359: A Tax Update with Tom Wheelwright

Catch the full episode: https://www.wealthformula.com/podcast/358-the-personalization-of-personal-finance/

Buck: Welcome back to the show, everyone. Today, my guest on Wealth Formula podcast is well known to the show. He is Tom Wheelwright. Tom is, of course, best known for his seminal work. I will call it a fantastic best book on taxes you’ll ever read. Tax free wealth. And he has followed up with another book called The Win Win Wealth Strategy. Tom, welcome back to Wealth Formula Podcast.

Tom: But always good to be with you, love. Love what you’re doing. Love your group.

Buck:Thank you. And, you know, we for those of you who are watching this on YouTube, you might notice that Tom and I think alike when it comes to taxes in. And it also seems that we are dressing the same these days, too. And this wasn’t planned. We just happened to be wearing almost an identical outfit, at any rate. Good taste there.

So, Tom, you’ve been on the show many times. And the first thing I think it’s always useful to talk about is, you know, since we last, you know, last year. Now it’s 2023 now. And and there’s been some changes that are of significance in the tax laws. So why don’t we start with that?

Tom: Yeah, for sure. So particularly in real estate, there have been actually, I think, two the two biggest changes in the real estate area. The first, of course, is the bonus depreciation change where we’re now starting to decrease every year, the amount of bonus depreciation by 20%. So up through 2022, we had five years of 100% bonus depreciation for land improvements and the contents of the building. And beginning in 2023, it’s 80%. Then 2024, it’ll be 60% goes to 40, 20 and zero. So we’re going to continue to see this decline, which will certainly give some people some urgency from the tax standpoint for investing in real estate.

Buck: Yeah. And, you know, obviously we still have cost segregation, so that’s still helpful. But it does tell me, at what point do you think I mean, I did the numbers on this a few days ago, but it seemed to me that, you know, just throwing out some generic numbers, like 70% LTV and, you know, $1,000,000 purchase and you’re selling for 2 million or whatever, at this point, it’s not necessarily is entirely clear whether you should, you know, just use bonus depreciation and buy a new property and get your 80% depreciation off Kassig or do a 1031 exchange. So I know that was sort of a mouthful for people listening. But basically the question I have is, I mean, with 100% bonus depreciation last year, in the year before, there really was no reason to do a 1031 exchange that I could certainly pencil out. Is there an idea.

Tom: It was actually pretty rare that a 1031 exchange made sense prior to this year and now it’s going to be closer? Yeah, okay. I think next year it’s going to be you know, we’re going to see more 1031 exchanges. We may even see some more this year. But I think it still I mean, you’re still talking about upwards of 20 to 25% of the property being depreciated in the first year. standpoint with bonus depreciation than 1031. But of course, I always recommend that you sit down with your accountant. Sure. And run the numbers because it depends on your situation.

Buck: Yeah. And I should point out and we’ll talk about this towards the end, but you know, all the things we’re going to talk about today are, you know, large, big scope ideas at a high level. And anything that you need to have drilled down on, you need to have somebody good work with you. Bonus depreciation was a big one. Is there what other what other changes to the tax law do you think would be useful to note?

Tom: Well, I think the other big one is actually the deduction for meals. Okay. Remember, and 2021 and 2022, they changed the rule from 50% of business meals to 100%, but that is now reverted to 50%. So you go out with a client, you go out with a business associate and have a meal at a restaurant. No longer is that 100% deductible. Now it’s only 50% deductible. So that might you might change where you go. You go out to dinner for lunch, but definitely it’s definitely going to have an impact.

Buck: Yeah, certainly it certainly would, especially if you eat a lot, right? I mean, they.

Tom: Or you buy expensive wine, right, and.

Buck: Stuff like that. You know, there are certain tax avoidance strategies that, you know, we’re fairly, I would say controversial. They were they made the IRS list of, you know, the what do they call it, the watch list.

Tom: The Dirty Dozen.

Buck: The Dirty Dozen and all that. And there’s a couple things that were on there for many years. Conservation easement specifically especially and then captive insurance. These types of things have been in heavy scrutiny over the last year or two. Can you tell us if there’s any resolution or any guidance on these types of things by now?

