Tax & Legal Q&A: 25 Years of Tax Advice in 43 Minutes...

How much should I be paying for a tax advisor? I think a good tax advisor should save you far exceed what you're paying them.

Don't be gun shy with the high fees, but make sure they do have the credentials and the understanding. Worst thing is to pay a lot of money for a service provider that doesn't know the strategies that's going to actually help you save money. Start now in 2025. Cash app Venmo. All these payment apps are going to start sending you 1099ks and you don't

want to cheat on your taxes and then have to answer.

What Mark's saying is you don't want to be going to hell for.

This question is, what are my options? Am I screwed?

Run that for you.

Welcome, everybody, to today's episode of the Main Street Business Podcast. My name is Mark Kohler, here with the illustrious Matt Sorenson, and this is the People Show. I love doing the Open Forum.

Yeah, it's the Open Forum. This is where we answer your questions. Of course, those are more important than what Mark and I have questions about in life, but, yeah, this is tax and legal planning, guys.

So we, I thought we were talking about the super bowl this weekend and the spread. That's not. We're not answering that question.

I barely know who's in the super bowl, let alone have any ideas on what the spread is going to be. Even if I did, you wouldn't want to know what I think. All right, all right, all right. But I do got something to say about some of these tax and legal questions. Wealth building. So we're going to be diving into that. And if you're like, hey, why don't you guys talk about this? This is why we do this show. Go to mainstreetbusinesspodcast.com and you can submit your question there. And that's where we're getting the questions from today.

Yeah, we have several categories. Tax, general, Q and A, estate planning, finance. So several categories and please submit questions. We love it.

And it's dating tips. Whatever you need.

Yeah, dating tips. We'll go there. And yeah, if you want to talk tax in be man, I'll tell you right now. It's the. It's the secret weapon.

Yeah, it's a secret weapon.

Yeah.

Want to put someone to sleep, but whatever.

That's right. Okay, I've got one here. Or do you want. You got your first one. You want to go.

I'll go first.

Okay.

Okay. Since you're. You're yielding.

I will.

I will take the time okay. All right. This is from Lynette. She says, how the heck do I put money into an hsa? Seems like a ridiculous question, but I specifically chose insurance that allowed me to open up an hsa, and here I am, two weeks before the end of the year, trying to figure out, where do I put the money in? I'd like to make it happen for this year. Can you help? Then she says, my husband and I are small business owners. We buy our own insurance through the marketplace. I appreciate you guys for all the inspiring podcasts you bring us. All right. Excellent question, Lynette.

Ooh, so much to unpack there.

Yeah, you get into so many different great things, which is why I want to do your question.

All right, so let's say deadline first. Let's make sure she doesn't feel urgent.

You do your questions, I'm going to do my questions. Okay.

All right. I just want to make sure you don't miss anything. All right. Okay. I'll back clean up on your question because I know you're going to blow it.

Yeah, no, no pressure, no pressure. Okay, let's work from the deadline. Get that out of the way first.

Well, that's a novel idea.

I thought we should start there, Lynette.

Okay.

All right. So the good news is, Lynette, is you've done right. You've set up the HSA qualifying plan. That's the first thing you needed. The qualifying plan in 2024. We're sitting in February 2025 as we're recording this. But you talked about this back in December, setting up the HSA qualifying high deductible plan. But you're like, but I don't know where to put the contribution in. That's okay. You have until April 15th to make your contribution for the prior year as long as you had the HSA qualifying plan in the prior year. Okay, that's point number one that I want to make for you, Lynette. So don't worry if you didn't do this yet. By year end, you're okay. Now, the second question of where the heck do I put this? Make sure you all understand an HSA account is different from your HSA qualifying insurance plan. An HSA account can be set up wherever you want. Your bank probably offers one. Maybe the health insurance company you're with has a referral that they send people to. Or even better, you could go to our company directed ira, where you can have an HSA that could invest in crypto, into real estate, into private companies. It could do stocks or Mutual funds. But the health savings account is the place where you put your contribution, where you get a tax deduction. You can invest it and pay no tax on the gains, and it comes out tax free for your qualifying medical. That's different than your insurance plan and the company you got the policy with on the marketplace. All right, one other thing, and then I'll let you clean up here.

Well, there's so much here. You're done. Fantastic.

Thank you. Thank you.

You've had so many good things.

I started off where I should.

Yeah, I'm working. Oh, my gosh. You're so passive aggressive.

Some fun here, you know? All right, guys, we're talking about health insurance and health savings accounts.

We gotta ham this up a little.

