Last-Minute Tax Strategies Before You File or Extend!

by your tax return.

I thought we were recording this live. We got to be live.

Holy shit. I'm already getting interrupted. I'm in the intro. I can't even get the intro.

I'm so excited.

Yeah, this is what happens in the podcast when we're recording. You know, I can get 5 words out even though I was supposed to do the intro. Guys, we're excited to be with you. We're bringing a ton of energy. Mark's had 2 rock stars. I've had a little too much coffee and lattes this morning. So, but the nice thing is We're amped up and we got an amazing team behind us at KQS Lawyers helping clients across the country with tax planning and strategy. So we're coming to you with some things you can do and what we want you to know before you file your return.

And if you have questions, we are— do we have to hold up a newspaper that we really are live? I don't have— what's a newspaper? Do people actually still buy them? Anyway, if you— we are live. So if you have a question down in the portal of, you know, the avenue that you're watching this. I think it's primarily going to be on YouTube today, but I know we're on different platforms. Please type in your question. Tristan in the studio from time to time is going to just throw out a question that looks good. So be thoughtful and we'll try to answer it on the fly. But here's the big deal. It is tax season for some people. We think tax season goes all the way till October. We'll explain why in a moment, but there are some things you might be able to do to save a little more in your tax return for last year. Get a bigger refund, make some smart decisions. We're going to throw out every strategy we can think of. We're going to go back and forth and we're going to get into it right now. Matt, what's your number 1? Bring it. Impress me.

Number 1, impress me. Jeez. All right. Okay. This is not going to become a surprise. But this is one so many people miss. This is your time. This is that special time of year where you get to double dip and make your retirement plan contributions. You can still make IRA contributions and HSA contributions from 2025 up until April 15th, 2026. Okay, you have until the tax return deadline. So if you're someone that didn't even— didn't contribute to a Roth IRA, traditional IRA, HSA in 2025, You can still drop money in for 2025. Let's say you're doing a Roth IRA, $7,000. That was the amount you could do, an extra $1,000 for 50 plus. And you can throw in your 2026 contribution because we're in 2026 now. So I can get rid of both and check those both off the list right now. That's the double contribution opportunity for people doing a backdoor Roth IRA. If you're one of those people, it's like, oh, I mean, I can make too much money. I can't do a Roth IRA. No, you can do a backdoor Roth IRA and get $14,500 in. Oh, you got a spouse? They can do $14,500 too. Now we're at $29,000 in a Roth IRA, all because you came to this live.

Okay, now see how this, this live broadcast is already going. I said, Matt, give me your best one. He's already threw out 3 of them. 3 right out of the gate. Now, you know, he said, number 1, let's get ready. Number 1, if you want a tax deduction, Based on your income, you might do a traditional IRA, run the numbers, or think long-term, short-term, you know, short-term pain, long-term gain. Do the Roth IRA contribution. Your income does not matter. Google backdoor Roth IRA, Mark Kohler, Mass Sorensen. You'll be surprised. Now, third, we could bring up the solo 401(k) for any of you small business owners. That's— I'm going to throw that as number 3. Now, if you didn't form your 401(k) before year-end last year, you can still take another bite at the apple. Matt, you're an expert on this. You broke this down yesterday on a call.

Yeah.

So let's say you're someone that has an S corporation and you're like, hey, I'm self-employed, I don't have any employees. Well, you can still set up a 401(k) for yourself. It's called a solo 401(k). You can put $70,000 in.

True.

Maximum of $70,000 still for 2025, which could be all traditional dollars. And you got a $70,000 deduction even though you didn't even put anything in yet. You can still set that up for tax year 2025. Now, if you're an S corp owner, you can't do what's called an employee contribution unless that solo K was set up in 2025. You had to have done that like in December of 2025, but you can still do employer contributions. Bottom line. You can throw a lot of money in still and get contributions in for 2025 using a solo K. We love the solo K. We have tons of other content on that, podcast episodes, videos. We can throw in links on all these. We'll be throwing other resources in.

Now I'm going to be counting these. We're at number 3 and I want to add something to the solo 401(k). Little spoiler alert. You don't have to make that contribution by April 15th. For the IRA or the Roth, you do. But if you're a small business owner, we're going to talk about extending here in just a moment. But you could still do the solo 401(k) up until your extension filing date. If you're an S corp, we're looking at September 15th. So yeah, on that one, but just put it in the back here. Yeah.

And that would be the employer contribution, which is what's still available. But even if you extend, you can— we can be setting up your solo K in August. And still making the 2025 contribution.

Okay, now before we go to extending, you did say this in your opening statement. I think you got excited, but you did say a little premature tax, whatever, premature tax planning. That was an inside voice joke. I do not want to go there. Okay, now somewhere around the backdoor Roth IRA and premature idea here. Okay, so the next idea would be the health savings account. The health savings account, as Matt just said, let's not gloss over too quickly. If you had a high deductible plan last year, double check, you could still make a contribution for last year up until April 15th, over $8,000 if you're married, around $4,500 if you're single. Look at the numbers. This is a tax deduction on the front page of your tax return. You could pull it right back out. I mean, this is how you launder money. You put it in, you take the tax write-off, then reimburse yourself for medical expenses for last year. That's cool.