Tom: Absolutely. We actually do have a major change in the conservation easement space. Let’s start with captives. So captive insurance for those of you don’t know is the really when you set up an insurance company of your own and then that insurance company pools with other similar insurance companies and to establish a risk pool, and then you pay premiums into that pool. The reason behind it is that there are just certain certain things that are so expensive to insure that you really want to self-insure, but you would like to actually set the money aside and the government would like you to set the money aside. So we have what’s called Section 831 B of the Internal Revenue Code, which says, look, if you do set up the insurance company, then the premiums are deductible. So long as they’re reasonable and they’re not taxable to the insurance company. And that’s where the big tax benefit is. Now, the IRS came out a few years ago and they said, wow, this you know, we’re seeing a lot of abuse in here. They had a couple of court cases, really bad facts, and they started going after captives and now pretty much go after every captive that they find. Couple of things that have changed, though, is last year we got a ruling down from the courts that said that for captives that they did not follow the process properly for requiring you to file this form 8886, which is what highlights that you have a captive now, they did say, well, this only applies to this taxpayer. However, you would have a pretty good argument still until they go back through that process, you still have a pretty good argument that they came after you for not filing 88, 86 to say, wait a minute, we’ve got this court decision that says, you guys didn’t do it right. We’re going to take this to court. They’ll I would expect they will concede. But the IRS still wants you to file the 8886. So that’s where you highlight the issue. I’m just so.

Buck: Just clarity there. I’m so I’m a little confused. The court say that they should not have that ability necessarily to file. I mean, you shouldn’t have to flag yourself for this.

Tom: But remember, the court case applies to that taxpayer.

Buck: Okay, Got it.

Tom: Right now, it’s precedent, which means that other taxpayers should be able to rely on that. However, the IRS has been very clear they’re still going to assess penalties if you don’t file in 88, 86. So you’re going to have to fight it. So how they will how can they do all they can to fight it? Well, they can.

Tom: You know, it’s kind of like how does President Biden wipe out $400 billion of student loan debt?

Buck: Yeah.

Tom: Right. When the courts clearly have said it seems like there’s no way the courts are going to agree with that. Well, this is kind of the same type of a deal. So while I think it’s improper, I may think it’s improper and illegal for the IRS to do it. The IRS is the £800 gorilla in the room, and we just have to respect that. They are going to force the issue with you. If you take that position and don’t file that 80, 88, 88, 86. Now, conservation easements actually had a bigger change because they actually had a change in the law. So beginning with 220, 22 conservation easements, they said going forward, if you have a conservation easement, you’re not allowed to deduct more than two and a half times the cost of the property. Okay. Now, that said, I want to be really clear. It’s not two and a half times the investment made by the investors. So again, a conservation easement is where you have a piece of land and they the the owner of the land decides that rather than develop the land which they could do, they’re going to set it, set aside an easement for it, donate the easement to a conservation charity, and therefore it can never be developed.

And so that reduces the value of the land. And that difference between what it would be worth if you developed it and the cost and the cost of the land. That’s or the value that she gives me the difference between the value of the land. If you could have developed and the value of the land without being able to develop it is a charitable contribution deduction to the owners. Well, for years, as we talked about on this show, Bach investors have been able to invest in a in a property and then the then the the partnership, if you will, then turned over a conservation easement for the conservation easement and made that donation. And a lot of times that was four or five times the investment the investors made.

Well, the new law says they don’t restrict it to four or five times your investment or two and a half times your investment. They restricted two and a half times the cost of the land, which may be a lot less than two and a half times your investment because there’s the IRS is still going after these. So even though they changed the law to what the IRS wanted, the IRS is still pursuing that.

And we don’t know how hard they’ll pursue the new ones. We know that current anything through 2022 is automatically being audited. The conservation easement partnerships are automatically being audited. So everyone without exception is being audited. And then, of course, the goal is what’s is that, you know, you end up settling at something and the IRS settles or you end up taking it to court.