We gotta work with what we got here. Okay? So here's what I want you to know, Lynette. And this is an awesome concept. Right now. You can put 8,500 bucks approximately for a family. You mentioned you got a spouse. You got a husband. So you guys could be doing 8,500 bucks. I think it's 8,550 a year for what you put in 2024 and 25. It's a little different. But right now you could do both. You could be having $16,000 into the HSA right now. And I want to talk about why 2024 contributions you can still do up until April 15th. 2025. Contributions are available right now because we're in 2025. Now. There's one thing I want you to know about your scenario, Lynette, and this is really important. For anyone else that just set up an HSA qualifying plan last year, there's something called the last month rule that says as long as you had this HSA qualifying plan before, in December, before the end of the year, you can make the contribution as if you had it for the whole year. Because there's something called the pro rata rule for HSA contributions that says. Let's say, for example, in 2025, you close your HSA qualifying plan in June. It says, well, you can only do pro rata 6 months. You only do half of an HSA contribution for that year. But when it's the first year, when you set it up, that pro rata rule doesn't apply. And a lot of people misapply that and say, well, I can only do 1/12 because I only had it for one month. No, your first year, when you're setting it up, as long as you have it by year end, you can do the full year of Contribution. So hopefully that's a good little tip for everyone else. But that's some of the cool stuff about an hsa. Hopefully that's helpful in that.

Yeah. And I gotta add a little cleanup here. And this will be insightful, hopefully.

Yeah.

First, I want to say this too in a simple way. When you said, how do I fund my hsa? You open up the account, you ach the money in or send in a check. You can go to direct@ira.com to open up that HSA account there so you can self direct it. And again, like Matt said, just find a platform that sponsors hsa. Don't worry about insurance companies. That's where you buy the insurance. This is where this. Kind of think of it like an IRA for health care. So you're just going to open that HSA anywhere? That's the easy part. Now I will throw this out. Yeah, I'm playing a little investigator here. Now, in Lynette's question, she said, I just opened my HSA insurance plan and I two weeks ago and I want to make my deposit before year end. Okay, let's think about this. If she just set up her health insurance plan in the middle of December, I have a feeling it may not be effective until January 1st. If that's the case, Lynette, you've missed out on 2024 contribution because the plan had to be in effect by December 1st. So not sure. Just want to, I'd say look into that, make sure if it was effective in December, you're good to go. Everything Matt said, awesome. Also you said, oh, I'm a small business owner and we've got all these other things going on. I suspect you probably have an S corporation. An S corporation. And if you do make a contribution for last year, make sure that Your S Corporation W2 payroll indicates that. Because you can lower your FICA wages on your W2 and save another 15% on the HSA contribution if you put it on the W2 properly. Now that's a little technical, but a good tax advisor can make that happen very simply with no additional cost. Because this is just. This is ABC's 101 for a good tax advisor. They're going to be all over this. I'm just so proud of you for listening to the show. You're on this, you're taking the initiative and now it's making sure you're aligned with your advisor.

So good stuff.

Now that does lead me into my question from Quality Pool Service. Oh, hey guys. Let me first take a minute. Thank you. For all the videos and you make to help educate us newbies. I don't always understand it all, but you brought my knowledge from 0 to 100 real quick. So thank you. Every Wednesday for 10 years. Matt and I have been in here at least 10 years.

That's a heck of a good time.

It's been good.

It's the best meeting of the week.

It is. I.

Okay.

So he said, I bought a pool route about 15, 1.5 years ago. I spoke to 1, 800 accountant and they put together a great plan. Okay. When I told them that you said to file an S corporation, they wanted $5,000 to prepare two years of returns. I don't know why they do two years. I wasn't sure if they would even save me that much and they offered no guarantee. So I ended up going to a CPA that only wanted $500 for my personal return and with a schedule C and 750 for the S Corp filing. So they went to the other extreme and they recognize this and says who's that?

Cpa.

Yeah, I know, but it seems I'm telling them what to do now instead of them advising me. So you go with a cheaper person, you're in charge. You go with a super expensive one, you get taken advantage of. So they're in a hard part spot. So the question is, she says or he here, how much should I be paying for a tax advisor? My pool route is generating about 100 grand. As a bonus question, the expensive advisor. I don't know which one. Oh, the expensive would want to be the first one. Said that I should lend the business the amount to cut and charge 50% interest.

Oh, good lord. I know.

And write it off in the S Corp. The less expensive advisor said that would make no sense because I would have to pay tax on the interest income because you'd have to pick up the interest income with the business paying you and you get a write off. It's a vicious cycle. At least the cheap accountant could see that.

