Avoid Taxes with The Ultimate Tax Strategy Guide

Hey everybody, thanks for watching this. I'm gonna save you $1,000 right now. I want to put a thousand dollars in your pocket giving you some kick butt tax strategies that you can apply right now, this year. And if you're in a 30% bracket, think about that. If you're paying maybe 25 in Fed, 5 in state, pretty average. If I can drum up a $3,000 tax write off that you haven't thought about, that means you just saved a thousand dollars in taxes. My name is Mark Kohler. I'm a CPA attorney, best selling author and an entrepreneur. I had a lemonade stand as a kid and I'm going to save you a thousand bucks. So don't go anywhere. Please pay attention. Watch this. Grab a notepad. If you're on your commute, home driving, this is going to be your best freaking live broadcast you've listened to all week. I'm grateful you're taking a minute to watch me. You're going to love this. Now where this is all coming from as I have released it this week. It took 18 months in the works. It is the ultimate tax strategy guide. That's me on the front. 30 steps. 30 steps to saving taxes and building wealth. And this is 20 plus years of work and culminating in my newest ebook. So I'm gonna pull out. The studio's told me I gotta do four strategies. I'm like I'm only gonna throw down three. They're like, no, you're throwing down four. So let me tell you what the four strategies we're gonna cover and then I'm gonna take your questions and and wow you here. I promise you number nine in the 30 tips. Number nine is why have a small business or side hustle. There's now over 40 million Americans with a side hustle. After Covid, people are starting small businesses out of their home, driving Uber, renting cars on Turo, doing Airbnbs consulting on Upwork. People, you one out of three Americans working Americans now have a side hustle. I'm going to tell you why and how it's saving you taxes. Number 13, we're going to hit the auto and truck expense. One that so many business owners don't take advantage of. We have a new mileage rate for 2022. You may not know that gas prices are up. So is your freaking write off. Number 15, putting your kids on the payroll or your grandkids or your spouse. I'm going to hit some highlights there. And number 17, why Home Office is one of your best write offs. And you shouldn't be afraid of it. So I'm just going to highlight those four. They're one of the 30 in the ebook. Now, let me just throw this out. The ebook is free. You can get it. You're going to have it Now. I've worked so hard on this to give it away. I've got other books on Amazon I'm selling. You can dive deep on those. I've got workshops, I got vids and all that stuff. But this ebook is for you. And I mean that from the heart. I love helping people. I love small business. I love the American dream. So down in the description below, there's a link. And you just sign up for my newsletter, you get the ebook. 40 pages. It has been combed through by 20 to 30 attorneys and CPAs in my office over the last four months. We have beaten the crap out of this. Now, they're general. Each one, I'm getting hit in the highlights. Each page or two pages, there's a tip and then there's links to other articles and other videos. So you can dive deep. And in the end, you may need a tax consult before. Before your end. So anyway, let's dive into it. Number nine, why you need a small business. I want to go to the whiteboard. Let's go to the whiteboard. Tristin. All right, everybody. This is your tax return. This is your tax return on your brain. Is that drugs on brain when they fry an egg in the pan? I can't remember that. This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Whatever. Okay. This is your tax return. Was that it? This is your brain on drugs? I'm not doing a frying pan and I'm not doing an egg. For some of you that were like, just say no. There was the frying pan before that. Okay, now here's your tax return. This little line right here is called AGI. Any expense above the line is freaking awesome. Any expense below the line sucks. So whatever you hear out there, above the line, below the line, this is the line. It's called Adjusted Gross income. Now, this is the only tax return I'm going to show you right now. Now hear me out. Let's say your employer does not pay for your cell phone. Let's say it's a couple hundred bucks a month. All right? So that's $2,400 a year. $200 a month times 12. You hearing me as 1200 a year? Your employer is not covering your cell phone. You are. Do you have a small business? Do you have A side hustle. The IRS allows you to write off 100% of your cell phone as long as you can show you have a home line. Maybe it's a. You haven't even plugged a frickin. You know, stranger things. Yellow Winona Rider dial up phone in the wall lately. But you can. That's all you got to do. Go down to freaking Salvation army or Goodwill and buy a piece of crap phone, plug it in your wall. You got a home line. That means your cell phone is 100% right off people. Because you have a side hustle. All of you out there that have a side hustle, you're driving Uber. You're selling crap on ebay. You've got an online store. I do not care. Have a side hustle, people. You want me to save you taxes? You got to have a side hustle. Because now that cell phone that you were not writing off