Biz To Biz Podcast With Brandon A. Madden (InventYou Accounting Consulting) #consulting

You are now watching the Biz to Biz Podcast with Allen and Justin. Hey everybody, welcome to the B2B Vault Podcast. I'm Allen Kopelman. I'm your host today. And today we have a special guest, Brandon Madden, who's a CPA and an enrolled agent and is a tax expert. And we're going to be talking about things to do with taxes and business and what you can do to help your business grow. And let's get into it with, uh, Brandon.

Thanks for the introduction, Allen. Uh, glad to be on the, uh, Biz to Biz Podcast.

So Brandon, where are you located?

Oh, I'm based right outside of New York. I'm in New Jersey, on North New Jersey.

Okay. And like, for customers, do you work with people all over the US or just up there?

Yeah, so I'm, I'm a federally licensed enrolled agent, uh, licensed by the Department of Treasury, and our exam is strictly focused on taxes, right? Um, so I'm not a CPA, right? Just want to, uh, make the differentiation. I'm an enrolled agent and we're federally licensed, uh, by the Department of Treasury, and so we can represent and work with clients in all 50 states.

So do you help people file taxes or You don't get involved in that part.

So primarily we work on tax planning and tax representation. And so tax representation, if you haven't heard of it, it's essentially if a taxpayer owes a balance to the IRS or the state, we can take power of attorney and represent them to really help them pay their fair share based on the Internal Revenue Manual, the laws that are in place. All right. So that's tax representation. Taxpayers have a Bill of Rights, just like, you know, citizens in America do, right? We have a Bill of Rights as well. Right. And so taxpayers have a Bill of Rights, and most of them don't know they have the right to representation. So typically what happens if they owe a large balance, they'll start getting letters from the IRS. They'll panic. They may not open the letter. We help them navigate and negotiate that entire situation. On the tax planning side, we work with real estate agents., and other service-based businesses to really help them pay their fair share, uh, really help them plan for years out, uh, regarding taxes, things like that. And as a result, you know, filing taxes is a result of doing all of that. So we don't just primarily file taxes. We're not like, you know, a, a box, uh, tax filing shop, um, but as a result of the work we do, we do file taxes as well.

Okay, so like a lot of businesses today, they're like, they struggle to get, you know, like to grow their business. And, you know, sometimes people need to get like bank loans and things like that. And when we were getting to know each other on the phone, I was telling— we were talking about, you know, struggles that people have. And sometimes people are running a lifestyle business, and they have all— they're running their life out of their business accounts. And, you know, and then when they're trying to get a loan, sometimes that doesn't always play out. Or they're using, um, PayPal and Venmo and Cash App to collect money, and that doesn't always pan out to show your correct income, you know, when you're trying to get a loan. So what— how do you suggest, like, people, like, right the ship when they're you know, they have this startup company, they're starting to make money, but now how do you right the ship?

Yeah, definitely, that's a great question. I think that, uh, and I see this all the time, uh, I've had clients in the past who I've had to let them know, hey, you can't really use these accounts, uh, because it's, it's not looked at in the proper way, right? So the first thing I would say immediately, you want to separate your personal bank account from your business bank account, right? And you may or may not have heard this already, um, that's because there's the danger of commingling funds. And essentially the entire point of having an LLC, which is a legal designation, it's not a tax designation, right? So it's a legal designation. And what that legal designation does for a business owner, it separates their personal assets from their business assets. Now, um, if you were to commingle funds, right, there wouldn't be a difference between your business assets and your personal assets. And so what the IRS can do if the business owner was ever sued is called piercing the corporate veil, essentially ripping down that veil because you're no different from your corporation or your LLC. And so that's the first thing I would recommend, is creating separate bank accounts, right? Uh, the next thing I would stay away from is just using Zelle, PayPal, Cash App, uh, these really quick payment processors, um, that are not necessarily business related, because what you can do is have transactions that may not even be taxable, right? Just sending money to your mom or, uh, reimbursing a friend, all right? That all gets commingled into there. So you want to make sure you're separating those accounts and really finding a true, uh, business processor, all right? So those are the two largest things I would recommend. And we can dive into kind of, uh, how those payment processors are going to be taxed in the future as well and why they're so dangerous.