And the courts have actually been it depends on the court, but especially the 11th Circuit in Georgia has been very favorable to taxpayers. And so I do think it’s one of those things where I think there are a lot more conservation easements are going to win. I think the IRS is eventually going to just have to settle them out at a much higher donation values than they thought they would. And and then hopefully they’ll really just do normal audits on the new ones that are at two and a half times the cost. But again, remember, that’s still enough times the cost of land, not to enough times your investment. So if money’s being set aside to handle legal matters and audits and administration, etc., that doesn’t count in that two and a half times.

Buck: So, you know, there was a big there was a lot of fear from a number of of people that I talked to who had invested these in the past and say they had four and a half, five x valuations and deductions they had. And at one point there was some talk about there being essentially the ability to go back and, you know, apply that new law or whatever, you know, that two and a half maximum automatically to easements that were done before that law was in place. And as I understand it, that’s not really you. They’re not going to do that.

Tom: That’s correct. The new law was very specifically not retroactive. It was prospective only. So the IRS, they can audit all those old partnerships, but they can’t apply that two and a half times rule to those partnerships.

Buck: But at least that’s some good news, right? It is.

Tom: Well, we’ve got some clarity, which is good news.

Buck: Yeah. Is there is there anything else that I think that sticks out to you about tax laws right now that are in flux that might change soon or things that you’ve got your eye on?

Tom: Well, the one actually that sticks out that I think we are going to see is I do think we’re going to see the research and development tax credit be changed back to the way it was. So for those of you don’t know in 2017 and Trump’s tax bill, they actually eliminated the ability to both write off your research and development costs and take a research and development tax credit. Okay? You either got the full credit and had it amortized or you got the full deduction that didn’t get the credit. So what they’re working on right now is they’re trying to find a bill and they think they’ve got a couple of bills that they can do this with. They they’re trying to find a bill to attach this to where they’ve got bipartisan support, which they need, obviously, and will be able to pass the CRA. Really correct this back to the way it used to be, which is why we need it to be, which is you get to deduct your R&D expenses and you get the tax credit because otherwise we’re on such an uneven footing with the rest of the world that it really puts us a disadvantage from technology.

Buck: You know, how does you know? So I’ve never actually used R&D credits in any sort of way. And can you give us an example of how like a small business, like, you know, mom and pop thing and we’re not talking about anything scientific or whatever, How how would you apply R&D to to a typical small business?

Tom: I’ll give you two examples. One is you might be in an industry that is ripe for technology development and you decided we’re going to develop the technology. So you go out and you actually build software to handle a technical, a service issue basically that was being done by hand. And now you think you can do it better with computer equipment right through through a through an app or through software, really through a software.

And that’s one case where the R&D credit is absolutely available, and that’s pretty clear. Another one is you might have developed you know, one of your advantages might be that you have processes that you use, that your competitors don’t have. Well, developing those processes, as long as there’s some scientific or engineering aspect to it can actually qualify for research and development tax credits. So I do think there are a lot more small businesses that qualify for the R&D credit than small businesses that might not otherwise think they qualify might actually qualify.

Buck: Interesting. You know, one of the one of the topics that comes up all of the time because of the nature of my audience, a lot of doctors and a lot of, you know, high paid professionals in general who unfortunately receive a paycheck. W-2. And they always ask me, well, you know, can you have a show on where you talk about, you know, things that you can do if you’re W-2? And I know the answers generally, not a whole lot, but there are a few things.

Tom: You know, there are I give I give you three answers to that. Yeah. The first is the most obvious answer that’s been around since 1986, which is oil and gas. Yeah, right. You can invest in oil and gas development property and you can be an employee and you can get up to $500,000 right off against your W-2. If you have more than 500,000, it carries forward as a net operating loss.

Buck: The following bonus depreciation, Is that the same thing?