because your employer wasn't covering it, and you're like, I'm out of pocket. Your millions of Americans are paying taxes and then paying for things. Stop it. No more. Let's write off that cell phone above the line. So if we can write off your cell phone 100% above the line for your little side hustle, you're in a 30% bracket. I just saved you 800 bucks. Bam. See? $2,400 times 30% in taxes that you were going to pay anyway, but not anymore. We're going to write it off above the line. So, people, I want expenses up here. Cell phone, dining, travel, home office, computers, laptops, electronics, drones, cameras, anything for your social media. Because you got to have a small business marketing plan. You're going to be down at Best Buy, an Apple store, buying crap. I want to write off 100% of it. Your account should be talking about this. You should be doing it. That, my friends, is why you need a small business. That's number nine out of my 30 is just to take advantage of your side hustle. You got questions, I got answers. We're going to hit it here in a minute. I want to get through these other three. That's why I want you to have a small business. Okay, next on the whiteboard here, auto and truck. Auto and Truck is number 13 in my ultimate guide. Now, there's two ways to write off auto. Whoa, what did I do there? Okay, there's two ways to write off auto. You can go actual, where you can depreciate the vehicle. You can do fuel, repairs, maintenance, all those goodies. And you need to be using the Vehicle for business at least 50% of the time has to be for business, but the business doesn't need to own it and you don't have to wrap it with signage. And by the way, by putting your name on the side of your truck doesn't make it more of a write off. You got to be using it for business. More than 50% or you go mileage. Now, 90% of my clients go mileage because it's simple and easy. Now this year, because fuel costs were up the first half of the year, January through June, it was 58.5 cents per mile. It's not percentage. And then July until the end of the year, it is now 62.5 cents. Now we can have fun with this. Let's just say some of you, you might admit it, you're driving a Prius. I know you don't. You're embarrassed about it. I know you're embarrassed to say you drive a Prius, but just own it. So let's say you're getting 40 miles to the gallon in your Prius. I know you're getting beat up at truck stops, but that's okay. You freaking are saving money. So let's say you're getting 40 miles to the gallon. Let's say a gallon of gas is four bucks. So you're paying four bucks to go 40 miles. What's your write off? Right now it is 62 and a half cents. So I multiplied that by 0.625. Your write off for a gallon of gas is $25. You're writing off $25 even though you only spent four dollars at the tank, at the gas, whatever. So $4 a gallon gives you a write off of $25. That's 62 and a half cents times 40 miles on one gallon of gas. So for you Prius owners, you shouldn't be embarrassed. Own it. Love it. You're getting a great write off. So people, a lot of my clients go with mileage. Now in the ebook, when you get there to number 13, there's a link to an article view 7 Rules of Thumb. Are you leasing? Are you buying a truck? Are you doing an SUV? It doesn't weigh more than 6,000 pounds. Should you do mileage? Should you not? So I've got other videos, I've got other articles to help expand on that topic. Use the guide as a guide to figure out where you go next and talk about it with your tax professional and you tax professionals out there. Use it and abuse it. Spread the good word. Just get, just Know it's copyrighted and say hey I got this off Mark Kohler site and give me some love. Okay, number three of my strategies today then we're going to do Q and a. Is number 15 putting the kids on payroll, right? Putting the kids on payroll. So let's go back to our tax return. So here's your 1040. We got our AGI, right? You want write offs above the line. We just talked about that. You're going to write off cell phone. Well, what if your kids are on the board of directors? Let's say you've got older kids, 18 and older, they're helping you out with their business. They're on the board of directors of your LLC or your inc. And you've got a board of directors bodies got a board of advisors BOA on your llc. When we set up an LLC in an inc we always make sure there's a board of advisors and board of directors. I want your kids on the board. And instead of paying taxes and giving your kids frickin money, put them on the board of board of advisors or the board of directors. My daughter Molly, I talk about her all the time. She's wonderful. She was my paper shredder administrator for years when she was age 6 to 9. Now she's 19 years old and Molly's on my board of directors. We have regular meetings. She's very helpful. She's gave us some ideas for our last workshop that was freaking awesome. We did the Real Estate Tax Summit in Austin last week and she's like, you know what? You need to have little labels of everybody to say who they are. They realtors or developers or renters and I mean landlords and they have rental property and put that on their little lanyard so they can network with others. That was Molly's idea. Everybody, she's on my board of directors. Molly calls up and says hey, I need tuition or I