Yeah, the government did pass a law, and a lot of, you know, PayPal, Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, all those, they sent out 1099-Ks to people, um, the last— they've been doing it for the last 2 years, and they keep, you know, they, you know, so anything over $800 that you receive, they're going to send you a 1099-K in most cases.

Yeah, definitely. And that 1099-K is a huge issue in the tax world right now. Uh, back in, uh, 2021, they passed an act called the American Rescue Plan Act of, uh, 2021. And essentially what they wanted to do was for any, uh, transactions over $600, they wanted to issue that 1099-K. Um, and as tax professionals, we advocated against it., it would be an entire mess, right? Because there were no protocols set in place for reasons I mentioned before. What if you sent $300 to your mom just to send money to your mom, right? What if you sent $400 for a reimbursement for a concert ticket? You know, these artists have these huge concert tickets. All right. So that's $700. Now you're getting a 1099-K and you're like, I don't even have a tax liability. I'm not operating a business. So as tax professionals, we saw that and said, hey, like, this needs to be phased in slowly. And what the government did was they said, okay, we'll listen to you. We'll put a pause on issuing 1099-Ks just for transactions over $600. So the rate, the threshold was $20,000 or 200 transactions. And then they said, okay, what we'll do for tax year 2024. So this is next year or this year. Currently we're in 2024. Tax year. So for the filing season in 2025, the limit is actually $5,000. And then in tax year 2025, they're actually going to get into that $600 threshold. And so this allows them to extend their time to create processes, protocols around it. And it helps, you know, individuals and business owners know, okay, this is going to happen. Please get ready for it.

It's good that they're phasing it in because a lot of people got a big surprise, right? You know, have you heard about the— you know, I think it, it went into effect for this year where every business, whether you have an S-Corp, an LLC, you have to register your business with FinCEN now.

Yes, yes, this is another, uh, update that has happened there was a lot of pushback on this, really because of obvious reasons, right? Anti-money laundering. There's shell corporations. All right. There's a lot of stuff going on that, you know, the IRS really wants to just know who is actually owning these corporations, who's behind these companies. Right. And so with FinCEN, that's really relating to financial crimes enforcement. All right. So like I said before, anti-money laundering, things like that. But essentially it's your beneficial owner report. Okay.

So, right.

Very simple report. You're going to go on a FinCEN website. You're going to fill out your information. You're going to say, okay, I'm the actual owner of this entity. And then you're all set. You're going to upload a picture of your ID and that's it. Obviously, a lot of people don't like this level of transparency and reporting, especially those folks who created LLCs in states like Wyoming or Nevada.

Wyoming, Delaware, Nevada, where they don't have to disclose the owners, right?

Right. And so, so no one, no one likes it, right? And obviously people don't like more government oversight, so it's never a fun thing for taxpayers, um, but it is law. And you know, there's a penalty if you don't do it right. If you established your company, uh, prior to 2024, um, you know, you have an entire year to get it done. If you established your company as of 2024, January 1st, 2024, you have to get it done within 30 days, right? Um, if you don't get it done right, it's a penalty of about $500 a day, which is ridiculous, but you know, it's a good incentive for folks to get it done.

Yeah, we've talked about it on the podcast before, and I've mentioned it even in my newsletter that people need to do this, but they really haven't You know, I don't think people are taking it too seriously, and I don't think it's in the news enough for, you know, like in the— like on the news, you know, they're not talking about it. No.

And that might be strategic, right? Most business owners don't keep up with their annual filings. If you're in New York, it's a biannual filing. You have to file every 2 years to just say, hey, like, you know, update— let's update the company's registered agent, the address, the phone number. Has anything changed? And it's like $9. Most business owners don't even know they have to do that. And so, um, I think that might be strategic that they're not marketing it as much as they market taxes, right? Maybe they, they want to have these shell corporations and these absentee owners, um, have it lapse, right? Maybe they want to collapse and see who's act— who's active, who's not active, um, and they can get that $500 a day. So I'm not saying the government is doing it on purpose, but it is interesting.