So this is government incentivized money laundering. They want you to do this. They've said do this. It's called an HSA. You get a deduction, you don't pay tax on it. It's $8,550. That's the total amount for 2025 you could drop in, which again, you could drop in your 2026 contribution now too, if you have the high deductible plan in 2026.

I love it. Now I want to say this too. Every one of these strategies we're talking about, if you throw it in YouTube with mine or Matt's name, you're going to see, or even just in Google, you're going to see our articles, our podcasts, and our YouTube videos on these topics. So you can dive deep. But I will say this, Matt, why don't we do 10? Then we'll take some questions. I think we're going to get up to 20. So if you're watching here, we're going to wow you. You're going to get something out of this and save some freaking money. But Matt, back to you. Number 5, what do you got?

Okay. Number 5, I want to just give a caution of what you can't do and maybe put a bow on retirement accounts here. Okay. And sometimes knowing what you can do and can't do, it just gives you clarity. If you have a 401(k) with a job, you can't contribute anymore. Okay. The only thing we're talking about here where you still have a window is IRAs, traditional or Roth, until April 15th. HSAs, April 15th. Solo K for those of you self-employed up and— but you can extend. Okay. And still do those. The HSA, IRAs, no extension. Doesn't matter. You extend your return, still do April 15th. Solo Ks, even SEP IRAs, you can extend and still contribute. But for those of you that have a 401(k) at work, that money needs to go in. Then want to do the mega backdoor Roth and all that. You need to do that in the tax year.

Okay.

Now I'm going to add an amendment. May I, Senator from Arizona, to your—

without objection.

Okay. Thank you. I'm going to do a filibuster here. I think I'm going to call your number 5 double down. So what Matt did not say, but I'm going to say here, is if you have a day job 401(k), but you drive Uber on the side, you can still have a solo 401(k) for your Uber business or whatever business and a Roth IRA and an HSA. Yeah, you can double down, triple down, quadruple that. But the point is, I'm going to say that's number 5. Is you can combo your 401(k) at work with your small business solo 401(k). You can do an IRA or Roth. Now it's a little more complex. You got to get into it here, but you don't feel like if your income's too high or you have a day job 401(k), you're screwed. You are absolutely not. There are lots of options. All right.

I love it. Okay. You ready for 6 now?

Yeah. Do I get to give 6? I mean, your 5 was a little weak.

I mean, Yeah, why don't, why don't you, why don't you give 6 and I'll clean it up, you know, and tell people what it actually matters.

Fair enough. You'll explain it in real English. All right. Number 6, extending is not a freaking big deal. And you actually reduce your chances of an audit and you give yourself a chance to go dig up more write-offs. People think of it. I own cows out on a ranch in Utah.

Lots of fun.

When they go to the auction to get butchered for those beautiful ribeye steaks some of you might like, the first cows that go through the chute are the first ones to meet their maker. You want to be one of the last cows, eke out a little bit more life, you know, there on the ranch. When you're the first ones to file your tax return, the IRS is already assigning their audits in the regional offices. It— statistics prove it year after year that by the summer the IRS has already tapped out. They've assigned all their audits, and then my tax return shows up in October. And again, every numerical tax return service that does these statistics shows the later you file, the less chance of an audit. So take more time, do not stress about it, and You have to calculate what you think you're going to owe. I'm going to give you 5 ways to do that here a little later. That'll be another tip. You've got to send in some money so you don't have a penalty for not sending in your money. But you don't have to file, people. Extend. Great tip.

That's what all the cool kids do. That's what we do. We extend. We need to get like extend and something. It's like extend and pretend is a thing, but that's not— we need, we need, we need a little catchphrase for this. Yeah, but extending is not pretending. I don't know. Something. Yeah. Extending is cool, guys. Okay. And if you are someone that's in partnerships or you're invested, you get K-1s, you freaking have to extend and get ready. So why not? I love those two points. Reduce the chance of audit and find time to dig up more deductions. Okay. I want to give a new one. This is a new one that probably hasn't made our list before. We've used our final ones. Okay.

Wow. Okay.

All right. Okay, you ready?

Yeah, yeah, I'm interested here. You're reaching— are you extending for this one? Take a little blue pill before you—

oh geez. All right, here we go. Um, big one, big beautiful bill. No tax on tips and overtime. All right, some of you might have overtime pay, some of you might have tips. Now there's high-income phase-outs on this. All right. But overtime up to $20,000 is not taxable. Let's say you're a nurse or your spouse is whatever. They, they're— they have a job there where they get paid overtime quite a bit. $20K, not even taxable. Let's say you're a tipped worker. The tipped workers can be self-employed too.

Okay.

You could be a hairstylist, a nail tech, self-employed, and you're getting tipped income excludable up to, let's see, $25K.

So on your tip here is you better go check with your employer and make sure it's properly reported on your W-2. Maybe do it.

Well, if you're self-employed, let's say you're self-employed and you're a tipped worker, you still get to take it as well. So that would be the tip is make sure you know, maybe you're a musician.

I don't know.

