Part 2 of the Small Business IRS Show – SBS 69

A Small business show episode number 69 for Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Greetings folks and welcome to to the Small Business show here at businessshow Co. The show by, for and about small business owners or people that want to be small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How goes it, man?

I think I started a new business this week.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I mean, you sound a little.

Well, I don't know if it counts. I guess, I guess it could. I mean it's not a brand new business, but with one of the bands I'm in, Fling, we just finished recording our five song. Five songs that we're going to release as a, as an ep.

Nice.

And, and so we, we've got them actually online at. What's the name of the site? It's. It's not SoundCloud because they screw everybody now. It's. Yeah, yeah, it's Fanburst. So if you go to fanburst.com fling, you can stream them for free right there, right in your web browser. But, but we're cool, man. We're also pushing them. You know, I want to get them on itunes and Spotify and Apple Music and all of. We've done that or we're doing that. It's happening. In fact, as you and I talk here, we partnered with a company called CD Baby that does this. They're an aggregator. They started just by selling people CDs online.

I remember that.

Yeah, yeah. And now they've taken it to digital distribution. There's a couple of different companies that do this. As you might imagine, there's a lot of money in being a middleman.

Sure. Still, didn't we have a show about that?

Yeah, I think we're gonna have a lot of shows about that. Yeah. But so we, you know, we use them and we paid them, we paid them about 75 bucks today to get everything registered for this five song EP and put it online. And then I think we'll probably pay about that every year to renew that, to keep it online. So the question is, is this going to be a losing venture or a winning venture to have, you know, if I just isolate these songs. Now obviously having these songs out there is not something we did for profit. It's more for fun. But it also, you know, helps bring people to our gigs and all that stuff and gives people a reason to keep coming because they'll, they'll be able to listen to these songs at home and it, you Know, it extends the experience and that's a good thing.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds awesome.

I'm curious to see how much. I mean, we'll get some money, I would assume, because I'm going to go listen to it online, so I know that there will be, you know, some fraction of a penny that will be earned by us. The question is how many fractions of a penny?

Yeah, and. And cd, baby.

Do they.

They push it out to all these different channels?

Yeah, there's probably 100 different channels with, you know, it'll be for sale in itunes, it'll be for stream on Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, and a million that you haven't heard of.

That's great.

Yep.

Yeah. That's interesting. Now you have another podcast that the Gig Gab.

Yeah.

Where you talk about, you know, the band and everything else. And, and I definitely listen to. Do you guys talk a lot about the business side of running the band or more performance wise?

We talk about both. And a lot of it is business because. Yeah. I mean, the focus of that show. Well, it's not just this. Yeah, it's not just this part of it. You know, Paul Kent, my co host there, runs a cover band actually out in your area of the woods. In fact, I'm playing a couple of gigs with him in August, so.

Nice.

Yeah. But so we talk a lot about more the financial, business aspect of a gigging musician. Right. You know, where you're, you know, because that's where. I mean, at least thus far for me, that's where if there's any quote, unquote, real money, that's where it is. And it's not very much, but.

Yeah, right.

But you know, it's at least, you know, in the hundreds of dollars versus fractions cents. Yeah.

Yeah. That's perfect. That's awesome. That's good. I'm. Congratulations. I think that's great.

I'm excited. And now I, you know, now that we've finally done it, it's such a pain in the neck getting the tracks in the right format for everything. You know, it's. It makes sense. I'm a, I'm a geek, but I get it. But it's always like, oh, we got to get it just right. And then it's. Get every. All this information in. And now hurry up and wait for them to, you know, tell us it's. It's ready for sale. And it might be ready for sale tomorrow. I mean, it could happen quickly or it could take three weeks. I don't know.

Yeah. And the thing I like about it is that despite the outcome, you know, one of the most important things about running your business and powering through all the stuff you have to, you know, do, you got to keep your energy level high. Yeah. And, you know, oftentimes, you know, when you're. When you're going through a tough time, you know, somebody's attacking your charmed life, like we've talked about here, you need things that will help you with that energy level, and they be. They may not be related to your business. Probably wouldn't be. So I can just tell by the inflection in your tone of voice and everything else something you're very excited about. So those things really go a long way to helping you in your overall. Let's call it the small business ecosystem, if you will, because I know you have a bunch of stuff going on, and that's hugely positive. I think it's great.

