW TAX LAW CHANGES WITH YOUR CPA BEFORE IMPLEMENTING ANY TAX PLANNING STRATEGIES.

Get your copy of my book the 10 Biggest Tax Mistakes That Cost Business Owners Thousands HERE!

Listen to the full podcast here.