You drive an Uber and DoorDash, you know, you're getting a 1099. Like, make sure you understand what the tip part is. And this is the first year it's happening.

Oh, I love your innocence. You think musicians are actually reporting their tips? You know, they get home, I better report this to the IRS.

Well, I'm just saying they don't have to now. Now you can feel, you know, real and legit. And maybe, you know, this is a serious problem. Like how many, how many self-employed people that get tipped income like that are not reporting it? And what's their number one complaint? I can't get a mortgage. Well, now you can freaking claim the income and it's not taxable. So you're going to have a tax return as a self-employed person. You can actually show to get a mortgage and buy a house.

That's true. And all that guilt is just washed away that you're sleeping at night going, I'm not cheating the IRS. So when you go to meet your maker and you're going up the escalator and Matthew, the tax-collecting apostle, is there saying, hey, did you cheat on your taxes? You could be like, no, I reported my tips and I didn't pay tax.

Wasn't taxable.

It's a big day.

So I'm just saying it might not apply to everybody, but we got every, you know, For every— not every tip here is going to apply to everybody. The goal is to grab a few that are going to make a difference on your return.

I like it. Okay, 2 more tips, then we're going to go to Q&A. Tristan, start right. I know you've gotten hit with a bunch of questions. You can just scratch down a few of them so that you're ready to go hard and fast on them. Okay. Number 8, home office. Now, why would I say that's a last-minute tip? Because a lot of people forget about it because Also, their accountant said, "Ooh, that's high risk. Watch out for home office, you'll get audited." Poof! People, the home office write-off is alive and well. It could be up to $1,500, 300 square feet at $5. $1,500, it's a low-hanging fruit, take it. A lot of people forget about it because you don't write a check for it. You don't put it on your debit card. It doesn't come out of Apple Pay or Zelle or whatever. So you've got to go grab it. And the home office write-off for any of you. There's over 50 million Americans that now have a side hustle. They've got a 1099 from somewhere, and I have to presume you're using some little space in your house, even if it's just a corner of the house for home office. And I'll just say the sister to this is if you have a home office, even 5 square feet, whenever you leave the home office, to go do business, it is no longer commuting. It is a tax deduction from your home office to go visit a customer, a client, go to Staples, go to the Apple Store, go to Home Depot, wherever. So you need the— you can't write off mileage if you don't have a starting point and an ending point. So when you don't have a home office, what's the starting point? You lose it under audit. So get the home office. That's my number 8.

All right, one thing I'll just add to that is remember this administrative exception. If even if you have another place of business but you have it, you do have a separate spot in your home that is exclusively used for business, you can still take home office for that separate space within your home. So that's one thing a lot of people miss is they think, oh well, I have another place where I might meet patients or clients or sometimes, um, 'But that means I can't take the home office.' No, no, no, you can still take that. There's this administrative exception that allows you to take still a home office deduction if you, again, have a separate spot exclusively used for your home. All right, one of the next one I'll add in, and Mark kind of, you know, tiptoed into this one, is mileage. Okay, for auto. This is one commonly overlooked. I think a lot of people that are business owners, like, you know, we're not keeping a log and you're not tracking it on an app. And it's not like on your QuickBooks. It's not on your P&L unless you add it in. You've got to like have a record of this and, you know, to document where you, where you went. But any of your business miles, you went to a meeting, you drove to the airport and you flew out to a conference. You met on site with something. You went to a client place. You met with a vendor. You went and recruited an employee or a relationship or whatever this is. These are all business purposes. And that mileage that you've, that you've traveled to there is deductible. $0.70 a mile. Okay. If you come up with 10,000 of mileage, that's 7 grand of a deduction on your return. And again, this is one of those ones like home office that you're not— it's not on your— in your book keeping and financials. You're not going to see it in your credit card statements.

Did you pause when you said if you did 10,000 miles, that's— did you have to do the math on $0.70 on 10,000 miles, or were you just positive?

I think that was just like the internet connection. Oh, really? Yeah, definitely.

Pausing for effect. 0.7 times 10,000, $7,000 write-off. You know, come out with authority on that.

Just want to be precise.

Take it to the hoop. All right. Number 10. And then we're going to Q&A.

Travel.

Many, many of us went somewhere last year on a plane, paid for an Airbnb, paid for a hotel, for Uber, for a taxi, for valet, whatever. If you went to meet a customer, meet a client, close a sale, buy supplies, go tour a competitor's facility, a customer's facility, anything that you had your board meeting with your family. Some people have something in November called a board meeting and actually eat turkey on a Thursday. That's what we do. I don't know what Thanksgiving is. I just know we're having a board meeting. So if you can justify some airfare, hotel, anything for a justified meeting, which I love, a bona fide meeting, which I love the home board meeting with your family, Please take advantage of it. Travel again is so often overlooked on a client's tax return. And I'll just say this, look what Matt brought up, maybe $5,000 to $7,000 of mileage, home office, maybe $1,000, some travel, $2,000 or $3,000. People, you're at like $12,000. If you're in a 30% bracket, you just saved $4,000 right there. You're welcome.