need some money. I go great. I'm not going to give her money. The company is going to pay her for being on the board of directors. Now I get a tax write off above the line for money that I may have given Molly. Anyway, people, get your family involved in the business. I've got videos and articles and diagrams and in the Ultimate Guide you're going to want to go to number 15 to figure out how do I pay my kids under age 18 and how do I pay my kids over age 18? When do I pay my spouse? I have a whole video on YouTube. When do I pay my spouse? Go check it out. This is what I do. I love talking about this stuff. Okay, last strategy we're going to share today and then we'll do some Q and A on these four topics. James, I want questions on these topics. I don't want to hear about someone trying to, you know, ride off their drone in Puerto Rico. Right now we're just going to focus on these four strategies. Although I love drones and I love Puerto Rico. Okay, now home office number 17. All of you that have a small business should be writing off home office. Don't be afraid of it. Frickin own it. Oh my gosh, so many accounts out there afraid of their own tail. Come on. All right, so what we have, home office. You have two methods here and I highlight this in the guide. You can do what's called the standard method where you take your house and you do a little, oh, here's the square footage of my little home office. And then you multiply it by rent. You don't have to own the home or your mortgage, not payment, but your mortgage interest. And then you're going to multiply it by your utilities, maybe property taxes or HOA fees or whatever. So you're going to have all these expenses for your home and you're going to take a percentage of your home and multiply it by these expenses. So that's your home office deduction. Now that can be a pain in the butt. I know it is. So that's fine. You have your simplified method and there's. I also talk about the admin exception for those of you that have a bricks and mortar office as well as a home office, you can have both. There's a new court case on this. All right, so simplified method is you can write off up to $5. Sorry, $5 on up to 300 square feet in your house. That's a $1,500 write off. Now that's for the year. You know, that's not every month. I can write off fifteen hundred dollars. Some of you may have a rental property. That's a small business. I want to write off home office. I look at so many clients that have a rental property and they're not writing off home office. Now let's just go over this. Let's say you write off $1,500 for home office and we did auto. Oh, and then we did kids. Let's say you write off a couple grand that you were going to give a kid anyway. So Now I've got 1500 plus two grand in write offs for a kid, which you're going to do more than that. That's no brainer. And then you got mileage, let's say. Oh, Mark. Oh, my gosh. I wasn't writing off as much mileage as I said. Let's write off maybe a couple thousand in miles, which would be around 1200, $1500. So there's another $1500 on top of the 15 on top of the 2. So there were 5 grand. And then. Oh, that's right off our cell phone. So there's $2,400 maybe. I wasn't thinking about cell phone or my kid's cell phone. People just right there. Just brainstorming for a minute. I'm coming up with five to seven to eight grand in write offs. If you're in a 30% bracket, I just saved you two or three grand. It's not that hard. You're the captain of your ship. Let's go off the whiteboard, Tristan. People, I want to say this. Look into my eyes here. This is so important. You are the captain of your ship. You have a side hustle. You have a small business. You're living the freaking American a dream. Wreak everything you can out of it. I want to come up with every freaking tax strategy I can dream of, and they're going to be legit, and they're going to be honest, and we're going to write them off on your tax return. You should be talking to your tax advisor, going, why aren't we writing off my kids and my payroll? Why do they not? They're involved in the business. Why are we not putting them on there? Well, you got to issue W2. No, you don't. For kids under age 18. No, you don't know the rules so you can hold your accountant accountable, make sure you're involved in the process. And if you're dropping, dropping this all into TurboTax thinking you're a genius, get some second opinions. So, bottom line, if you are willing, I promise you it'll save you 10 times what you pay us. Call my law firm. Get a consult with one of my tax lawyers for a tax return review. They're going to build a trifecta of your life. Come up with some tax strategies for this year and review your last year's tax return for around 1200 bucks. A tax lawyer? Really? A tax lawyer that would have could get paid thousands of dollars Working in New York City is helping you on Main Street. That's what we're committed to. Get it. If you don't like my firm, fine. Go somewhere else. But get a second opinion on your tax return. There you go. I'm so excited today. Just feel like I've been yelling here. I'm sorry. All right, we're going to do some Q and A, people. I'm all yours. I'll go to the whiteboard if I need to. James, let's hit a few questions. You got anything good? Yes, Janet Lord. Oh, sorry. That doesn't sound like James.