One thing I think they're definitely cracking down on is people who have a foreign ownership in a corp, U.S. corp, and then they have like a, a signer that's in the U.S. or maybe no, no signer in the U.S. and then they're finding these corporations that are doing tons of business in the United States and they're not filing any taxes at all because they don't have a Social Security or an ITIN, right?

And, and that's a, um, that's a risk as well.

Yeah, because we've seen a lot of credit card processors, especially Stripe and PayPal and Shopify, shut these merchants down lately. They've been shutting them off, right?

And, and so everyone's, everyone's facing the, uh, the crackdowns on this, right?, it's, it's never something that, you know, you want to necessarily avoid, right? And sometimes it works. One bad apple ruins the bunch, right? We don't want to say that all these companies that are operating are doing something shady, um, but if one of them is, then it kind of ruins it, um, for the rest of them, right? And so that's why all of this oversight is starting to happen. Um, I think that with the American Rescue Plan Act,, it'll be good. But business owners need to really get their finances in order. Um, stop using Zelle. I'm not saying it's bad, it's very convenient. Um, but the actual transactions may not be classified correctly. And so a bookkeeping example that I had, I actually had a client who did this. Um, they were using a processor called HoneyBook, for instance, and HoneyBook charges fees., and, uh, they would tell their clients, hey, if you want to avoid the fee, just pay us through Zelle. So that way the money just comes directly to us. We don't have to pay that percentage to HoneyBook, and it works better that way. Um, so what that did was HoneyBook would create an invoice and there would be no way to close that invoice, uh, or the— it would be no way to actually close the accounts receivable because it wasn't bringing— it wasn't showing that the actual invoice was paid. All right. And that created an accounting nightmare because they were using Zelle. So that's just one of the many examples as well.

Yeah. But also, like when you go to the bank to get a loan, you know, banks don't look at that. You know, they want to see frequency of deposits. And they— and also when they see money from PayPal, Zelle, Cash App, or you just transferring money from your personal account into your business account, they're— they don't know whether that's part, you know, just personal money being funneled in or those are actual business transactions when you do it that way.

Exactly. There's no differentiation. Getting a loan from a bank is important to grow your business. Um, you want to be able to get that business credit. You want to be able to maybe rent an office, purchase a private, uh, you know, home, apartment, things like that. But if you don't have one, the financial statements approve your transactions, and then two, um, you're not reporting your taxes correctly, right? That leaves an issue. Um, and so that's the issue we face. Um, so I guess, you know, just to ask you a question in terms of, uh, you know, nationwide payment, uh, systems, how does that really, uh, counteract what we see from the accounting world, uh, with Zelle, PayPal, and Cash App?

Well, we see a lot of people starting to get regular merchant accounts, or they just, you know, they, they keep doing that and they're just going to keep doing it until they get caught, basically. And yeah, that's just what, that's just what happens. And, you know, as they get caught, then they start to switch around. We had a client who came to us one time and they were getting paid with Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, PayPal, all this stuff., you know, into, into a bunch of different bank accounts, all personal, one business account. And we reorganized all their payments so that from their website and from all the payments they did through invoicing was now being done on a real merchant account and being deposited into their business account. After like one year of doing that, you know, the guy was doing significant amount of business, like $100 grand a month. They were able to go to the bank then get a loan and buy more equipment for their factory and really grow their business. They like 3x their business after they got that loan because they were able to get more equipment for their manufacturing facility, right?

And, and that's impressive, right? And that's the power of using, you know, an actual, uh, payment processor that's designed for business.

Yeah, because the bank, they want to see that frequency of deposits. They want to see, you know, that it's, that it's all, all business. That, you know, you can't go in there and show them 4 different bank accounts. They don't know where that money's coming from, what, what is it for, and things like that, right? So it's important when you want to grow your business, you know, not to run it like a lifestyle business, you know, run it like a real business.

Yep, exactly.