Yeah. And that's just federal. Yeah. If you're in California, that's another, you know, $1,200, $1,500.

Brutal. Brutal. Okay. All right, Tristan.

Okay. Well, I think everybody's being shy.

What?

You know, we got a lot of people on, but like, people are shy.

Yeah, you got— and the few questions that are in here, Mark, real loaded. I can give you some loaded questions if you'd like, but I'll start with this one. How about that?

I don't know what loaded means, but I'm locked and loaded. Bring it.

Where do we go to speak with a tax and legal or retirement specialist? Would that be KKOS?

Well, okay, good. You know, this is going to be number 11 tip. If you're trying to come up with last-minute tax strategies, you're screwed. You should have been doing this in fourth quarter. Tax planning for 2026 starts right now. You don't wait until freaking April next year. So we have at KQS Lawyers a comprehensive tax consultation under $2,000. We go through your entire tax return, build you a trifecta, come up with a plan for this year where you're proactive, and it is so much more effective. We do have our tax network of CPAs. And by the way, if you're going to go look for a new accountant and you're frustrated with your last year's accountant, you're hearing us going, what the hell? My accountant doesn't talk like this. If you need a new accountant, you can go to our Main Street Tax Advisor Network. And interview and find a new advisor. But let me just tell you, no one is going to do a discovery call with you between now and April 15th. So file an extension. We'll talk about sending in a deposit, come do a comprehensive tax consult with KKOS Lawyers, and find a new advisor on our network. Yeah, problem solved. So be proactive about this year. That's tip number 11.

Awesome.

Right. Nope.

You got another one?

Yeah, we got a few. We actually—

All right. You're—

you work there, Matt.

Yeah.

Jdel01 asks, I contributed to my solo 401k at the end of 2025, but I found enough write-offs that I actually over-contributed. What is the best way to correct this?

Okay. Over-contributed. Tell me what that is.

So I presume you are contributing based— see, here's— you must be, uh, self-employed as a sole prop because if you're an S corp, it's it doesn't matter, it's off your W-2. So I don't care, you could have a loss on your S corp return and whatever your W-2 is, what you're contributing in to your solo K. So I presume you are a sole proprietor where your contribution's based on your self-employment income. So what you can do is you'd have to reduce the contribution and take it back out. And you're going to want to do this before your return is filed.

Hold it. I got to back up here. Yeah, make sure I understand this. Okay. And we may need this person to amend their question. You said I contributed to my 401(k). Now that means you—

solo 401(k).

Solo 401(k). So you have an S corp.

No, they didn't say that. That's what I'm— that's why I'm saying.

Oh, okay. So you put money in your solo 401(k), but you didn't have enough earned income to do it. Now, if you had an S corp, You would have taken payroll and contributed up to at least—

and it wouldn't matter.

Yeah, it wouldn't matter. But if you're a sole proprietor doing a solo 401(k), which is actually pretty rare, really—

isn't this what I just said? Keep going.

But I'm just adding to it. I'm just adding to it. But so now you have—

so, Jadel, are you, are you a sole proprietor? Let's just ask that. I think that's what we're trying to get at here, right? If you're, if you're an S corp owner, that doesn't matter. All these deductions you're getting are reducing your profit, which is on your K-1. Yeah, for you. And most people who are frankly putting a lot of money in a, in a solo K are S corp owners. You should be. That's a better tax bucket strategy to be in. So I presume you're self-employed, in which case that's the only way this question matters. Yes, you will have to reduce your contribution and take it back out.

Do you just call your How would you do it, Matt? You call your—

Well, if you're self-employed, you wouldn't have filed your return yet. So it's not reported yet to the IRS what you contributed. So you'd have to take it back out. If you have investment earnings and growth on that, that is taxable though. But otherwise you can reduce the contribution and have a return for overcontribution as long as you do this before you file your return.

All right. I, I think in this situation too, This is fairly, there's some complexity here where I would recommend again filing that extension and talking to your tax advisor about unwinding. Maybe it's not necessary, the S corp, your sole prop, what are you? I think there's enough there that trying to rush and file is not a good move in that situation. Next question, Tristan.

[Speaker:TRISTAN] All right, Rosie T5G asks, regarding the mileage deduction, can I use a percentage for personal to avoid tracking miles? Example is 30% personal, 70% business.

No, I don't think that's a smart move. Now here's a few, here's what I would do. I don't keep a logbook religiously. Who does? No one freaking does. Now there's software out there and GPS and all that. Is this Is this being recorded?

Yeah.

Should I not have said that?

No, I mean, I—

yeah, I mean, I have a logbook. I just don't share it with them.

But yeah, it's confident.

What you want to do is think of, okay, what's my typical week look like or typical month? Where do I drive? Blah, blah, blah. Come up with your normal routes and do the math. You know, just get on Google Maps, Apple Maps and just start doing some math. Come up with the typical, typical week, typical month. Multiply by 12 and then go with that. The biggest issue, some of the biggest audits I've seen on this is the IRS is like, okay, I'll take your mileage. Just prove your beginning and ending mileage. Did you have an oil change? Did you have your tires rotated? What was your mileage before you even started the year? Because if you said you had 8,000 business miles and 12,000 personal miles, I just want to make sure you hit 20. Show me that you had 20,000 miles to begin with. And so be a little more accurate and not round. Matt, your thoughts?