It is. Yeah. And it is. It's one of those things. I mean, just the fact that I get to do this is a. It means my charmed life is. Is, you know, still mostly intact, which is good.

Yeah. That's killer. Yeah, it's good. It's good. So whatever. I mean, I just. I think that, you know, finding something that helps you with that energy, whether it's, you know, something related to commerce or whether, you know, I love selling stuff on ebay, you know, and I always have a ton of personal things that I pick up here and there, and I'm like, oh, I can make some money on that, or I can do this. And, you know, it's usually not a ton of money. I have a separate account that I'm, you know, outside of the businesses that I do, But I love it. I'm like, Look, I made 50 bucks. You know, that. That's exciting. I could sit. And the great thing is, you know, you can do it all on your phone and manage everything. And I love. It's. You know, those kinds of things that get you excited are really important.

Yeah. Congrats again. Thanks, man. Yeah, yeah, I'll keep you posted, of course, because it's just fun.

It's, you know, that's awesome. Hey, so, you know, this week, we had some great responses to our IRS show last week, and it's, you know, always a fascinating subject. You know, one of our listeners, Dan, wrote in and asked about, you know, some issues he was having with the irs, and if you didn't get a chance to listen to that show yet, go back and there's some really, you know, important tips. I think one of the, maybe the most important, the two things that really stuck with me is, you know, humanizing your relationship with the irs. Getting past the blank letter or the, you know, phone call, that kind of thing. And then the other one I think, Dave, that you really, you know, hit on with me is that don't forget you're the customer of the irs.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, obviously, I guess, you know, what I took away from that is you don't want to have an adversarial relationship with them.

No.

And, you know, for the most part, you shouldn't have if, you know you've made some mistakes or something's going, as long as you're not committing fraud, which I know none of our listeners did that. So, you know, you made some errors or you maybe didn't report something correctly, they really will help you figure it out, you know, yes, you may owe them some money, but, or maybe you won't. You know, you're just not going to know until you go through the process.

Yeah, yeah. And I guess, you know, it sounds like we're going to do a little follow up to that here. One thing I will say is just because the IRS reaches out to you doesn't mean you definitely owe them all kinds of money. It just means they have a question.

Yeah, that's right.

That's it. You know, and it might mean that you owe them all kinds of money. There's no guarantee. You never know.

You don't know. But it's, you know, you have to deal with it. They're not going to go away. No, they, you know, they're going to want some information from you. Could be just a little tidbit that takes, you know, a 10 been a phone call or it could be something that, you know, goes over time. So it's, I think shifting your view of the relationship could be the most important thing on how you traverse a situation like that, whether it's just an inquiry or full blown audit.

Yeah.

And I thought, and since I didn't get, you know, we kind of burned through our time as we are want to do here. And I could, I definitely have a few more things to say, so I thought we would continue on part two of the IRS show.

I'm in cool with that. Yeah, man, I love, I love talk. It's weird. I, but I love talking about the irs and I think we're the only podcast out there that maybe we've, maybe we're stumbling into our niche here.

Shannon, you never know. Yeah, you never know.

Mark my words. And if they don't come to fruition, then it doesn't matter. But otherwise, mark my words.

Yeah. And I think it'd be different if we had maybe had different outlooks or different outcomes from interacting with them. But, you know, I think we both told some stories last week about things that turned out okay. And, you know, one of the things that I think is really important is, you know, going into anything with the irs. You want to always try to have, you know, a relationship with an accountant before something like that happens, because it's. It's a very different conversation to call an accountant and say, hey, I'm having trouble with the IRS versus calling an accountant and saying, hey, I need somebody to help me with my business.

And can I. I want to take us on a tangent already there.

Absolutely.

That is a hugely valuable piece of advice. Not just about an accountant. You want to have a relationship with all kinds of service providers, and accountant is one of them, but an attorney is another.

Yeah, that's true.

You know, if you run into some problem, you gotta be able to call somebody.

Yeah. They want to have that backstory on who you are.