Tom: No, it’s intangible drilling costs. Okay. So oil and gas is unique in that all of the work that goes in to drilling a well, including all the labor and everything is deductible immediately. You don’t have to capitalize it to the well, the equipment. You do have bonus depreciation. And so that’s, you know, whatever the amount of the equipment is. But normally the equipment is only about 20% of the cost of drilling a well. So the 80%, which represents intangible drilling costs, are what we commonly referred to as ADC. That gets deducted the very first year and in fact can be deducted the year before you do it if you drill by March 1st. And so you can actually go into a deal on December 31st and they drill in February and you get that 80% in December.

So that’s actually an advantage that nobody else has. And on top of that, you can be a completely passive investor. So you have to be a general partner. You can’t be a limited partner. You can’t hold it through a limited liability company or a limited partnership. But you can be if you’re a general partner, no matter how much insurance they might put on to limit your liability to your general partner and you own it individually, you can absolutely take that deduction. But again, only up to 500,000 because we have this excess business loss limitation on wages.

Buck: My problem with oil and gas is I’ve never made money, so it might as well just be a deduction.

Tom: That is the biggest class. That is the biggest issue. And it is. It is. You do have to remember that it’s a depleting resource. It’s not like real estate that is appreciating value, oil and gas. Typically, wells don’t appreciate in value. They actually deplete. The second one, which is fairly new, is the solar activity. So solar credits are just the credit portion, not the depreciation portion, but solar credits are available to investors. Regarding loss of whether they’re passive or active. So they’re not subject to the passive loss rules that depreciation is or real estate is. The credit portion. And it’s a 30% credit now is is is dollar for dollar tax benefit. And that is not limited by that excess business loss rule. So you really could wipe out your tax liability with solar energy credits if you invested in a solar energy deal.

Buck: Interesting. So have you seen much of that? I haven’t seen I haven’t seen a whole.

Tom: Lot of starting to see it. It’s just we’re just starting to see it now. Where I think that it works the best is either on your own building because then you’re not passive in your own building, right? You’re you’re using your building, you’ve got your practice in your building, for example. But again, this isn’t for employees, but, you know, it’s either on your own building or a rental property and then you get both the credit, 30% credit, but you also get the deduction. That’s equal to about 65% of the cost of the solar. So let me give you an example.

Buck: Would you actually make money on this?

Tom: You actually can you actually can I give you a quick example? Let’s say you put $100,000 of solar and you went out and you borrowed $50,000, so you borrowed 50% of that and you would get a $30,000 credit. So that brings your investment from 50 because you’re borrowing 50, so 50 down to 20. And then you would get a $65,000 deduction, which effectively you would be net positive on the day the day you put it in service.

Now, that one you do have to be that would be passive with respect to the deduction, just not respect to the credit. So that’s an important distinction. And of course, all rental real estate is subject to the passive activity rules. So one of the things we do want to consider is, okay, we have two choices with passive activity and we’ve talked about this many times, but one is either you or your spouse can be a real estate professional, which means that you’re spending more time in real estate than you are your other jobs and it also means you’re spending more than or 50 hours a year in real estate, or you can have passive income to offset that passive loss. And that would be investments in simply other passive activities. So those are really your two choices. If you’re a W2, really, your choice is can my spouse I mean, the logical thing is can my spouse be a real estate professional? And if they can be a real estate professional, we still only get to offset 500,000.

Remember, we still have this excess business loss limitation that came about last year. And that loss limitation means that anything more than the 500,000 that lost gets carried over to the next year and net operating loss. So it’s really a one year push. But you do have to realize you can’t offset all of your income from a W-2, even if your spouse is a real estate professional.

Buck: I had a guy on recently, Tom, I think he was on your show too, is basically talking about who he was talking to by air Airbnb type stuff like like short term rentals. And, you know, he he he mentioned some pretty profound, you know, possibilities for W-2 deductions. You know, if you have these short term rentals. And I was thinking if I was a W-2, I’d probably like based on what he said, I mean, I don’t know if it’s true or not.I would probably start investing in a bunch of these short term rentals. Can you talk a little bit about the short term rental advantages? Yeah.