I mean, yeah. And like some of the, you know, yeah, I think accurate, not round is like, you want to nail it and be precise. I mean, one of the things I've done and other, it's like, I like have my calendar and it's clear where I went. And so I can know the mileage from these different places, you know, from my office to the airport. I know that one. Okay, I know that one. Okay. Or other regular places where you might have these business miles. So there's 10 of those during the year, you know, whatever it might be. So we can, we can, you can kind of recreate this if you, if you need to later. And that's common. Don't feel like if you don't have this logbook every mile or an app that you're SOL on the deduction. Just know you will need to have evidence of that if you're audited and you want to be realistic about it. That doesn't mean you just come up with some BS number.

Yeah. And I'm going to just throw this out too, and I'll probably piss off some accountants here, but I do not care if your accountant says— if your accountant, CPA, enrolled agent, whatever, says you got to bring me your logbook before I write off your mileage, you're fired. Your accountant is not the police for the IRS. Your accountant does not need to see your logbook. They ask you, do you have a logbook if I needed to see it? Yes. Done. Give them the mileage. Now what an accountant does have to do is say it has— they have to have good faith belief that you're remotely accurate. So if you're a dentist, you live 2 miles from your office and you've got 20,000 miles, your accountant's going to be like, uh, I don't think so. I need a little something because no dentist has 20,000 miles in business mileage because commuting from your house to your office does not count. Now if you're a realtor and you go, hey, I had 20,000 miles, I'm going to be like, you sure you didn't have 30? Because you're on the road, you know, 90% of the time. So your occupation is going to be reflective of what your mileage should be. So, but don't expect to produce a logbook for your account. Holy crap. All right, one last question, Tristan, then we'll go back to our list.

Awesome. And Jay Dell did come to correct, he is a sole prop and he did contribute more than his tax taxable income.

Okay, that makes sense. Take it out. If you didn't invest it, don't worry about it. Report the right contribution. If you did, you have to pay tax on the earnings you had. Yeah, there you go, Jadel.

Boom, great question.

All right, we got another one. Yes, final question. We're going to get back to some strategies and we'll come back for those of you got questions. I know, yeah, it just takes one person to get them going and then they start flying, right?

Uh, Vintage Finds asks, how do I open an HSA account outside of my work? They don't offer one?

Oh, great question. As long as you have a high deductible plan, you can open up an HSA wherever you want. You don't need to be with your employer's HSA. In fact, your employer's HSA probably sucks because you just put money in a savings account and you can't do anything with it but spend it out. The real value of an HSA is you put your money in and you invest it. Don't spend it back out for your medical. Why would you do that? This is a tax-advantaged account that grows and is going to come out tax-free later. Let that thing invest and grow. Let's pull the money out later because I can use my medical, even though I'm incurring this year, and pull it out 10 years from now. Yeah, for a qualifying medical I had now. Meanwhile, I have invested and grown it. So you can open up an HSA at Directed IRA. We have HSAs at Directed IRA. Of course, our company, directedira.com. You can self-direct it, put in a mutual fund, whatever you want. And you can also do it as a TD Ameritrade or a lot of other places where— but the point is, I want you to get the money in. Grab your contribution, get the deduction on the contribution and invest it.

Yeah. And I'm just going to say it another way here, too. Your employer has nothing to do with your HSA account. It's portable. You can take it anywhere you freaking want. You quit, it's yours. You want—

if you still work there, you still work there, you can move your HSA. It's not like a 401(k). A lot of employers just like lay an HSA up for you and say, we use XYZ company and they might throw some money in it for you and you use that company just because that's what they laid up for you. But you're not required to. You can move the money wherever HSA company.

Yeah. And any of you out there, just Google this. Matt and I are going to have articles and videos and podcasts on this. Just confirm you have a high deductible plan last year before December 1st. Didn't even matter if you had one all year long, just as long as you had it up and going by December 1st. Then you can go to Fidelity. I'm just Googling some of these. HSA Bank, Lively, TD Ameritrade, whatever. The one I would do, seriously, go to directedira.com and get our crypto HSA. People, crypto's down right now. I am all up on XRP because I know it's going to double.

Not investment advice. Yeah, today this is not investment advice.

Do your own research. But you could open up a Crypto HSA, and in 24 hours from now be buying XRP at a yearly low and double that HSA by next year.

Maybe do your research, but yeah, put it in whatever you want, you know, wherever you want.

You buy gold, you buy silver, buy crypto, buy Bitcoin, whatever the hell, but go to direct@ira.com for a crypto HSA. All right, I'm going to go back to our list. We are at 11. We're looking at number 12. I've got a couple. You ready to roll with one?

I got one. Yeah, why don't you go?

I got one.

You want me to go?

Okay.

All right. Equipment that you bought in your business. Okay. This could be the camera, the laptop, and I don't care if this is side hustle, main hustle. Take inventory on the stuff you bought in your business. Sometimes we end up buying it personally and it's not showing up in our financials or in our QuickBooks or accounting, however you're tracking your income and expenses and look, look at those things. Remember, we had the one big beautiful bill, bonus depreciation's back. So that could be something you get 100% write-off potentially on your return in 2025.

