Tax Planning on the Contractor Fight Podcast with Tom Rebar

We’re going to talk a little bit about some of the biggest mistakes that business owners make when it comes to their taxes and all that good stuff. Listen, he’s also an Amazon bestselling author. He’s got a book called Secrets of a Tax Free Life, and then he also has a book called Ten Biggest Tax Mistakes That Cost Business Owners Thousands, so check out the show notes, and with that being said, Craig, what’s going on? Welcome to The Fight, man.

Oh, thank you very much for having me.

You’ve got a funny accent, man. Where you from?

New York.

We’ve got some guys in our coaching groups that sound just like him. If I close my eyes, you sound like Alan Schul who is also, he just retired from the force.

Yeah. Yep. Alan and Erin, his wife. They’re in, I forget what town in New York, but they’re up that way. I think he was in the city and then he relocated to another town. I think, I don’t know, I’m probably butchering it.

My kids tell me I have an accent too.

Yeah. You’re obviously from New York.

Yes.

As I stated in the intro, you’re a CPA and a Tax Coach, but you had a life before that, man.

Yes.

What did that look like?

This is my second career. Yes, I had a good life before it. I actually retired as an NYPD Lieutenant. I spent 17 years there. Before I went to join the police department I was an economics major, so always liked numbers. Somewhere along the way I really got into the tax part of it, and saving people money. Started with estate planning and that kind of went out the window, and here we are now, I mean, business owners and tax planning, saving them a lot of money.

So like when you were like arresting a perp, and he was resisting or something, do you be like, dude, chill the hell out or I’m going to whip some math out on your ass, man?

Yeah, that’s a good one.

Let me ask you this. You work, how long you been doing this now?

18 years.

18 years. Okay. What would you say a conservative percentage would be of, like you have your top line income, whatever it is, so for the sake of just our listeners and the easy math here, let’s say you’re a million dollar company. What percentage are you throwing away from that because you don’t have your shit together with your taxes on average that you see when you take over with a business? You know what I’m saying?

Yeah. Yeah. It could be over paying taxes by 50% because nobody’s looking at the numbers, nobody’s doing any kind of planning, and it’s not rocket science either.

Yeah. So, somebody’s paying 80 grand a year in taxes, let’s just pick a number.

Correct.

Another 40 grand-

Yeah.

It’s probably up to 50%. Okay.

Yeah.

So this is big stuff that we’re talking about that’s important. So those of you that are tempted to go, oh, we’re going to talk about taxes, and math, and this is going to be hard for me to follow, as you’re listening to this podcast, just stick with us here because I know Craig’s going to simplify some of these things. And like you said a minute ago, it’s not that complicated. Well, it’s not that complicated for somebody who knows what the hell they’re doing.

Right. But, it’s all about keeping more of what you make. I mean, everyone’s busting their butt out there. So how about we keep some of that?

Yeah. What’s a Tax Coach? You call yourself a Tax Coach.

A Tax Coach is somebody that works with clients to lower the tax liability in a legal way. Most accountants are really good. They put the right numbers in the right boxes, but it ends there. A tax coach, somebody like myself, is going to look at ways to legally reduce that tax liability as well as put the right numbers in the right boxes. As a profession, we’re probably not the most personable group of people, okay? We don’t like to sit down with people, and we don’t like to go through the numbers, for the most part, especially, big burly contractors, rough and tough guys. We typically, we don’t want to do that, so what we need to do is just spend a little time. Just like guys, they’re going to buy a truck or a piece of equipment, they do some research. Let’s do a little bit of research and keep some of your money.

All right. Man, my head is all over. I’ve got this list of things that I want to talk about. I’m just trying to think we’re going to weave this together here today because I want to kind of backup before we get into the nuts and the bolts of math. Just using a blanket term there. What should I expect? What’s the ideal relationship look like with a CPA?

An ideal relationship is, you should be communicating at least once a month. All right. What we do with our clients is, when we go through their books and everything, and we get them straightened out every month, we schedule the Zoom call, and we go through the P&L. We might be on one week or one month, we might be on for five minutes, another month we might be on for a half hour. It depends on what’s going on. The more you communicate back and forth, the more you can help people, okay? The more they tell you, you know what’s going on. Oh, yeah, I’m starting another business, or I’m looking at starting another line of work. What’s the best way to do it? But, if you don’t have that conversation until the following February or March, there’s not a whole lot of stuff you can do. It’s hard.

I’m not ripping on CPAs, but you’re going to probably get less of their best focus and energy when you’re waiting till February or March to ask them.

Listen to the full Podcast here 

Get your free copy of “The 10 Biggest Tax Mistakes That Cost Business Owners Thousands” HERE!

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