On who you are. Yeah. When I ran into some. Well, I told that story a couple of weeks ago, but the first time I had to sue somebody. And the good news, and it was this petrifying experience, as I said. But the part of it that wasn't petrifying was I had several people that I knew that were former clients of mine, but not that former, that I had done work for them were attorneys. And so it was like, oh, great. And I really didn't. You know, the business was sort of in its infancy. I didn't have. Maybe not infancy, but, you know, in its toddlerhood, I hadn't had need for an attorney on a regular basis, so I really didn't have one for the business. And thankfully, you know, I knew people that I could reach out to, and I did. I reached out to. Actually, at the time, it was two of them, and it absolutely did not work out with one. In fact, the first one that I talked to, I don't remember the details, but I remember it very, very poorly, the conversation I had with the guy, but. But the other one worked out really well. And then, you know, he worked for us for a long time until he retired, and now he sits in Italy.

Nice.

You know, he always told me he was a broke lawyer, but. But he has this villa in Italy in a town where you can't drive cars. And it sounds quite sublime. So I'm not convinced that he was a broke lawyer.

Maybe that's why he was broke. Yeah, could be. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But. But that's a. It is a really good point to make. You know, you want to start those typ early on. Right.

And even if you're not hiring someone, just, you know, keeping your ears open about people that provide services to businesses, you know, and it might. Accounting is one. I mean, accounting, you're going to need kind of early on, you know, legal help is another. But really, anything that might apply to your business, just keep. Just build the relationship, even if it's separate from the business, even if you haven't, you know, contracted with them and it helps to join. You know, like there's this local thing, it's loosely referred to as the men's club around. Around here, you know, but it's really just a group of guys that are all. It started out as, like, dads of. Of kids and Cub Scouts, of which I am not one, but then it. But then it started to spread, and now once a month they get together. But it's really helpful. You know, there's people there that run all, you know, all kinds of different businesses. And I've used them, sure. You know, for landscaping. I mean, there's all kinds of things I've used. But it's nice to hire somebody that you trust, and it shortcuts that first conversation.

Yeah. And those people, you know, accountants, attorneys, bankers, they are looking for you. They want to have the relationship. And the conversation is just so much more pleasant when you can say, well, you know, we started this business and we've had a little bit of success, and, you know, I don't need an attorney right now, but I certainly wanted to reach out and have a conversation, maybe get a cup of coffee. And that way they just kind of know who you are. And in the event that you, you know, your accountant, you need some help with the irs, or you need some, you know, a letter written that you can't do yourself, find an attorney, that. That's. It's just a way better conversation when you make that phone call and say, hey, Bob, you know, we met.

It's Dave. Yeah, that's right. Right. Yeah, we. Even if it hits, it's Dave Hamilton. And remember, I'm the guy that was, you know, if you got to tell the story. Oh, yeah, I remember you. Okay, great. You know, it's what they do for a living so that it's not going to be weird to them.

Yeah. And I think that, you know, I'm a fiercely independent person, and once the legal industry started to get disrupted by, like, you know, legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer and those kinds of places, I loved it because I could do all these things myself. You know, hey, I don't have to pay somebody to do an llc. I could do this, I could do that. But you still want to have someone that you can call and who knows who you are. Yep. So, you know, I think I see my attorney once a year and, you know, we go grab lunch and we check up on things. This is that. And we talk tech. He asked me all these technology questions and. And I ask him what's going on, and I'm, you know, I'd love to have him on sometime, actually, and talk about his business because he's, you know, successful guy, and that's another small business type of thing. So I think that's a real good. A real good point to.

Yeah. So I think the easy three are banker, accountant, and attorney. But there might be more for your business. Think about. Look at someone who has a business like yours that maybe is ten times your size. Right. And what services do they employ? Well, you hope to be at that point you plan to be there. You've probably got a system in place that'll get you there if it succeeds. So just start making the relationships, even though you don't necessarily need to employ these people yet.

That's right. Yeah. You don't have to, you know, exchange money. They're willing to put some time in to, you know, meet you and.

Yeah.

See if there's a possibility of doing some business down the road.

So.

Yeah, that's very cool.

Anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to take us on too much.