And what— here's the thing that I see a lot of business owners struggle with, and I, and I try to tell them, let's say you're just a solo entrepreneur, right? You're one man, you're a one-man show, or maybe it's you and your wife, or maybe it's you and you have one employee, right? And I tell everybody, I'm like, if you just— if you're running your own company, you should at least if you're— let's say you don't have an employee at all, just you by yourself, or you and your wife. I tell them it's very important, you need to get a payroll company and you need to pay yourself an actual paycheck. Don't just take everything from distributions because you're robbing yourself of the Social Security later down the road. You know, you're just robbing yourself of that.

Right. And a lot of business owners don't know how to kind of get started doing that. So I'll give them a path to really get started doing that. Essentially, what you want to do is make sure you speak with your tax professional because there's a certain income threshold in terms of net profit, right? So what is net profit? Revenue minus expenses gives us net profit. And so as a business owner, you should know that term. You should have accurate bookkeeping so you can understand where you are financially, all right? So let's say you get to around maybe $40,000 in net profit or net income, then you might want to look into electing S-corp status. And so another myth I wanna clear up, you don't actually get rid of your LLC. Your LLC is just a legal designation. You're, as an LLC, whether you're a single, if you're a single, member owner, you're what's considered a disregarded entity by the IRS, which means that your income on your business just simply passes through to your personal Schedule C on your 1040, right? Now, right, if your business is doing well, we like to call it an upgrade, okay? So now your tax designation is going to be upgraded or elected to an S corp., status. What that is going to allow you to do, it's going to allow you to place yourself on payroll. Uh, the rule is you actually have to take a reasonable salary once you elect S-corp status, once you're an actual S-corp. Um, some states you have to file separately because they don't recognize the federal S-corp, uh, election, such as New York. All right, I had a client recently who was an S-corp. Um, this was our first year working together. He was an S-corp since 2020, but he didn't realize he wasn't an S-corp in in New York. And so we had to correct that immediately, okay? And so once you elect S-corp status, you're now required to take a salary. Like you mentioned, Allen, you want to have— you want to get started with a payroll processor. A few payroll processors are Gusto, ADP. There's also, you know, Paychex, things like that. There's a ton of them out there that you could use that allows you to put yourself on a W-2 And then you now pay into that Medicare, you know, Social Security, FICA taxes, right? It's coming right out of your paycheck just like a normal job would.

Yeah, you still can take, you know, you take a paycheck and then you take your distribution of your profits so that you don't have to pay, you know, as much tax as you should. You should be taking a paycheck if you're making $40,000, $50,000 a year, even if it's $1,000 a month.

Right.

You want to take some kind of paycheck.

Exactly. That's going to cut your self-employment tax, you know, and the self-employment tax really isn't cut. It's just now deductible in the form of FICA taxes.

Right.

Right. So there's a lot of added deductions there. You can give yourself a 401, solo 401. You can have medic, you know, health insurance. There's a ton of benefits once you upgrade your tax status to an S corp. Um, so yeah, putting yourself on W-2 allows you to qualify for loans a lot easier as well.

Yeah, it's very important to, you know, to take care— to, to make sure that you're doing that. Another thing, like, I see a lot of businesses struggling with today is, is a struggling, you know, and a lot of people not even aware that the federal, you know, the federal government— I'm not a big fan of the government when they pass laws You know, but one, you know, one of the laws that they recently passed that affects a lot of businesses is the, the non-disclosure about having, you know, you can't have these NDA— not an NDA, uh, non-competes with your employees. You're familiar with that?

Um, not as familiar. I did hear that they, um outlawed it, uh, that you can't, right, have non-competes anymore, which is, which is great. Um, as an employer, I'm not sure that really helps me, but as an employee, it's great, right? Um, because you want that loyalty, uh, you want some sort of contract that the employee is not going to go to the next company that's doing the same thing and tell all your business secrets, right? So I mean, on one hand, it's good on one hand is not good. If you're an employer, I think for you, like, I tell—

like, we changed our agreement because they've had that in Florida for a while where you can't have a non— you can't have a non-compete. So, you know, we use— we just have wording, non-circumvention, you know, you can't steal our clients, you know, in writing with employees. So, you know, you can still protect your business. When it comes to, when it comes to that.