No, it's Diane. Hi.

Oh, hey, Diane. So glad you're here. In the stud. Bam. Janet Lloyd asks, can Skype be used as a home line? Yes. Okay, but. Okay, everybody, I'm going to repeat this. Can Skype. So you're using a VOIP system. So your phone is going through your computer. Well, let's think about that. What is paying for your phone? Your Internet. So now you have to say, well, if Internet is paying for my home phone, I can't write off Internet in my home because I'm using it for my home phone line. Here's what I prefer you do, folks. Many, many of you are still paying for dish or DirecTV or cable. A lot of times they'll throw in a home phone line for free or for five bucks. You're not going to be writing off your DirecTV anyway. I don't care if you watch the Home Shopping Network, and that's part of your business. Iress is going to like you writing off your tv. You know why? Because you're going to be watching fricking NFL this weekend. That's not a write off. So use your cable network or Your Dish or DirecTV to issue you a phone number that you can plug in the wall or use maybe through your cable. Then you can now write off your Internet for your business and your cell phone for your business. So whatever's paying for your home phone line is not going to be a write off. I hope that made sense. All right, Diane, what do you got?

Okay, next question is from B. Pain. If I buy a vehicle less than £6,000 for my business this year, 100% business use, then take the bonus depreciation of 100% this year, can I use the truck for some personal use in the following years?

Yes. And you went under £6,000. Then you threw out the word truck. So I'm a little, like, confused. Is it going to be under 6,000 or over 6,000? A lot of times when people talk about the truck write off, we're thinking it's over 6,000. So we've, we've got to be careful with this so let's go to the whiteboard. Tristan, let me. Now, I've got videos on this and trainings and so just know I'm trying to hit some highlights here. This is tricky. So our person here is asking, what's their name again? Emily B.

Pain.

B. Pain. Okay, so B. Pain says, I'm going to buy an auto. And they were clear to say it's not a truck, that it's not £6,000 or more. That's what they said. Right. Usually trucks are gonna. It's just a plain old vehicle. Okay. So you've got limitations on how much you can write off. And you've gotta be careful with this bonus depreciation. When bonus kicks in, it kicks in on your vehicles that are over £6,000 in a big way. If it's under £6,000, there's some limitations. So you want to look at those rules on how much you can bonus. And we're going to look at the fact that you're. Oh, boy, this is so tricky is that you're going to be looking at your percentage of use, which you said is 100%. Now, I love that you're 100% business use, but you've got to be able to show you have another vehicle that you're using for personal use. Then you're going to do your depreciation and make sure that you write off as much as you can. And you're going to look at bonus as a possibility there. And then you're going to do plus fuel repairs and maintenance. And then you're saying, well, next year I'm going to have some personal use. Technically, the IRS says, whoa, whoa, whoa. If you change the use of the vehicle, then we need to back off. Some of these write offs you took before, that's the technical rule. So if it now goes down to 80% business use and you change the use percentage, you've got to go back and claim and reclaim some of the depreciation you may have taken previously. What I would prefer to hear is that you're still using this other vehicle for personal use because you're going to have to have two vehicles, 1 and 2. This one is all business, this one's your personal. Let's try to keep this 100% business use for the life of the vehicle. Talk to your accountant. If you change the use dramatically in later years, I don't want you to get in trouble. A lot of my clients continue to hold firm that it's 100% business use. And I'd like you to Try to stay in that realm. So one other thing and reason why you hear see smoke coming out of my ears and why this is tricky is when clients say, I'm going to buy a vehicle, it's 100% business use, I'm going to bonus it. I'm going to say, how many miles are you going to put on this thing? And they're going to go, we're going to put on a ton of miles. Well, bonus may not be the best thing to do because if you're going to put on 20 to 30,000 miles, you're going to be getting some significant write offs in the next per year. So let's say you're going to put in 20,000 miles a year or more, then all of a sudden doing bonus may not be the best move because in the long run, your mileage deduction is going to outpace what you took up front. So I really want clients to look hard at what their expected use of this vehicle is when it comes to the number of miles too. Don't just be chasing a tax deduction now without looking at what your long term miles are going to be. All right, next question. We're jumping between Emily and Diane. Nice to have my ladies there in the office. I love it.