Those are really valuable. Yeah, no, no, that's great. You know, one of the things, talking about the IRS and things, if you do wind up having to go through an audit, you know, I think it's also very important to understand is, yeah, they're looking at your business, but they're also probably looking at you as well. And what I mean by that is they will often do what they call a lifestyle reality check. And they're really. What they're trying to do is match up your lifestyle with your tax filing. And if they can't do this. And I talked to a guy at length about this one time, might have been over a few beers at some convention or something, and he was telling me how this guy worked for the irs, that they put a lot of time into just. Just kind of checking things out. Even if it's casually looking at, you know, property values, the cars you drive, I mean, all the things you're reporting, they just want to see it kind of match up. Not. Doesn't have to be exact, but kind of close to the revenue and the, you know, tax information that you're reporting on your. On your income tax.

That's so smart. Yeah, I can totally see where. Especially in the audit process. I mean, it's like I relayed in last week's show. It's you having a conversation with one person. Well, that's true on the other side too. Right. They're having a conversation with you and they're deciding how much effort do I think I need to put into digging into finding out things like does this person come across as someone who's. Who's honest or not? Right. I mean, that's gonna be the. They're going to make that determination, correct or not. They are going to decide whether you are guilty. Now, they may not be able to prove it. Whether you are or not is irrelevant. You know, but if they, if they feel like, wow, I really feel like this guy's guilty, but I haven't seen any evidence, any hard evidence of that. But he's driving a different car, his property and the watch and the. He comes in, in the suit, the way he handles himself, there's more. And so they're gonna dig. They're gonna go for that second wave. Whereas if you show up and, you know, you present an appearance that matches what your stated income is, they're going to say, okay, here's this guy. And all right, well, I have no. There's no spidey sense that tells me.

There'S no reason to keep digging. And the thing is, you know, any interaction that you have with them, they are auditing you. Of course, on a personal level, they're making judgments on your office, your building, your vehicles, all those things. And again, and most, you know, most of us don't have anything to worry about that, but you need to be able to. Which kind of leads us into another thing. You need to be able to justify your income, your, you know, your write offs, your expenses. Can you explain everything? And if, you know, especially with your accountants help, if you can explain everything, because oftentimes the accountants are going to look at things differently and go, oh, you know what, we can do this or we can do that. Yeah, you know, as long as you can explain it, the IRS person that you're dealing with should Be fine with it. And, you know, if it makes sense to you as well as your accountant, even if it's things, you know, I mean, a lot of hot buttons are, you know, vacation costs tied into your business, entertainment, you know, when those numbers are really large, they're always suspect, but they're not necessarily.

A vacation is an interesting thing because if you are taking a vacation, that can be. And I've had an accountant advise me to write off a vacation when it was like, look, this is a board meeting for your company. It's like, well, I mean, sure, but it's a vacation, man. You know, they're like, no, no, that's fine. But who went. Are those people all part of your company's board? Yes. Did anyone else go. No. Did you discuss business while you were there, at least for some period of time? Yes. Well, the, I mean, the IRS allows retreats to be part of the. Oh, okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Again, as long as it's justified. You feel comfortable.

Yeah.

Stating it. I mean, you know, you can't take 10 people, you know, unless they're, you know, directly related to your business.

Right. Right off your kids. And they're not people that work at your business.

Correct.

It gets a little crazy. Yeah.

It's like your car. Same thing, you know, if you've got a car that you're leasing through your business, it's no problem. But if it's your only car, you're not going to be able to take 100% of the write off. Right. And your accountant can help you figure that out and say, well, you know, we can take 50%, you know, because you're using it for, you know, part of the business or maybe it's higher than that. But you need to have that discussion so you don't have things keeping you up at night. When you get a letter from the IRS that says, hey, we want to look at your books, you can go, okay, no problem. It's. It's a headache. And yeah, it takes some time, but we don't have anything to hide.

Yeah, yeah.

Very, very important.

And it is helpful. That's where it's helpful to have an accountant as opposed to, you know, accountants, online, dot com, or whatever.

Oh, yeah.

You know, where you're making your own decisions based on what other people have done in other businesses. It's helpful to have someone advising you.