Yeah.

Now here's where quality pool service. I want to just. My heart goes out to you and I know there's many, many listeners. You're just so frustrated with the accounting industry and you become apathetic and start saying I'm just gonna freaking knock it out on TurboTax and listen to Mark and Matt and do the best I can. And I can understand why when I hear stories like this. So I want to just tell you. Yeah, I'm sorry, It's. It's sad. Now what I've been trying to do. My mission the last two to three years has been and Matt and I've been doing it together is helping accountants around the country level up. So we I've been spearheading the Main Street Tax Pro Network where I have now over educated a thousand accountants around the country. And they speak Mark and Matt now and they're certified on 80 topics and da da da, da da. Well, here's the good news for all. I'll come back to how much you should pay, but let me just say that network is available to all of you listening or watching today. You can go to markjkohler.com click under Services and go to the TaxPro Network. TaxPro Network. It's like a LinkedIn page with almost 400 different accounts around the country and they can't be on that list unless they have tested out on all the topics Matt and I teach. And they're incredible. I learned from them many, many times. It's an incredible community. So if any of you are looking for a tax advisor this tax season and you're already frustrated that you're going to be going to the same bozo that you did last year, level up. So go to the Main Street Tax Pro Network. Should have a link down below maybe. Okay, now with that said, how what should you expect? First of all, it's sad here. One person's charging way too much and giving bad advice. The other person, they're charging way too little and not giving any advice. And it's very, very common quandary. If you go to one of the tax pros in our network, they get to charge what they want to charge. We don't tell them and we don't make any money on what they charge. So that's nice. You can do several discovery calls with advisors. I recommend all of you do that. But here's what I would expect. You're going to be probably paying a monthly fee, which is nice for your budget, which will include your tax prep for the year and a quarterly phone call or strategy session throughout the year. We call that tax advisory services. We want our advisors to have a relationship with their clients where they're meeting at least quarterly. Some of you may want them to meet monthly, but the price, what you pay monthly could be $500, 1,000amonth, $2,000 a month. I don't know. It depends on what you need. Is there bookkeeping involved? Is there payroll involved? How many tax returns are involved? You get to negotiate that and talk with the advisor and find the right price. I think in your situation, having an S Corp return, a 1040, some payroll, needing some advice, you're going to be between probably 500 to 1,000amonth. And I don't know how much bookkeeping support you might need, but that 4 or 5,000 during the year is going to not only get your tax work done, some payroll done, some minor support with bookkeeping, depending on what you need there, but it's going to get you advice. A good tax advisor should save you far and exceed what you're paying them and they're going to solve this S Corp issue and all the strategies of paying the kids and board meetings and travel and all that. So any strategy Matt and I teach, they're going to bring to bear to help you in that process. So get to the network, do some discovery calls, find someone. The nice thing is you're going to know they have the knowledge. Now you're just looking for the services you need at a price point that works for you, young or old. East coast, west coast, big firm, little firm, you get to choose.

Love it. I was just looking up what I paid for my own S Corp tax return just to give you an idea. And I paid 2,500 bucks for my S Corp return. So now that's a good accountant. Happy with them. They know what they're doing.

They're in our network.

They're actually one of the CPAs in our network, their firm, they got a number of accountants there and so now I would say they even discount mine a little bit. So you do get what you pay for a little bit. And this is for a lot of professionals. And here's what happens to a good CPA and like any other professional, anybody. This could be someone that, you know, paints houses, does build homes, fixes cars, I don't care. Anybody that has, you know, that's good at what they do. Their clients don't leave because they're great and they get to charge more. Now sometimes you do get the people who are great at marketing but shitty at what they do and they, so they get a lot of people in and they burn them and they don't keep them and so they just keep charging high fees. So get good referrals, make sure they understand the strategies. The number one solution, that's the tax advisor network Mark just mentioned. Don't be gun shy with the high fees, but make sure they do have the credentials and the understanding. And, and I like your diligence where you started talking about the strategies you want to do. They don't Understand that Run.

Yeah.

The worst thing is to pay a lot of money for a service provider that doesn't know the strategies that's going to actually help you save money. It's one thing if they get the strategies and you're getting all the tax savings and the cost of them helping you is minimal to the tax savings, you realize. So.