Tom: So they’re different than long term rentals. So long term rental is by definition passive. Okay. And you have to have you have to be real estate professional to overcome that you or your spouse. Short term rentals are not considered rental real estate. So they’re still real estate. They’re just not considered rental real estate. They’re more in the nature of a hotel. And so they’re treated as a regular business, which means that you don’t have to have more time doing the short term rentals than you you’re doing your regular day job, but you do have to have 500 hours. Okay. So you still have to meet the regular passive activity rules, which is the 500 hour test. But you don’t have to meet the real estate rental rules of 750 hours. So that means and more and more and more in real estate than your other jobs. So that means you can literally have a full time job. And if you’re willing to put in 500 hours into your short term rentals, you would be able to use those losses from the short term rentals, from the bonus depreciation to offset up to $500,000 of your income.

Buck: Yeah, Yeah. And that’s to me, it’s it’s something I actually didn’t really know and understand. And it’s my fault in part because I feel like I’m not W-2, so I don’t look for these, these types of things. You know, but this is this is pretty, pretty profound. I mean, so just as a is a follow up on that. So if you have when you talk about the I think it was 500 hours and you can you can that be an accumulation from multiple Airbnb properties and what kind of work does it need to be.

Tom: It can because you can aggregate all of your properties because they’re all under the same management, they’re all the same ownership. And it’s pretty simple election to aggregate all of your properties. So it’s not each individual properties. As long as you make the election aggregate now, you still have to aggregate them. But if you do, you should be pretty safe. Now, you can’t just be an investor, so you can’t just go hire a management company and say you go do all the work and I’m just going to buy the properties and I’m going to and I’m going to do the bookkeeping that’s not enough. You actually have to do some some actual work on the properties. I mean, you either have to manage them or, you know, collect the rent or, you know, do the advertising, the marketing. Most of the people I know who do this and I do have many clients who do Airbnb and they do it successfully, they’re they’re actually pretty much there. They’re spending good hours and they’re really well on the property. Yeah. So they’re in charge. They’re in charge. They’re the ones putting up the ads on Airbnb. They’re the ones making sure they’re there, you know, a super host and etc., etc..

Buck: Yeah, and, but, and just to be clear, what we’re talking about here, again, is the ability to if you if you meet those criteria, do a cost segregation analysis, apply bonus depreciation, and then offset W-2 income with that. That’s correct. Again, that’s to me, that’s that’s a very good opportunity for people who are willing to do it. And frankly, if you think about how much you could offset in taxes based on that, it probably be worth the hours, you know, to do.

Tom: And consider, if you’re in a 40% tax rate, you’re talking about roughly $200,000 of tax reduction up to. Right. Yeah, that’s pretty good numbers.

Buck: It’s pretty cool. Pretty cool. How about one one other thing I want to talk about is, is there any changes in the estate tax laws?

Tom: Not yet. We’ve had no changes. There are lots of threats, but no changes. I honestly don’t think it you know, we’ve got a split. Yes. Government right now. So I don’t think we’re going to see anything before 2025. Yeah, it does phase out. By the way, this 12 million, $24 million exclusion does phase out. You know, it reverts back to the old basically half of 2026 or 2027 I can never complete.

But it’s one of those two years and then it reverts back. So I do think people should still be paying attention to it because you want to use up that exclusion when you know it’s there because it’s not likely to get better. Right. There’s still this big you know, there’s still a lot of discussion about tax the rich. The rich don’t pay enough tax. You know, Biden still, after doing that, we’ve got the new IRS auditors that are going after after, you know, wealthy individuals. So, you know, we still have to pay really close attention to it. It’s not something that I think I do think it’s going to be a fight when that does come up in a few years. I do think I think it’s going to be a knockdown, drag out fight between the parties.

Buck: How about in terms of the various, you know, trust like I mean, was some there was some talk a while back about what you know currently like you know the estate tax is referred to by some as is you know the dumb tax or the stupid tax because essentially right now.

Tom: Yes.