Oh my gosh. I want to add to that big time, people. Your business account does not have to pay for any new equipment you bought if you paid for it personally on a credit card, but it's used for business. And let's assume 100%. It could be anything over 50% use in your business you can depreciate. So do a percentage of use. That's where you can estimate. But let's say anybody with a side hustle is going to have a social media account. If you have a social media account, did you buy a camera, a tripod, a new cell phone, anything this year?

A selfie light.

People, and you can see the rule is if you buy a piece of equipment personally, and then you contribute it to your business, it's as if your business bought it and you can write off 100% of it with bonus depreciation this year. So love that tip, Matt. It's so good. All right, number 13. We've got to get there. I'm hating it, but we've got to go there. You need, if you file an extension, send in what you estimate you owe. If you say owe $20,000 in taxes and you had something withheld from work, but you had a small side hustle on the side and you think, and then I probably owe another extra $3,000 or $4,000. My withholdings at work covered everything I earned on my W-2, but I got this extra side hustle. I'm probably going to owe some taxes. You have several ways to go at this, but if you don't deposit what you owe, whatever that remainder is, like say you put in $4,000, you owe an extra $5,000. It's not the end of the world. Make sure you pay it before you file your tax return by October 15th. You'll file it with your tax return. There is a penalty for not sending in everything you owe by April 15th, but it's like half a percent per month. It is not the end of the world. It's cheaper than a credit card. So now I'm just saying, Don't get pissed if you have a penalty and you're like, well, Mark said it's not— it could be a big deal to you. But the point is, send in what you think you owe. Now I've got 5 quick ways to estimate it. This is an article on my site. I'm just going to say briefly, you can go to look at my article on this. Just look at what you paid last year in taxes and then estimate how much more money you made and take 25% of it. Send it in. Just, you know, good little estimate. Number 2, look at what your tax rate was last year, how much you made this year, how much you deposited, and within a half hour you can be like, oh, this is probably what I owe based on my tax rate. Your tax rate may be less than 25%, it might be more than 25%. It's called your marginal rate. Number 3, just look at your taxable income, take again a 25% look at it, and just send that in. Especially if you don't have any W-2 withholdings. Now, the technical rule is there is no penalty if you send in at least 110% of what you owed last year. That, and that's if you make more than $150,000 a year, you got to send in 110%. If you make less than $150,000, it's 100%. So you could just send in this amount and there's no penalty. You set in the safe harbor. And then the last one is do a mockup of your tax return. You may not send it in because you want to still sharpen the pencil. You're going to go, you know, look for these write-offs, the mileage, the equipment, go through all of your credit cards and find anything else you could have written off. But just do a mockup on TurboTax if you're doing it yourself and come up with a number again, send it in. So try to send in an amount with your extension to reduce any penalties. Not a sexy strategy, but got to talk about it.

I think that is the strategy. That is like the strategy is extend and come up with more deductions, give yourself more time and reduce your chance of audit.

You know, number 14, Mr. Sorensen, what do you got, man?

What you can do before year end that is actually going to work still. This is where we start having to, you know, scrape the bottom of the barrel and, you know, just not willing to go there.

So I want to give it to—

I want to give— I want to kind of flip this now for a second. We got some other questions we can hit too. But I just want to say a lot of the great tax planning strategy is stuff that you need to start doing right now and that matters for 2026. Us trying to pull a rabbit out of our hat for 2025, there's just not much. Kind of what we've hit. Look back on some of those stuff that wouldn't be in your books. Travel, home office, you know, um, maybe some equipment you forgot about. We got all the retirement account stuff that you can still do, and that'll still help you on your 2025 return or get money in for 2025 contribution amounts. Um, but, but I think one of the biggest ones goes back to structure, and this is probably my before we get more questions, I would say the structure of your business entities, how you're receiving your income is one of the most critical things in how you're going to save taxes at the end of the day. So have you done a trifecta? Do you know you have the right entity? Are you someone that still has a C corp? Are you a sole prop and you should have an S corp? Are you using an LLC thinking that LLC is what saves taxes? That's not what saves taxes. So I think understanding the right structure for how you're receiving your income would be the first step. And that's what we're helping clients. It's not meant to be— I mean, today's webinar is brought to you by our KQS Lawyers, by the way. This live is brought to you by KQS Lawyers. So, you know, but that's what we're doing with clients every day, guys. I use all these entity structures for my business. Mark uses them, right? We're operating these structures ourselves and that's what's helping us save tax. So get the structure right. It's not something we can go back and fix for 2025, but we know we can get you right for 2026.

I like it. Needed to be said. Not a last-minute tip, but definitely a 2026 tip. And I love it. I've got 2 more that'll round.

Okay.

All right.

I'm curious what you got.