Oh, I want to say one, just one last thing too. Matt's book, the Directed IRA Handbook. Incredible. My book, the Tax and Legal playbook. Love it. I think those are two mainstays that should be on your business desk. And we've written them, so they're very understandable for the average business owner. They're not made for the professional, they're made for you. And but here's the point. When you go out, some of you are like, well, I've got this great accountant, kinda. I'm not ready to qu quit on my accountant. Ask them to level up. Say, hey, I've been reading Mark's book. It's a best seller. Matt's book, best seller. Take him a copy as a gift. Say, please read these. I want to be on the same page with you. If you don't like what they're saying, let's talk. But they've got credentials. They're not out there crazy talking. And then if they are like, wow, thank you. Say, go level up. Go to the Main Street Tax pro certification. I'll bring you more friends because if I have more confidence in you, Mark and Matt are going to send you clients too and you might be able to help them level up. This could be your brother in law, whatever. Okay, next question. Let's keep moving.

Send you more friends.

All right.

Okay. CP Gator asks, says, great show. I have a single member LLC for my rental house and my tenant pays me through my personal cash app account. When I get a payment, I deposit it over to my business account. Would these be considered commingling since it's originally coming into a personal account? I'm going to come back to that. Actually, let me answer that because you got a second question. It's a great question too.

CP Gator.

Okay, I don't love that. CP Gator for a number of reasons. Yes, you do have this issue of someone be able to pierce the corporate veil. When you have an llc. One of the reasons you set up an LLC for your rental property is if the tenant slips and falls or there's any liability or something happens, they can't sue you. They have to sue the llc. So all your personal assets, your Job, your business, your paycheck, your retirement accounts, all your home, all those personal assets are untouchable to anything that happens in the llc. Unless a plaintiff's lawyer can pierce the corporate veil. The corporate veil is this protection an LLC has that says you can't go after the owner. You can just get to the llc. Well, how can a lawyer pierce the corporate veil? If you didn't respect the corporate veil, if you treated the LLC like it was your personal bank account, how can a lawyer show that you've done that? Well, if you're using personal bank accounts for the LLC's business, whether it's a Cash App account or an actual bank account, so stop doing that. You can still use Cash App. I'm okay with that. They have business accounts. And I know it's like, well, my tenant is an easy way for them to pay rent. Okay, fine. You can get a Cash App account in your business. All right, that was question number one here. Anything you want to add on that one?

Nope.

Okay. Okay, question. Let me add one other little tip here, actually, on that Cash App, Venmo. All these payment apps, by the way, are going to start sending you 1099ks. They're going to start sending those starting out in 2025. If it's a personal account, they don't send it to you. If it's a business account, they do send it to you. Now, I know what a lot of people are thinking. I'll just collect all this money in my business, whether it's a rental property or main business side hustle. I don't care what it is that way. I'm not going to get a 1099k from the cash App. That's wrong. You're jacking up the corporate veil here and the protections of the llc, which is the whole reason you have an LLC for your rental property. And even if you got paid the money, you still have to claim it on your taxes. The fact of you getting a 1099k is just a piece of paper that you're getting, the IRS gets too, but you still owe the tax anyways. Yeah.

And when the real problem is, is when you go up the escalator, that fateful day comes and, you know, Peter, James or John asks you, hey, did you cheat on your taxes? They could be showing you the way down to the other escalator that's going down. And you don't want to cheat on your taxes and then have to answer, you know, yeah. To the big guy.

What Mark saying is, you don't want to be going to hell for this. Be honest, you know, in your dealings with your fellow men. Okay. All right, second question here from CP Gator, which is a great one too. Says second question on this LLC for my rental house. It's a single member llc. How do I tell if I sign for an S corp? Where would I check to make sure I did that? It's been a few years. I'm not sure if I filed that form. Don't hope you didn't file that form, Kate. An LLC for a rental property, you do not want an S election on it. Do not have that tax as an S corp. Why do we do an S election or turn an LLC into an S corporation for tax purposes, to save on self employment tax. If you have a rental property, you get two types of income on a rental. Rental income as you're owning it and cash flowing it and capital gain income when you sell it. Neither of those types of income are subject to self employment tax at all. So you don't need an S corporation for your LLCs that hold rentals. Now, if you're selling goods or services, products, whatever it is, that's ordinary business income, you do pay self employment tax on that. That's where for small business owners, side hustle, main hustle. We love the S election on an llc, so hopefully you didn't file that. CP Gator. Never. This for everybody here. This is why we do left side, right side. When we talk about our trifecta, your right side is assets like rental properties. We don't want you to have selections over there. We want you to have LLCs that are flowing through directly to you or down to your trust.