Buck: Because essentially the way to potentially and again, I’m not a tax or legal authority, but just, you know, from my understanding is, okay, just get it out of your estate. What does that mean? It means basically having irrevocable trust, you know, that maybe you’re you’re still ultimately managing, but it’s not you don’t own it anymore. And that’s really what you need to do. Although you’re paying the tax on that. And so the question I guess there was some question a year or two ago, as I recall, there was some some people bringing up this idea that if you’re paying the tax on that still, then, you know, it shouldn’t really be it should be part of your estate.

Tom: Right. But they didn’t pass any of that. So no, that got passed. We’re still safe on that. And this is what basically a lot of estate planners have done over the years is they say, well, we want you to still be taxed on because that gets even more money out of your estate. Yeah. Now, you don’t have to be right. I mean, either the trust can be taxed on it or your kids. Yeah, your beneficiaries can be taxed on it. You get to choose on that, but you still get to choose. So that is not change. You’re right. There have been a lot of proposals. Remember, we’ve had a wealth tax proposal. We’ve had, well, tax proposals recently by several of the high tax states.

And none of that has happened and none of it likely will happen in the next few years. But remember, there is a downside to getting it out of your estate, because when you get it out of your state, you don’t get the basis step up a So that means that you don’t want to get more out of your estate, then you have to. And this is the challenge and this is why people are wondering, what do I do? And so here’s because if it’s going to go back to 6 million, I want to get the 12 million out, right? I want to make sure that I’m covered. But if going to stay at 12 million, I don’t want to get the 12 million out. I want to get everything over 12 million out. Right. Because the 12 million I want to get the basis step up because I’m not going to have any estate tax anyway. So right now is the time to actually set up trusts. You don’t have to fund them right now. And I think that’s actually the hard work is getting the trust set up the way you want them to.

It takes a lot of attorney time. It takes a lot of your time and your spouse’s time and, and it’s worthwhile doing even if you only find a few million dollars now and then later on, you know, if they if they’re going to change it and you see that there, you know, there’s discussion about this, then fund it heavily, but you’re not going to be able to make all those changes. You know, if everybody’s clamoring for the estate planning attorneys, your chances of getting it done at that point are pretty low. So I would start doing that right now.

Buck: So when you’re transferring when you’re over that money to a trust currently, is there a maximum amount that you can give to that trust or is that not really an issue?

Tom: Yeah, right. Right now it’s 12 million. Okay, so.

Buck: It’s the same as okay, got it. TJ 12 Oh, that’s right. 12. So it’s basically the so that’s where you’ve got that whole dilemma. Like if you have too much money, like, okay, yeah, you get zeroed out on the basis, but you’re, but then you’re going to have a huge you have a huge potential problem for your kids because they probably have to sell a property in order to pay the taxes on it. Right?

Tom: And they’d have huge income tax. So so the question is you’re really trading income tax for estate tax. Right. And right now that the tax rates are pretty close, pretty close to the same rate. So you’d rather not have you really you know, the concern is you want to also get appreciation out of your estate, right? So you don’t want just the current value, you want the future value out of your estate. So now you just do the planning, that’s all.

Buck: Well, that is really good stuff. And obviously, you know, we could keep going on and on. But I want to talk a little bit about, you know, the books and some of the things that you’re doing. Obviously, the, you know, tax free wealth was a really influential book for me. It’s on my reading list, so to speak, on the website recommended things. I think it’s it is must reading in personal finance and you talked a little bit last time about the win win well strategy, but can you give us a little summary of of what that’s about for people who might be interested?

Tom: Yes. So you actually asked me why I write doing a lot of strategy when you know, tax free. Well, it’s such a popular book and still still the number one bestseller. I said, well, for two reasons. One is there are still a lot of people who think that avoiding taxes is unpatriotic or bad for you and the win win all strategy. One of the primary goals with this book is to really prove and I think it does prove that tax incentives are good for the government. They’re not just good for the person, for the taxpayer. They’re it is a win win that the government wins and the taxpayer wins. So that is number one. Number two is I wanted to show that really the tax laws are very similar from country to country.