Okay. And this will round us off for 15-year, you know, last-minute tax tips. The next one is the Coverdell. Now, the Coverdell is an April 15th deadline. And if any of you are— and the tax strategy is, I don't want to pay taxes on money and help my kids go to college or private school in high school or whatever. I want to invest it in gold, silver, crypto, stock, real estate, and then not pay tax on that money and have it come out tax-free for college. So it's again a short— kind of a short-term pain, long-term gain. But the deadline's April 15th. So what it means is you could put $2,000 in an account for last year for any child under age 18. And in this Coverdell, get a tax-free account growing for college. Then you could put your $2,000 in for this year. So you could double down, get $4,000 in, in the next 4 weeks into an account for any of your kids or grandkids. I'm doing this with my grandkids. I've got 4 grandkids. I'm going to drop in $4,000 each. That's $16,000. It's growing tax-free. Now I could pay my kids to pay my grandkids to help with the business. Now I just got a write-off. The $2,000 for this year would work because it happened this year. But the $2,000 for last year, I couldn't— I can't just say I did it. I'd have to do it. So anyway, I love the Coverdell, and you can go to directedira.com and set up a crypto Coverdell. I freaking love it. All right, my number 15, and then we'll go to our Q&A. Number 15 is do not forget your state tax deposit or state tax extension.

Okay. When you did Coverdell, I was like, that's actually a good tip. Now we are officially at the bottom of the barrel. What? Keep going.

I don't agree with that because if you're going to file an extension, I'll tell you right now.

Okay. The states are definitely more aggressive if you're, if you're late. They come fast.

I'd rather fight the— I'd rather fight the IRS than the California Franchise Tax Board any day. True. So in Idaho, even Idaho, just they nail you with some major penalties. So if you're going to file an extension, don't— oh, the state will be okay. No, it will not be. So I think that that's a big one. State tax deposit with your extension. All right. That's my 15. Love it or hate it.

All right. I love it. I feel like we need to come up with one more just so we can do like the sweet 16. I'll count.

You know, let's see what comes through in our questions. We might find something.

Yeah. Yeah. We can get one more tip in there and we got the sweet 16. It's March Madness.

So that's true.

It's true.

All right.

All right. We got—

all right.

Oh, I'm not even going to try that name. My CPA says I have an office in my business. So no room for home office. Is that accurate?

Oh my hell. It's called the administrative exception. You can Google a grok, ChatGPT, Mark Kohler, home office, administrative exception. I got account articles, videos, whatever.

We've done a podcast episode on it on the Main Street Business Podcast.

Oh my gosh, people, this is a key example of how you You could very well need to upgrade and make a change with your tax accountant advisor. We like tax advisors, not just tax preparers. We want people that are giving advice. Now, I'm going to tell you what your accountant's going to say right now. They're going to go, oh, well, the simplified method for the administrative, it's only going to be, well, $5 a foot, you know, for a max of $1,500. It's not even worth it. Yeah, but you didn't even bring it to me. You didn't even bring it. So what else are you not bringing to me? Because you're going to be afraid you didn't tell me last year. This is where it drives me crazy. If you go to your accountant and go, hey, why don't I have my kids on the payroll? I should have been doing that in December. Well, you know, it's high risk and you don't want to do that and get audited and— no, maybe I do. Why didn't you bring it to me? It's because they didn't think about it. They didn't reach out. And the only thing they can do is poo-poo it. Because they're afraid they're going to look bad. People, be careful when your accountant shoots down ideas. They should be bringing it.

Yeah.

And a $1,500 deduction, by the way, you're in a 1/3 tax. That's $500 for what is it going to take? 2 minutes to add this on your return.

It's not that hard. Totally.

And yeah, so I— that you're good. Go get— go chase that deduction. Grab it. And I think the best thing about tax planning and just the most successful clients, you are not doing one strategy that's going to save you money. If you want to talk about significant tax savings, you're doing like 15 or 20 different things that when you add them all up, it's not just thousands, it's tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of deductions and savings.

Totally agree. Totally agree. Tristan, next.

Brenda asks, I invested in real estate using my self-directed IRA. How do I account for the directed IRA annual fees that I will be paying out of my personal account? The deal went bad without payments. I need to know if this can be claimed as a loss.

Oof, that's a— Several issues there.

That's a lot of questions there. Okay. Um, first, your account fees that you pay, directed IRA, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade for your IRA, even for your regular brokerage accounts, not expenses. You can't expense that stuff. Okay.

You can pay for it personally.

Yeah, you can pay for it personally, but it's not an expense or a write-off. Yeah.

All right.

So now if you made an investment that went bad, um, that's also— there's nothing— you just like, you bought stock that went down, or like, it's just like you have a loss. Like, you don't pay gains on investments in your retirement account. You don't take a loss either. So not a lot of help, Brenda. Sorry. Sorry, that's the right answer. All right, next one, Tristan.

Okay, and this will be the last question. So Anne asked, can you speak to the real estate professional qualification? Once you meet it, what's the benefit?