And that's a good, that's a good way to put it. Thank you, thank you for that.

You know, so, you know, so a lot of businesses are dealing with different things like that. What other kind of tax struggles do you see? You know, you know, businesses, you know, like one of the things we were talking about, payroll, right? So, you know, one of the good things is when you do use a payroll company, they file all the forms they file all the taxes for you. So you don't have even— you don't really have to deal with any of that.

Yeah, so using a payroll processor is really good because they're going to file those 940s and 941s, right? So one is your quarterly, um, payroll, uh, tax report. One is your annual payroll tax report, essentially. Um, and they're— the payroll processors is you're paying into it and they're transmitting the money to the state and the IRS for you. If you were to try to do this on your own, which you actually can do it on your own, right? But one thing that companies who do it on their own run into is the tax— the tax recovery penalty. And it escapes— it escapes my— it escapes my mind right now. But there's essentially a penalty. Let me just take a look.

Yeah, there's a penalty if you don't pay the payroll taxes on time. And if you— that's why it's good to use these payroll companies, because they guarantee that they pay it on time. If they don't, they take care of that penalty, right?

And it's called the trust fund recovery penalty. I don't know why that escaped my mind just now. I went blank. But it's a trust fund recovery penalty, right? Essentially, that money, uh, if you have employees or if you are the sole employee, you're putting that money in essentially an escrow for the government, right? So that money doesn't come to you. It's taken out of the paycheck from the employees and it's given to the government as, you know, a tax for having employees. Okay, so it's a trust fund recovery penalty. So that penalty is extremely dangerous and it's not something that you want. Um, you, you'll actually owe 100% of the actual amount that was not paid to the government. All right, and that's something that goes directly to the owner um, they're not going to put it on the business, right? So it's, it's one of the worst tax penalties you can get.

Yeah, you can pay— if you don't pay, you're— you could be liable for double what you owe, essentially, right?

Right.

Let's talk about— let's talk about 1099s because it's like a big thing, right? You have 1099— like, we have 1099 resellers that work for us and referral partners, and some of them always ask me different— they, you know, they ask me different questions. I always tell them, I said, it's really good if you go out and you get an LLC and you get all your money into your company, because then you're going to be able to deduct different business expenses like gas and part of your car and your cell phone and, and all these different, different things. But I've had a few of them, they ask me, they go, well, if I have a federal tax ID number, how come you don't send me a 1099? And I go, well, we're not really required to give you people— if you're— we're paying your company, we don't have to issue you a 1099 at the end of the year, right?

Right. So if you're— go ahead.

No, but then if you have us— if we're paying you through your— on your Social Security number, then we can get— then we have to give you the 1099. And they changed it because it used to be a 1099 miscellaneous, and now it's a 1099 NEC or something like that.

Yeah, so pretty much the 1099 NEC is used to report any independent contractor income. The 1099 miscellaneous is still around. It's used to report, you know, miscellaneous income such as rent or payments to an attorney. And so that's the main difference. So most times if you're an independent contractor, you'll still see that 1099 NEC. Um, and that's if you're getting paid directly, right? Like, if I just paid Joe Schmo from down the street to paint my house and I give him $700, now I'm $100 over the $600 threshold. Now he's due a 1099. Um, when you go to file your taxes, they pretty much say like, hey, did you owe any— did you issue all the 1099s that you needed to? And you have to either check yes or no., right? And so it's another penalty that you can face if you don't issue those 1099s, right? Right. And it's per 1099 that you don't issue. So these are all the ways in terms of payment processing where taxpayers can get in trouble. So especially if they don't have an accurate record of who they paid that year, right, they can open themselves up to liability.

Yeah, because we send— like, when we file our, uh, corporate tax, we send in all the W-2 forms. They don't really collect the 1099 forms, but we always get asked that by people, like, oh well, you know, why do I have to give you my Social Security number if I'm doing sales for you? I'm like, well, we have to report it, you know, we have to give you a 1099 at the end of the year for your taxes because, you know, we're paying you, you know, commission. So, you know, if you put it into your— into a corporation, then we don't issue you a 1099. You— it's up to you to deal with all that, you know.