The one thing I'm concerned about is CP Gator might be using the same LLC for his business and the rental property. And that's why they're thinking I made an S election. If that's the case again, make an appointment with one of the lawyers at our law office. It's very affordable and definitely in the big scheme of things. And we're a boutique firm for the small business owner. We're very affordable. We're not a big city firm that's going to take advantage. We want a relationship. You may have to restructure this llc, so get a call. Doing a review and getting your trifecta would be great. Anyway. Okay, KT Bagels. I use a license plate frame that has my. Now I'm gonna try. I've got to go faster because he goes on for a paragraph, but here's the gist of it, he has a license plate frame with his business phone number. I've got a front license plate with the QR code of my business. And I'm writing off miles when I go to my appointments and all that. But every time I drive, I've got this QR code on my license plate and I've got this cool license personalized plate. And so can I write off my entire car because I'm technically advertising everywhere I go. Well, KT Bagels is a very, very common question, and I think it's a very valid question. It's a common to think that you're like, hey, I use this car to drive around town and advertise. Of course, we see clients that use vinyl wrapping and go much more extensive than just a license plate. The problem is, no, the IRS has been very, very clear on this. Congress courts that you can only write off the mileage or your vehicle based on where you drive it. And commuting to your day job does not count. Going to the grocery store does not count, even if you're advertising along the way. So it's errands for your business, meeting with customers, meeting with vendors, going to different work locations or conferences or whatever. But it can't. Just because your license plate is an advertisement or you wrap your car, it is not going to write your vehicle, allow you to write your vehicle off more aggressively. So be careful there. Continue to track your miles and. And I love the auto deduction. I want to be very aggressive with the auto deduction, but whenever you put down I'm writing off this auto 100%, just know that the IRS's computer system is going, whoa, whoa, whoa. Is this a delivery vehicle? Because who in the hell drives their car 100% for business? They just don't. They're going to pick up a gallon of milk, they're going to go to a movie theater, they're going to go up to the lake on the weekend, you're hosed. So be very, very careful. If you say it's 100% business, because I don't even do that. I may go 90, but I'm not going to go hundy. So be careful.

All right? All right. Alec Bradley asked if I'm a small business owner and do not offer a safe harbor 401k to employees, but I have a separate small business where I do consulting work without any other employees, would I be eligible to set up a solo K in my consulting small business? What is the best option to help employees with retirement? If so, okay, let's ask your first question. All right, Alec, you have a business with employees. You have another business that just has consulting, that has no employees. Can you set up a solo 401k? No, you cannot. Sadly, what the IRS has said is in Congress is they created the retirement account rules. If you're a business owner, and in general, the rules get a little, there's a couple of shifts here, brother, sister, affiliated group rules and everything. But in general, if you own 50% or more of any business and you, you basically can, that has employees, you cannot do a solo K. And now

Matt says sadly, but I want to say the flip side of that is this. There's a purpose here and it's, it's so that employees are going to be allowed to have a place to do retirement planning and a 401k safe harbor. And it's not the worst thing in the world, the safe harbor plans either. But. But yeah. So there's two ways to look at it. Business owners are like, ugh. But you know, in the big scheme of things, the 401k is amazing. We all should be participating in 401ks, whether we're business owners or not.

You know, and let me just give an example. Like Mark and I, we own 50% or more of businesses that have employees. We cannot do a solo 401k. I'm in your same boat, Alec. Okay. Another way to think about this is when Congress came out with 401ks, they basically were like, this is for employees, whether you own the business or you don't. But then they said, you know what, we're not going to just let the business owner be like, well, I'm just going to do it for me. And then later on they came out and said, hey, we're just self employed people. We don't have employees. Like, well, we'll let you do solo 401ks.

Yeah, solos came in later.

There's no other employees here, so let's just let you do a solo 401k just for you. But the problem is now people are saying the business owners are over here with employees are like, I want to do that. No, no, no, no. This is only the solo key is only for you that have no other employees. Now let me give another variation though. Let's say you have a business with four partners and you own 25% of it, but you also have a separate consulting business. The other 75% of that business with employees, with other partners has no other family. It's just some business partners, you got another separate business that you don't have any employees in. Well you could do a solo K over here likely. So it just kind of depends on your ownership, where your employees sit and is that business truly separate or not