Yeah.

That's actually aware of what you're doing as opposed to just giving you general advice. Because general advice doesn't help when it's you and another person Having a conversation that impacts your future.

Well, and you're not an accountant.

It's probably not unless that's your business.

But I mean, you know, there's so many nuances to the way the laws work. And, you know, even if a mistake is made and your accountant says, well, look, we did it this way, you know, the IRS may say, okay, we consider that, you know, we don't interpret it that way, but we're going to waive penalties, fees, but you owe a little bit more money or something like that. I mean, it's all a negotiation is what it really is. You know, there's a few things that are really touchy on. One of them is payroll taxes. If you've got employees and you're collecting payroll taxes, it just needs to be straight in and out. And, you know, I don't know if we've all heard these stories, but I certainly have of, you know, companies that, you know, run low on cash flow and start to get a little arrears in making those payroll tax deposits. That is just a recipe for disaster and always stands out to the irs, that there's. That there's a problem. That's, man, it's a bad. It's a bad thing.

I can see it. I mean, you know, that I have the money. It's significant.

Yeah. If you've got a bunch of employees, it's not an insignificant amount. And, you know, cash, not your money. It's not your money.

It's their money.

Yep.

I mean, it's either your employees money or the IRS's money, but it is certainly not your money.

No. And. Yeah.

And that's the problem.

Yeah. If you're using a payroll service and it's all getting sucked out, you know, that's great. If you're doing your own payroll, which I don't think that's a good idea, but that's a whole other show. You know, it's so inexpensive to do now to hire somebody to do it, and there's a lot of liability. You want to make sure all that stuff is. Is getting. Well, it's taken care of.

We use bank of America's payroll service here, and, and so they don't suck out the taxes at the same time that they suck out the, you know, the. The payroll check. So we do. We get that float for a little while.

Yeah, yeah.

But we don't, you know, we don't. We don't bank on it, so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Even. Even using a service, I get. I suppose it's because it's our bank's service.

Could be.

It's not all happening at once.

That's right.

You know, and they send us email reminders. They're like, oh, you got to go approved. You know, these taxes to leave your account. It's like, yeah, yeah, okay, fine. Lisa always asks me because she handles our books. And twice a month she'll ask me, is it okay to pay X amount in taxes? And the answer, she asked me because she doesn't want to make an expenditure without me knowing about it. And my answer is always, if we have to. And I know the reply is, yes, we have to.

Yes, we do. Yes. That's awesome. And you use a lot of contractors in your business. Yeah, right. And that's another hot button, really, for the irs, especially right now in this kind of, you know, the gig economy we've talked about before, you know, Uber and, and Instacart and shopping and delivery places now where people are working. You know, the IRS is really looking at how you classify the people that work for you, you know, are your contractors. And you can't see me, but I'm making quote signs in the air. You know, are they really. Employees need to make sure. And the IRS has a few tests that they want to ask you to be sure that they pass those tests. And there's real quick, do you control when the person works and where they work? If you're telling them when and where? If you can't pass that test, they're an employee. They're an employee. How they are paid? Are they getting paid commissions? Are they getting paid an hourly wage? There's some real gray areas there. And what type of relationship do you have with them? Are you giving them benefits? Are you offering them insurance? You really want to get some advice before you, you know, just classify people as contractors because you don't want to pay, you know, I mean, it's expensive. And there are some companies that, you know, I know a few local businesses around here that kind of sneak under the radar with everybody as a contractor, not as employee. And it's. That's kind of part of their advantage, if you will, keeps their, their costs lower. But it's really not the right way. And it's just, it's going to catch up. It's going to catch up, go back and back and back to collect those fees.

You know, I play the drums, and one of the things that I started doing, I guess maybe three years ago, maybe it was two, I don't know, is doing theater gigs where I go and, you know, play in a theater pit. And when I started doing it just a couple of years ago, or restarted, it had been 20 years, but I already had, I knew how to do it. But when I restarted doing it, I was paid as a contractor, which is how I get paid for every music gig I've ever done. So it didn't seem weird to me. And then about a year ago, I picked up a gig with someone that I had done a gig before. And they're like, oh, we need you to fill out a W2.