Well, I'm not a lady.

Oh, now we got James in the mix. Oh, my gosh, I'm jacking this up.

Hey, guys, what's up? All right, so this, this is kind of one of those on the fine line questions. This might be a great one. I don't know. Tell me if I'm wrong or right. Can I give my kids 1099 for the work they do, ages 17 and 19 instead of W2 into 10 rental properties under my personal name with no LLC or S corpse. Is that off subject? Is that way off a little too much?

Well, I'm going to do my best. What's the first name here on this?

I'm sorry, that's Mansoor.

Mansoor, yes, Mansoor, first of all, and I love your question and if you've got these rental properties, you've got to get a real consultation, please, because your questions are a little revealing that you may be getting some bad advice out there. And so I'm trying to be very loving and careful in how I respond. But first, kids under age 18, you pay them in a very different way than when they're 18 and older. So you're, you are going to use 1099s for your kids 18 and older and no W2 and no 1099 for under age 18. Now, monsoon and everybody watching. This doesn't mean you just go do it. This means you go, oh, I better learn more. I better call a professional that's freaking going to help me issue the W2 or 1099. And I'm going to do it right. I'm not just going to find the answer I'd like on Mark's podcast or videos and then just go do it, people. That's how you get jacked up. And then you're mad at me because you go, well, you said I can do it. I said you can do it. But I didn't give you all the little steps that's going to take 5, 40 minutes or an hour of walking you through the steps. But I help clients do this every day. We've got great lawyers and CPAs on store. Please call the office. I'm going to put the number out here on the board right now. 435-586-9366. If any of you are liking these ideas, love it. But get a little advice. Pay for one hour with my tax lawyer. If I don't save you 10 times what you pay us, then we'd made a mistake. Don't worry about what you're paying per hour. Look at how much you're saving. That's what matters. All right, now, so you're going to have a different rule on the way you pay kids under age 18 and over age 18. Also, if your kids are acting like a rank and file employee, you have to do a W2. If they're 18 and older and they look and act like an employee, you. You don't have a choice. You've got to follow state rules on 1099s and who's a sub and who's an employee. But for your kids under age 18, you never do a W2 and never do a 1099. And I'll stand by that all day long. And you accountants out there that are freaking out that I said that, go read your circular. E. I've got all the white paper on this and I teach this on CE around the country. You're okay. Kids under age 18 do not need a W2. And you know why? Because you don't withhold FICA. And you're like, well, I'm not with. There's a penalty if I don't issue a W2. Yeah, what's the penalty as a percentage of FICA? Oh, I'm not withholding FICA. Then there's no penalty. So the IRS doesn't care. Okay. That's why you're not issuing a W2. All right, then this mansoor says, now I'm going to take what I'm paying my kids and somehow involve them in some rental properties. But I don't want to do an llc and I don't want an S corp. And people, this is what I'm diagramming here, is what I call the trifecta. And we want to build your asset side and your OP side. Mansoor. And any of you out there, if you have rentals, it is literally ludicrous. It is malpractice. It is the worst advice. If you're like, I'm not getting an LLC. Well, Mark, I'm in California, and it's $800 an LLC. I. I don't care. I've lived in California. We have an office in California. We've had clients in California for years. Oh, I have umbrella insurance. Oh, yeah, I've done podcasts on that, too. Do you know how often umbrella insurance pays out? Do you know why it's so cheap? Because they never pay out. People. Be careful. Get your freaking LLCs in order. I'm not saying you set up an LLC for every rental, but get something done. Get a consult. Quit trying to cut corners on $800 and then get in a lawsuit and lose $800,000 or $80,000, please. I'm not trying to rip you off and sell you an LLC you don't need. We want you coming back year after year and selling you exactly what you need and doing it cautiously and carefully. Thanks for that question, Mansur. All right, maybe two more questions and then we'll. Let's give away a book or two.

Okay, so I've got a really important question from Sam Berger. How do you get the ebook?