so and any of the tax lawyers at our office could guide you through this. So another important phone call because we can set up that solo 401k for you and allow you to self direct it and invest in real estate and all those goodies and they can guide you through the pitfalls of trying to do it and then having to unwind it if you you're not allowed okay so big no biz geek27 says so I elected an S Corp status for my single member LLC just before Christmas. Love it. Assuming you have the income to justify that. So that great move and everybody what we're hoping Bizgeek27 doesn't say this but hopefully he or she backdated that s election to 1124. So they made the S election right before Christmas. But on that form the they hopefully elected it back to 1124 which you can do. Some of you accountants might be freaking out. The 75 day rule does not apply when you refer to RevProc 20139 I think anyway. Or 2019-13 whatever. Anyway just there's a way to round that so we can easily go back and elect s corp status 1124 next sentence. But there was no time to have my accountant do payroll before year end. By the way, your accountant could do payroll before January 31st and you'd be okay. But I'm assuming that's what you mean. So anyway, hopefully your accountant didn't say sorry can't do this because they could have done it in January. So the question is what are my options? Am I screwed? The answer is no you are not screwed. There is a workaround the first year you claim that S election. Now assuming you made it back dated to 1124, assuming you had the income to justify this, and assuming your accountant knows what the hell they're doing, you might have to upgrade your accountant. Go back to the second question of the show regarding the network, but what your accountant can do is drive some FICA wages through a Schedule C and make sure that this is indicated on the proper line of 1120s, pick up the FICA wages on a schedule C and pay your fica. Do not double dip with the QBI deduction and be careful with the process. But it is audit proof. You will be okay if the IRS comes asking what the hell happened. And then this year you're going to do it right. You're going to get on top of quarterly payroll. Your accountant is going to do it correctly and not overcharge you, and you're going to be just fine. So there is a workaround this first time. If your accountant listens to this show, send them the show if they give you a hard time. And I will say this to any accountants out there that don't like this workaround. We have never had a client fail in rarely ever get audited or fail in an audit in 25 years because you pick up the FICO wages as long as you pay the. What's the damage? The IRS can't complain. Now, they may have questions. Why is it not on box 7 of 1120s when or is it or was there payroll withholding? You know, there's some questions there, but you're okay. Now, we teach this strategy and how to do it in the Main Street Tax Pro program. I have a whole module just on S Corporations where you're going to test out 15 to 20 questions. You work in the community. We're on the cutting edge of issues like this and many, many others. So make sure your accountants up to speed on that. If you accountants out there want to level up right now, even during tax season, please go to marcjkoler.com and sign up for a discovery call. And we'll get you certified and help get you more clients, charging more, helping more clients. And your clients will love you. It's a win, win, win. Love it.

Let's put an amen to that. All right, I'm gonna do my last question. I don't know if you had your last, last one here. All right, this is from RJ Growth 48 and says is an IRA LLC able to buy Bitcoin? If so, how? Great question. Let me say a couple things just for everybody who are like, well, how does a retirement account buy crypto? Well, we have a couple options on the ways to do it. The easiest way RJ Growth 48 to do this is to use our crypto IRA product. It's Directed IRA. Go to Directed IRA.com. we have a crypto IRA product. What happens is you can transfer over money from any IRA that you might have somewhere else. Roth IRAs could be even an HSA, traditional IRA, SEP, IRA, Solo K, whatever it is. And we it's specific for crypto. We then open up a Gemini account. We have a special relationship with Gemini, one of the major exchanges out there, and we fund it. But who's the owner of that Gemini account. Not you, your. Your ira, or excuse me, you get Roth ira, traditional ira, doesn't matter. Now, you're right on the Gemini exchange. And you can buy and sell crypto right there. That's our crypto IRA product. It's easy. We handle it. We link your retirement account, tax favored account to your Gemini trading account, which is where you have access to 30 plus, sorry, 60 plus cryptocurrencies. This could be Bitcoin, this could be XRP, Solana, whatever you want to buy and sell. And Mark and I have both done this, by the way, ourselves. Okay, well, what if I want to use an IRA LLC, as R.J. gross said? Well, that's the old school way to do it. The reason that structure I say is the old school way to do it is is this much harder to execute on. Now, when I first shot my video talking about how you can buy crypto with a. How you can buy bitcoin and crypto with an IRA in 2017, and I showed how I bought Bitcoin was 2,500 bucks per BTC back then. This is an old, terrible video quality, but, you know, I was showing you how to do this. We used an IRA LLC to do it. That's what I used. In that structure. When you have an IRA llc, and I'm assuming you know what that is already where you're here, where your IRA owns an LLC, typically 100%, you're the manager of the LLC. The LLC has a business checking account. What I did back then and what you can still do today is I linked that LLC business checking account to an Exchange Wallet. I used Coinbase back then when I did it. I've since linked it to other providers. And we typically will use Kraken right now if you're trying to do this. But here's the problem. If you go to any reputable place that offers an exchange, because here's your issue. You have US Dollars in a bank account owned by the IR LLC that you need to get on an exchange somewhere to go buy crypto. Right? Well, how do I do that? Well, I got a link to some reputable crypto provider, whether it's a Coinbase, a Gemini, a Kraken, or whoever it may be. Well, guess what they're busy doing right now? Opening up business institutional accounts for people trying to buy tens and hundreds of millions of dollars of crypto. So if you're a small business owner with $100,000 or someone with an IRA LLC and you're trying to open up a business or institutional account with a crypto provider. It's freaking complicated. They treat you like you're a hedge fund that has hundreds of millions of dollars to invest or ignore you or ignore you, which they do right now. Now, if you were trying to do this a year or two ago, you would have been okay.