Like, what?

Okay. And I'm like, all right. So I filled it out and when I got paid, they took, you know, they treated me as a part time employee and took taxes out. And it hit me, I was like, oh yeah, they are dictating the hours I work. I mean, that's true. I don't get to pick when to show up and play the show. The show is at 7pm on Thursday.

You know, and you have to be at that location.

Of course, like if I'm not, then I won't get paid. And they'll be really pissed too cause they don't have a drummer, you know.

That's right.

Yeah. So it, when it, you know, and, and, and even the small theaters around here are all doing it. So clearly someone from the IRS stepped in, at least in this area of the country, and said, whoa, you realize you're doing this wrong? And everybody was like, no, we're, you know, we're, we're small local theater. We're just scraping by, like, yeah, well, scrape by this way.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's a huge, I mean, millions, probably tens of millions of workers that are misclassified and they're always on the lookout for those kinds of things. So you just want to ask, especially.

So in market or in businesses where people might not claim everything. I mean, let's face it, musicians, if they get cash for a gig, forget it, they're never gonna report. I do actually, because I want to take my expenses.

Sure, that's a write off.

Most cats don't. They just like put the cash in my pocket and go home, whatever. And so yeah, they target those especially where somebody's not just going turn around and say, oh yeah, I got a 1099 and now I gotta pay my taxes.

Like, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you want to watch out for that stuff. And you know, we're coming up against it, you know, the end of the half hour again here. But I did want to mention that equally, you know, Fraught with what could be headaches is your state sales tax. The, you know, the collection agency, whoever that is. In California, it's called the State Board of Equalization. Just the name fills me with dread. But they're actually full of really cool people, just like the irs, once you make that connection. But, you know, similar to payroll tax, you know, they're saying, hey, if you're collecting sales tax, number one, you should be depending upon what you offer and where you sell it, how you ship it, if it goes out of the state, all these kinds of things. If you're collecting tax, it's not your money, and it, you know, you've got to make your. Depending upon how much volume you have to pay monthly or quarterly, that sales tax needs to be paid to whatever entity in your state collects that stuff. Really strict, heavily monitored. You know, I've been through a few of those Audi audits, and thankfully, you know, we had all our ducks in a row, but it was just digging through massive amounts of data to. To show all that.

I highly recommend running your business in a state that doesn't have sales tax.

Yep. It would be fantastic.

Just so happens I'm in one.

Yeah. Yeah. And you just have to be careful because even you may even be in the services business, there's a tremendous crazy amount of rules related to your services and what you bundle with them and how you present them and things. And we still to this day often have customers probably every few months make a comment like, well, you shouldn't be charging me sales tax. And now we just give them a piece of paper and say, oh, hey, we would love not to charge you sales tax. These are the folks who make the rules. Give them a call because we know we're right because we've done it enough. You've done it enough. And if you don't collect that sales tax, what happens when you go through a sales tax audit and they go, okay, you did this X thousands of times over the last four years. You now have to pay that tax.

To us whether you got it from your customer or not. Correct, Correct.

And, you know, and the same with. If you're selling to other companies that are resellers, you're selling products to them, and they are saying, hey, we don't want to pay sales tax. We've got to resell permission, permit, you are ultimately liable. So you need to have a copy of their current permit. And perhaps most importantly, it needs to be in your industry. You can't.

Really.

Not absolutely you can't. If you're selling roofing material. And, you know, Barbara's Beauty Salon has a resale permit. You have to charge them tax because they're not in the roofing business. And on and on and on. And it can get very, you know.

Difficult because Barbara's Salon might need roofing materials for their roof as opposed to for. Yeah, I see what you're saying.

They have to pay that tax because they are the. The key thing.

They're the end customer.

They are the end customer who is the end user, the end customer. That person ultimately needs to pay the sales tax.

Okay.

So when you're. When you're making that sale, you got to ask yourself that, you know, who. Who's using it.

That actually makes sense. So sales tax, theoretically should only be paid once, but it must be paid once, correct? Yeah.

And as a business, if you have a resale permit and you pay tax on something you're reselling, you get to claim that tax back.

Right.