How do you get the ebook? Thanks, everybody. Well, there's a couple options. Number one, you can just go to www.markjkohler.com. please go check out my website. I've got a lot of resources there. Articles, links to my YouTube videos, my blog, all that. Go to markjkohler.com right at the top, it's going to say, sign up for my newsletter and get my new ebook. And so you can go right there to www.markjkohler.com. also down in this description here in Facebook and in YouTube, there will be a description, and you can just click on it. Sign up for the newsletter. Now, if some of you are like, I want a consult. I got to get a consult with one of these tax Lawyers, there's no commitment. They'll call. My staff will call you up and look at pricing. Emily there in the office is the one that will interact with you if you need it. She's going to hear your comment on Facebook or YouTube and go, call me and Emily will hook you up. Right, Emily, you're there. Come on, give me some love.

Yes, call me, please.

Boom. See, she's desperate for a call, you know, I mean, for a call to make an appointment at kqs. When you call, she'll make an appointment for you. You can check the box when you sign up to get the ebook and just say, have Emily call me and she'll call you. You're going to love it. Okay, another question.

Got one more Ida Willis, home office question. I'm in the 10% bracket. Should I do the standard or detailed deduction?

Okay, so Ida says she is a small business owner.

And I believe that's a he.

Pardon?

I believe that's a he.

Oh, okay. He. Ida is a he. Okay. Ida is an. Is a small business owner in the 10% bracket. Now, people, I'm glad Ida said this. I don't care if you're in the 10%, the 5%, the 20%, the 30%, the 39%. I don't care, people, what freaking bracket you're in. If you've got a business check, if you have a home office. Check, then you need to take the home office deduction. Okay? So we're going to go boom, boom. We're going to take the home office deduction. Don't worry about what bracket you're in. You're going to take the deduction. So that's point number one. Then Ida says, well, do I take the simplified or the standard? That's how you would do it. Standard versus simplified. Well, everybody, what I tell you to do. And you can pencil it out with a little bit of work, find out what the number is, find out which one will give you what. Go through the process and find out what my standard would be. And you're simplified is going to be a max of fifteen hundred dollars. And I tell all my clients, at least take the $1500. Boom. You know, I bet you got 300 square feet in your freaking apartment or your house or your garage or your storage unit in the back of your house. You've got 300 square feet that you're using for your desk, your office space. You're using it exclusively for your small business. Boom. Be able to prove it. Go simplified. Now, Ida, if you run the Numbers and your standard is two grand, you might go with that. Now there is a pro a con to this. The simplified is super easy. Simplified, there's no depreciation recapture, meaning when you sell your home, you don't have to recapture some of the depreciation you took. If you go standard, when you go to sell your home, you got to take back some of that depreciation you depreciation you took, and that's okay. That depreciation recapture is like an interest free loan from the irs. Don't stress about it. Grab it. Go take it. If the IRS gives me a deduction today and I got to give it back five years later, sign me up. I'll take it right now. Boom. So it's all good. All right. I want to give away some books. Can we give away a couple tax and legal playbooks? Maybe a male and female. Can you tell? Can you identify a male and a female from their handles out there, Guys, of course.

We are going to give away one book to Sam Berger. Congratulations.

Sandberger gets a book. A tax and legal playbook. You can get these on Amazon.com my tax and legal playbook where I dive super deep into these different strategies.

And then the lady is going to be Brenda Smith. Congratulations, Brenda.

Brenda, congratulations. Now for all of you that won, let's go. Whiteboard. You're gonna go to Diane with two N's. Diane@mark j.kohler.com and you're going to say, diane, I'm a winner. And all of you can email her and tell her you're a winner because you're all winners in life. But if you won the book, we will verify if you're really Sandberger and really Brenda and then we will send you a book. So if you won, you two folks, make sure you email Diane and she'll hook you up. Get your mailing address. Well, everybody, I just want to say thank you for watching. It's Friday afternoon here. I love small business. I know I get excited, I get dramatic, but I love this topic and I'm passionate about it and I really, really want to help others build their American dream and save taxes. So get the ultimate tax guide. I've worked so hard on it. I think you'll love it. Share it with your friends and family. There's 30 different strategies and I think you'll, you'll love it. So check it out and have a great weekend. And I'll see you next week for another live broadcast. Please subscribe. You'll get a ping.