Right. And it just comes through as business income.

Um, right.

I think, I think the trouble that, um, individuals can run into if they don't, you know, uh, incorporate their business or file that LLC and they're receiving money as an independent contractor is, you know, they can think, oh, it was under the table, or the government won't know about it. But as a business owner, if you're filing that 1099, the IRS knows about it, right? And so what'll happen if that person doesn't file their tax returns or they don't claim the income? The IRS already knows about it, and they have 3 years to audit you. So if they pass that 3-year benchmark they, they might get away with it, right? But the IRS knows the income that you're making. Um, if you don't file those taxes and the 1099 is reported by the business that paid you, uh, the IRS can eventually file something called a substitute tax return that shows all the income you made that you didn't claim. And so they already know, right? And that's another— we had—

we, we got a letter once for somebody that didn't file. We paid them, they never filed their taxes. Then they asked us if we owed them any money. We didn't owe them any money at the time because it was 5 years later, and because he owed taxes that he never paid, right? I guess they were looking at everybody who issued them a 1099 in the past.

Yeah.

So, you know, and a lot of, you know, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of states have different rules about 1099s, and they just— and I think the department, the Department of Labor, just like increased The, um, they just, they just made a bunch of changes. One of them was they made more rules about who's a 1099 and who's not a 1099. And then also there's a recent rule about this, um, people on salary and overtime and all that. And how do you think that's going to affect a lot of businesses? I know that my son works for a large retailer. I don't want to name the name, but they switched every— all the managers that were on salary they divided their salary by 40, you know, by 40. And they're now on the, on hourly, and they have to clock in and out now.

Yes, I think that's the biggest difference. I think employers are going to just look more closely at the time that their salaried employees are working. I started my career out in Big Four accounting, Big Four public accounting. And so we were doing 80 hours a week sometimes during busy season.

Right?

Um, that would have been amazing if we got overtime, but essentially we work 80 hours a week for the same salary that we were getting for 40 hours a week, right? And so when you calculated 80 hours times that salary is very close to minimum wage. Okay, if you're doing 80 hours a week, that's pretty much double and you're not getting overtime. And so with this new law that was passed, I think, I think employers just gonna, you know, be more cognizant of employees' time. They're gonna really emphasize the work-life balance. Uh, we'll see what happens.

Yeah, it's definitely interesting how, how different— what different companies are going to do, you know, because it's, uh, definitely— and it goes into effect in July, I think July 1st.

Oh, that's amazing. I, I'm, I'm very interested to see how the Big Four changes because that's a reason why a lot of folks leave and, and there's so much turnover in those firms and most of Wall Street, right? Corporate America in general. But that's one of the main reasons there's a lot of turnover. So maybe this is another attempt by the lawmakers to retain employees. A lot of folks are leaving to become independent contractors to do work on their own, right? And so this may be another way for them to incentivize employees to stay for, um, employers to treat their employees better. Um, and overtime is not necessarily a bad thing for the employee, so this may make folks want to become employees again. Um, so there's pros and cons to everything.

No, definitely, it might definitely, you know, depending on what companies do, it could force, you know, between the new 1099 rules and the overtime You know, companies are gonna have to decide how they're going to navigate that. And I think it's going to affect larger companies more than it's going to affect smaller companies.

Definitely. I, I do think while they may want to do that to retain more employees or force folks back into the workforce, I, I am very concerned that it may decrease productivity and efficiency, right? So if, if, say, these salary positions are getting paid overtime, they may not finish their work in 5 hours. They may say, hey, this is going to take me 8 hours or 10 hours to do. Um, and so the efficiency may decrease. And, and that's one thing that I hope doesn't happen. Obviously, we want folks to be doing their best at companies, but I can see that happening as well.

It's gonna, it's gonna be interesting to see how that plays out over, over, over time. So, so, like, so what— so do you have like a, a routine that you do in the morning? In the morning, let's get to know you a little bit besides business.