Why?

Because they're not freaking busy. It's like you went into the restaurant at busy time asking for a special request and order and to get seated in a special spot, and they're like, who are you? Okay, it's not a good time to do it right now. I'm just telling you the reality of it. Because I get clients calling me now,

it doesn't mean you still don't try. But just go in your eyes wide

open, and you can't. I'm just saying don't be like, well, Matt, you said I could do this. You can. But now we do have. Like I said, Kraken is probably the best at it right now. Gemini has been okay, but they don't have a special product for this, so they treat you like you're an institution. Okay. Just know that you're gonna be filling out a questionnaire that's like, how much money under management do you have? What licenses and insurance do you have? And you're gonna be like, what the hell? This is my llc.

But answer question. Because you are an institution.

Yes. You are a business. You're going through the institution application.

Don't lie on it, but just answer it. Oh, under a million.

Yeah.

Or whatever. Under the da, da, da. So don't get frustrated. Just tell them what they need to hear to get the damn account open.

Yeah, but here's why I'm saying it in this way, and maybe you can see my. My frustration in this is some way too many people think I can set up my crypto wallet right here in 30 seconds to do crypto personally. Yeah, you can. Good luck doing that with an llc. It's just not the same. So if you want the easy route, that's why we have the crypto IRA product. We open it, we have access to Gemini to link that specifically to our accounts. And we do a lot of regulatory and stuff in that process to make sure it happens. Right? So that's why we've done the quick and easy route, which is what I do now. I don't use the IRLC anymore for my crypto. I use the crypto IRA product even though I have an IRA llc. All right.

Love it, love it, love it. Okay.

That was a little ranty, huh?

No, no good. It was a wake up call. Wake up call. All right boy, usually Mark Kohler's the one ranty. All right, last question on this end. This is from Whelmed in Texas, he says or she says. S Corp 2 shareholders, husband and wife made 200k in passive income via trading, but minus 20 grand in gross receipts. C Corp. Same to shareholders carrying losses, minus 20. We'll come back to that. Requests number one and let me, I'll run through this quickly and then I'm going to end. I think this is a good wake up call for a lot of people listening. This is going to be good. Number one, is there any way to minimize tax on the S Corp before the K1 flow through as the personal itemized deduction option does not seem to help for 2024 sub point. I appreciate an email response. Please do not punt to any MJK affiliates in Houston. That's a non starter. Oh well, okay, we'll come back to that. Number two, I've also seen enough MJK videos to know in bold and italicized, we need help restructuring everything for the future. So this is cool. They're saying don't beat us up. We get it. We know we're jacked up as our kids are adults now. Don't know why that matters because your other issues have nothing to do with kids. And then finally request info for an in person meet with mjk. Man, my wife's trying to get one of those. So get behind her. Good luck. Do include in person meet in Vegas or Houston is an option. Yeah, I'm trying to go to Vegas for Valentine's. You know, maybe squeeze you in. All right.

Okay.

Okay.

All right. Now I'm surprised you took this question,

but no, I mean I, I, I'm not trying to mock this person. I'm really not. It's, it's funny and I appreciate their request. I mean you don't, if you don't ask, it's not gonna happen.

Right? Yeah.

Shoot your shot.

You know, so people have been trying to meet with Mark J. Kohler for a decade now.

Just please know, like he's, it's not. And I'm flattered by that and I appreciate it and I appreciate the question. Now the reason why I took this question is because some of you may have the same desire or interest or issues. And I want to respond because we do have solutions for this and I want you to feel confident in those. So number one, S Corp. 2 shareholders, 200 grand in passive Income that's not good. You cannot, you, you shouldn't have passive. That much passive income in the S corp. So you don't need an S corp. So we'd start. And you said this earlier. You're. Later you're like, we need, we know we need restructuring. How you have minus 20 in gross receipts. That's like you had 20 grand in returns but no sales. It's kind of weird. Like what you may be meaning is we have minus 20 grand in profit because gross receipts is a positive. Then you have expenses. Then you're going to end up with negative. But anyway, that's okay. Now is there any way to minimize expenses? Da, da, da. And says we need an email response. Don't punt to an affiliate. Well, first thing is, I apologize. This is an open forum show to help people in general nature and guide you. If you need an email response, hire one of the lawyers. And I think that's what you're implying here. I want an email response. Well, you're not going to get one for free. This, it gets to be personal advice that we're liable for at that juncture. You know, I mean, we got it. You got, you need some help here. And you say, I need Mark. I want to pay Mark. Okay, but. And then please don't punt to an MJK affiliate in Houston. That, that's fine. We do have our network. I don't even care if they're in Houston or not. I just want you to have a good person. Yeah, I won't even.

