Donna Genie describes advising a client who asked about delaying a $60,000 tax payment for one year to pursue a real-estate opportunity. She frames the decision as quantitative—assessing costs, potential returns from flipping or renting a house, and required thresholds to make delaying payment worthwhile.
I had a meeting with a great customer the other day, and he asked me if he could delay paying his taxes for a year because he thought he had a better use for the money. Now, on the surface, most people would say, no, you can't do that. You have to pay your taxes. But when we're talking about dollars, the easy way to do this is to make decisions based on the results and the numbers. So I walked him through some questions. We talked about the situation. Turns out he has the opportunity to buy a house that is in need of some repairs to be sold. That house could be either a quick flip. Maybe he could do the work. He's in a trade where he could do some of the work to improve that price and make some money on the deal. But he also had another idea. He's got some workers who need a place to live, and those workers would love to be able to rent that house from him. What would it take to get that house? What would the cost be? And what would he need to get in return to make this a viable deal for him? Now, he's going to owe about $60,000 come April. If he waited one year to pay that, what would that look like? Well, his first thought process was to just guess.