Definitely. So I'm a huge, um, person that— I'm a person that likes to wake up early, all right? So I don't like waking up late, uh, so I'm more of a get to bed by 10, 11 than wake up at like 5 to 7 guy. Okay. Love the morning time. I'm definitely a morning person, so I'm glad we did this interview at 11 a.m. If you would have caught me at 7 p.m., I probably wouldn't have been as bright as— bye. So, you know, I'm a morning guy. Just brush my teeth, wake up, pray, make sure that I do something productive, eat breakfast. I may or may not work out. And then, you know, I'm off to working on either client cases, just marketing, working with our marketing team there, or just wrapping things up that wasn't finished the night before. So I would say that's my morning routine.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm up at 6 in the morning and my dog loves to go for walks. So it's a 2 to 3 mile walk every morning. It's like 6, 6, 6:15. It takes like an hour.

What type of dog?

Very relaxing, huh?

What type of dog do you have?

He's a part terrier, Rocky.

Nice.

He's sleeping over here. We're podcasting.

Oh nice.

He had a snack and now he's napping.

Yeah, he's quiet while we're on set. That's great. Good job.

Yeah, it's not unusual for him to bark during the podcast. Okay, so where do people— where's the best place for people to find you? On LinkedIn?

Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, it's, you know, I'll put my link in there. It's just Brandon Madden MBA EA, so exactly how it's written, um, on the screen. And then on Instagram you can find me @businessbybrandon. Uh, also on YouTube, uh, just search Business by Brandon, that's where you'll find me on YouTube. So I typically do videos on tax strategies, but then also ways to negotiate your tax debt and, and understand if you are in tax trouble, how to navigate that situation better. And so the overall goal of our entire practice is to not really help you evade taxes, which is illegal, but really help you avoid as many taxes as you can, right? So that you can spend more time with your family, put that money back into your business, or, you know, contribute it to charity, um, and, and make the world a better place, right? And so that's where you can find me. Um, my website is brandonamadden.com. And if you guys are interested, I talk about all the accounting tax strategies in a new book that's coming out. There's 10 that's available. You can go to brandonamadden.com/inventubook and you'll get a free copy of that.

Oh, cool. We'll have to put that in the— on the podcast when we put it out. No, it's, it's, you know, taxes. Everybody— people struggle with taxes, and sometimes you find yourself in a situation where Maybe you couldn't afford to pay your taxes at one point in your life, and Brandon could be a great resource for that. Or maybe you didn't do an S-corp election, because a lot of times people don't— people don't know that they need to do that. You know, another thing I see people make a mistake of— I didn't bring it up before, and then we'll get finished up— is you could get your federal tax ID number for free., you know, from the IRS. And a lot of times people don't know that and they end up paying like big money to scammers. Once they, once they, uh, form a corporation, they'll get a text or an email, oh, get your federal tax ID, only $300. Yeah, they can get it for free.

It's horrible, the misinformation that's out there, right? But also, if you just did a simple Google search, it's like the first thing that pops up., and you just go to the IRS website, you fill out your information, they give you the EIN number, right? But it's very tough, especially if you don't know or if you don't have anyone around you who knows, right? Um, it, it's a very tough— it's a tough market out there.

So Brandon can help you with all kinds of things with taxes, help you with your, you know, uh, getting your S designation and things like that, which is really important when you're growing your business. And that can help you navigate getting loans and things like that, we can help you at Nationwide Payment Systems with merchant accounts. And, you know, that's what we do. And it was a pleasure having you on the podcast today. Any last words?

I would say, you know, thank you for having me, Allen. It was great connecting with you. You're definitely an influential figure. So definitely looking forward to learning from you as well, listening to more of your podcast. Uh, guys, file your taxes. Um, don't fear tax debt, all right? And buy some real estate. That's all I can tell you.

Buy real estate. Okay, as long as you can get a good interest rate, right?

Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.

All right, peace out. Carpe diem. Have a great day, Brandon. Thank you for being on the pod.

Thank you, likewise.