As long as you keep good records. And if you have that in your purchasing system and your process, whatever you're using and you run that report, you just deduct that right off the top.

Yeah, no, I dealt with that when I was doing consulting down in Connecticut because I would go to whatever, Best Buy or Circuit City at the time, and buy a router for somebody, whatever, and then go sell it to a customer and be like, all right, well, you do the. The math and fill in the report, and you're done.

Yeah, you got it. Yeah.

It's not hard. That's right.

Yeah. So you want to keep on the good side of those folks. And, you know, if you do run up against them, same thing. Go back and listen to last week's show if you missed it. You know, we talk about really getting a relationship with them, you know, humanizing. If you don't get to the right person, hang up and call back the next day and try to get someone else or find out when that other person's at lunch and see if they have somebody covering for them. I've used it a couple times, and it's. It's. It can make all the difference, of course. Yeah, it works out really good.

Yeah. Or, you know, have. Have. Have one person from your business tie that person up on the phone and call again and get somebody else.

I don't know. I didn't.

I didn't. I don't know. I've never done that. But it could work.

Yeah, Yeah.

I mean, you know, you can only talk to one person at a time.

Sure. Or pay Your accountant to deal with them. I mean, that's true. If, if they're really good at it and they're personable and they've got a lot of experience and they know what buttons to push and terms to use, then that's certainly, you know, another viable alternative. You know, you're going to pay for, you're going to pay money, but the other way, you're going to pay your time. So what's more valuable for you?

Right. Yeah. You know, I feel like in that scenario I would make the first phone call and talk to these people, but knowing that I have to be very careful what I say, specifically, what I, you know, and I'm going to use the wrong word here, but what I admit to, what I tell them that I have done. Right, sure. But as long as I know that if I'm calling and it's a fact finding mission for me to decide, okay, do I want to have my accountant call? Because I'm of the mindset that when you have an accountant call the IRS or an attorney calls somebody, it ups the ante a little bit. It shows. And that can work to your benefit, but it can also backfire.

It can.

You don't necessarily get to pick. It's a gamble you are rolling with.

And you only get one, one time.

That's it. That's why I would make the first call and just feel it out. And if they say, oh, we just need, you know, you had a decimal point in the wrong spot on your return, can you sign this form? And yes, absolutely. Done. You know, and I might even, you know, take a screenshot of the form and send it to my accountant. Is this cool, man? Oh, yeah, that's.

Well, you could talk to them before, say, hey, I got this letter. Yeah, I'm thinking about just calling them back. What do you think? You know, what can I do? And you get that advice. And again, that's. That's an accountant that you've had a couple conversations with already. Because if you call one out of the blue and say, look, I got this thing, they're not going to want to advise you.

No, because they can't.

Yeah. He's gonna say, well, I don't know much about your business, so, you know, let's schedule a time and we'll dig through it together. I mean, you have to do some research, but if they've helped you with your quarterlies, you know, other tax issues or, you know, whatever. Whatever in your court.

Yeah, but yeah, make that I, I would say unless, you know, that what they've sent you means they already mean business.

Yeah, sure.

You know, and you might. You might be get something and say, whoa. Yep. Oops. This is that one thing I was hoping they wouldn't ask about. Well, guess what? You know, they ask.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And, you know, we. Like I said, we had some great response to all the IRS stuff last week. Really important. You know, Dave and I are not accountants. We're just telling you our personal history, some anecdotal stuff. Talk to your accountant, your attorney, and give us an email. Or go to businessshow Co. How else can they get a hold of us, Dave?

They can find us on Twitter @businessshowco2 and on Facebook at facebook.com businessshow co. Because you're a rock star and got us businessshow co on Facebook. So.

Snuck it in.

Yeah, of course. Somebody from Facebook's probably listening. That's gonna be over. That's the thing, you know, you don't want to admit too much, so.

That's right.

Yeah. Well, this was a. This was a packed show. I feel like I'm kind of exhausted, and I was part of it, so I only, like, got half the information because the other half I brought, so.

You got it right on.

Yeah, man. Call us at 401-472-4249. We'd love to hear from you. And we'll see you next week. Right.

Take care, everybody. Yep. See you next week. It.