Well, yeah, a lot there. I'll take first stab at it. And first of all, okay, real estate professional is a part of an overall strategy. It's not just like the get all into, oh, I'm a real estate professional, I get a write-off somewhere. There's going to be a material participation conversation. What type of real estate are you owning? Are you doing bonus depreciation? What are your write-offs? So it's part of a coordinated strategy now, which, by the way, is freaking awesome. Matt and I both own rental property. We take some write-offs for depreciation just on our self-rentals. We rent buildings to our business. We don't even have to be a real estate professional and we get the self-rental dash 4. We might do a short-term rental like an Airbnb. I did one last year. Can I take a write-off for that and not even be a real estate professional? Sure, 'cause I put in 100 hours of material participation. So don't think like it's the holy grail. And to qualify, you've got to put in 750 hours and it's got to be your primary occupation being in real estate. But even if you do that, you still have to show that you participate in the real estate under one of 7 tests. But if your spouse qualifies, you both qualify, I love it. And I mean, Matt, this is part of the consultation that we'll do at KQS is to see, can we shoehorn you into this? It could be a big deal.

Yeah, this could be a big one. Real estate professional, you or your spouse, one of you qualifies, you both qualify. And if you don't qualify, there's other strategies you could possibly use if you are a real estate professional or if you're a real estate investor. But even just real estate in and of itself, just keep in mind Let's say you're not a real estate professional, but you're getting good real estate income. You have good cash flow on the property, like there's money in your pocket. The property is appreciating in value. Your wealth is expanding. What does it look like on your tax return? Nothing. Nothing. The appreciation, you're not paying taxes on it, right? That cash flow coming in, you can take the depreciation to offset the cash flow, accelerate depreciation if you need to, to offset the cash flow.

You don't have to be a professional to do that.

Yeah, you don't need to have a professional to do that. I can even offset other properties that are cash flowing better with losses generated by depreciation. Depreciation is like a phantom loss. It's not like you're expending the money, like, you know, the mortgage interest you're paying or the property manager you're paying. That is actual, like, you're giving money, right? The IRS gives this depreciation thing because they presume assets go down in value over time. Well, yeah, things, certain things do that. Like a piece, like the laptop I bought in 10 years isn't going to be something I'm going to use anymore. But that real estate I bought 10 years ago, it actually goes up in value. It's not a— but the IRS lets you take a depreciation loss on it. This is how the tax code works. So even if you're not, we still like the real estate strategy. And that's my approach on it, where it's like I'm making cash flow on this, my wealth is growing, but I'm not getting hit tax-wise on the real estate side on my tax return. So yeah, still, still a good deal without real estate professional.

Yeah. And I want to add one last thing here. And thank you everybody for watching. Please share this with a friend or family member. If you've saw the 15 tips, one of these have got to have landed with you, and we hope that it did. And we're not going anywhere. We both have very, very active YouTube channels, and we're doing social media posts on a regular basis. Our two podcasts, the Directed IRA Podcast and the Main Street Business Podcast, please go check them out.

Monthly webinars at KQS Lawyers too, by the way.

KQS, monthly webinars, Direct IRA.

Yeah. Yes. We were like—

you need to be having a source for your tax strategy. It's not like, oh, I'll find a good accountant and they'll take care of it. No, you cannot pay someone enough to care more than you. You are the captain of your ship. You've got to be aware of the strategies and then expect to have conversations with an advisor, not just someone that's going to plug numbers in. But the point I wanted to make is tax savings is a long-term game. It's the long-term game. It's like that buying real estate is going to grow tax-deferred and taking write-offs, even if you don't get them right now. I'm not a real estate professional. Uh, I'm not going to pay my kids. It doesn't matter. No, you'll harvest it later. You'll, you'll be able to take those losses someday. Doing a Roth IRA and investing it so that I don't pay taxes someday. Doing the Coverdell, doing a lot of these strategies. It's the long-term game. And that's where the rich get richer. This is how wealthy people stay wealthy. They're playing that long-term game. So be patient. You might be right now be frustrated that you didn't do a lot of things last year. Well, change the— change your story. Yeah, it happened this year.

So yeah, yeah, the best time to plant a tree was, you know, I don't know what that is, but so, but you know, we don't have DeLoreans and plutonium, guys, you know, to go back in time. So, but we can affect what we're doing today and come up with a great plan and strategy. And we want to be a resource to you, whether it's more education and content here or you're booking a call with our team. We have this QR code. We're going to show that. Have you been already doing that? I don't know. We have this little cute— oh, that doesn't look great. Yeah, there you go.

All right.

There we go.

You can—

I mean, how do you do a QR code if you're watching?

I guess you could pull out your phone.

I don't know. I'm not savvy on this stuff, but kcoslawyers.com, or you can hit that QR code. Our team at KCO would love to help you on that journey, whether you're— you got a side hustle, a main hustle, real estate investor, crypto, self-directed investor. We're here for you. Want to be a resource and find strategies to keep more money in your pocket and also help you protect your assets and help you start growing and building wealth. All right.

Um, thanks everyone.

Yeah. Are we signing off?

I think we're done.

Okay.

Yeah. All right. Well, thanks everybody. Um, we'll be here next week, um, doing live broadcasts on both of our channels and our podcast. Uh, we're recording tomorrow, both of them. So dial in, follow. I know we will help you better live your American dream. I just know it. We, we see it every day in our business. So thanks so much. We'll see you on the backside.