So we actually have charts and tables for 15 countries and show how similar they are. The third is I want to show people not just how to reduce taxes, but how to build wealth while not paying taxes. So that’s why we call it the win win world strategy is we’ve actually looked at seven different categories of investments and said, look, these are seven categories of investing that the government favors and they favor us so much that if you invest this way, you’re going to build wealth much faster than you would if you did the traditional stock market stocks and bonds investing. Okay. So, you know, you look at things like business and real estate and energy and agriculture, you know, all of these items, these are things the government really wants you to do. And if you do them, you not only pay less tax, but they’re also if you look at wealthy individuals, everybody who’s built massive amounts of wealth has done it in one of these ways. Yeah, nobody’s done it by buying and diversifying the stock portfolio. Nobody nobody makes billions of dollars buying into buying a stock portfolio. You can do. Okay. But you bet you just can’t build them the kind of wealth that you do with these seven strategies. And that’s why we we really looked at these areas to show that it’s not just about reducing your taxes, it’s also about building wealth.

Buck: Obviously, these strategies can get fairly complex. It is not a do it yourself, you know, do not do this at home by yourself type thing. That brings up wealth, ability. Oh, what is wealth ability and how can we learn more?

Tom: Well, thank you, but that’s very generous of you. Well, you know, we decided, my partner and I, we had a big CPA firm you actually knew quite well, and we decided to sell that CPA firm because basically, actually, in part because of your request, you and I had this conversation. You said, well, look, there’s a lot of people can’t afford that CPA firm. And so could you. You know, is there a way that you could have other CPA firms that could handle a wider range of clients? And so what we did was we about four years ago started developing a network of CPA firms and training that network of independent CPA firms. And now we have 65 accounting firms, mostly CPA firms around the country, and even one in Canada, where we can literally can serve any level of client except those that might have need the big four accounting firms like Ernst and Young. So we can serve any entrepreneur we can serve with from somebody who’s just starting out and, you know, just needs the initial, you know, startup type work all the way up to the most sophisticated entrepreneur investor. And that was our goal with we’re there right now. We’re course continuing to build out that network. We would like to be in the thousands, not not just the hundreds of firms, but but we’re actually growing quite rapidly.

And so it’s just one of those things where, you know, you have to have a the problem with the independent CPA firm is they don’t have a system and they don’t have people to go to. They they’re just on their own. And so you don’t really want to hire just an independent CPA without any support, but you don’t want to hire a big firm because then you just get, you know, a lot of it’s kind of like we can’t Cheesecake Factory.

It’s like you get a big menu at a pretty reasonable price, but it’s pretty average food. Yeah, you know, it’s it’s a pretty average situation. So what really want is you want the personal attention of an independent CPA that can rely on other CPAs as well as, you know, have a system and we have a wall to build a system for, reducing taxes and building wealth. We we actually require all of our independent CPAs to use.

Buck: I will say those avocado rolls, the egg rolls at KB Cheesecake Factory are really quite good actually.

Tom: So anywhere pick and choose what you’re going to get.

Buck: So let’s so how do we get in touch with I mean, a number of our listeners already have, but if people are interested in talking to someone about potentially finding a wealth ability CPA, how do they do that?

Tom: Simply go to WealthAbility.com and just say, you want to give us your column, What we’ll do for your for your people because we’ll actually review your prior your tax returns and let you know if we find anything that we think that there are opportunities and if there are any opportunities, we’ll let you know that, too.

Buck: I should point out, too, that if you do that, make sure you let them know that you’re from this show, because I think there is a little bit different level of complexity that, you know, people who are listening to this show often have compared to, you know, some others. So so I think it’s useful and everybody there knows us and what we talk about. So they’ll get it Absolutely. Yeah. TIME So it’s always great to have you back on the show and I want to thank you for your time.

Tom: Always happy to be with you, Buck. And I love you. I love your listeners. I’ve met many of them and they’re absolutely great people and really wanting to learn more. And I think what you’re doing is amazing because you’re really, you know, reaching out and giving financial education to people who don’t get it in school. They don’t get it otherwise. And I think what you’re doing is very admirable. I appreciate it.

Buck: Well, thanks, Tom.We’ll be right back.