I'm in Phoenix. My CPA is in Dallas. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, like our law firm, we all work seamlessly between California, Utah, Arizona, Idaho. It's so.

Yeah. So now.

Yeah.

I do want to give you some options. The first one is just schedule with one of our tax lawyers. That's not an affiliate. That is an attorney that works under my Matt's direction that we meet with almost daily in ongoing support and training. That's not an affiliate.

You.

I apologize. I'm not taking personal consultations. But our 13 lawyers are freaking amazing. Some have been with us over 10 years. They're smarter than Matt and I on a number of topics for sure. So please meet with one of those tax lawyers. It's not an affiliate. Now you may need a good accountant. I don't care if they're in Houston or not. So get to the network there. But in conjunction with the lawyer, they're going to help you overcome this restructuring that you need. And thank you for the request for a meet, but I Apologize. It's just not on my, it's not just my schedule's too demanding. We're really trying to train administratively, our team internally and then our network to impact more people's lives. And me being on a one off call is actually not good for you because then you're going to be like, okay, when are you going to follow up? In three months. So you're like, well, that sucked. So when you work with one of our team members, they're going to have the time and ability to follow, follow up. And because it's not just one meeting, the meeting is the beginning of a journey. And you don't want me on this journey because I will be coming and going and that's not fair to you. It's not. It's not you, it's me.

Just did the classic breakup there and I don't want this for you. I'm gonna be terrible and I don't want this for you.

How'd I do it? I thought it went well until you

mocked the really good dude. That was really good. I was like all in on it. So that was so good. Well, I wanted to say, just to tag into that for just a second is I get the frustration of where that person's coming from. And, and even some of the other questions, right? People are trying to figure these strategies out and you know, and their professional

is not there for.

And their professional is not like on it. And like, oh yeah, is just like anybody building a business. And many of you that are asking these questions, you have a business and some of you have big business. Think of your cpa, your accountant, your lawyer, this is your team. And just like you've got to work hard at recruiting great people to help run your business and work side by side, you in your business day to day, you have to go recruit a good team too. And I think so many times people just think, well, I'll just call. You should invest some time in who this professional is going to be. Are you out there networking? Are you going to events? Have you talked to your friend that that's another business owner or maybe someone that you've aspired to be, like to see who they use. Are you getting referrals from these people? Like start networking a little bit. Listen to the stuff. Like we're putting out this podcast, of course, to give you all the strategies and ideas that you need. But maybe come to one of these conferences. Maybe come to tax legal360, maybe come to our self directed IRA summit, because who's there other People doing what you're doing and trying to learn these strategies. And their professionals are there too.

Yep. And I want to just add to that too. Like there's another problem out there or mindset. Oh. As soon as I find the perfect accountant, I don't have to worry about it anymore. You know, I'll find the best lawyer.

Yeah.

And then I can just forget about it.

No.

Once you find them, you want an incredible relationship with them, they're going to be your best friend with the biggest cost in your life and the biggest risk in building the American dream. The tax illegal. And so you're not just looking for that perfect solution. So you can check out. It was interesting. My wife's dad, when he passed away the last week, he had cancer. So everybody had their visits and it was just very, very emotional. And one of his key phone calls and meetings was with his accountant. And he said, come on over. I want to talk you through everything. I want you to be a good transition for my wife, my soon to be widow. And they had a relationship. I mean, if you were going to die next week, would you call up your accountant and have a meeting with them? If you're. If you wouldn't, you don't have the right accountant.

Yeah.

I mean, they should be that glue for your legacy and your family. And so let's get the right person on the team. I love it.

All right, well, thanks, everybody for these amazing questions again. If you want to get your questions answered on the Main Street Business podcast, get over to the website mainstreetbusinesspodcast.com and submit your question there. And if you love the show, please, please share it with your friends. Social media, Give it a five star A Like, whatever you do on whatever platform you're on, we'll see you next time.