Presidential Tax Returns with Charles Renwick

george grombacher  0:02

left over the storage G and the time is right welcome. Today’s guests are on the prowl for Charles Rennick. Charles, are you ready to do this?

Charles Renwick  0:09

Yes, sir. All right, let’s

george grombacher  0:10

go. Charles is a CPA and a CFA. He’s a business and accounting adviser. He’s the author of all the President’s taxes what we can learn and borrow from the high stakes world of President tax pain. Charles excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal life’s more about your work, and why you do what you do?

Charles Renwick  0:33

Well, thanks, thanks for having me.

You know, I’ve I’ve kind of been an accountant now for 15 plus years, and I really enjoy it because it’s a problem solving profession. And it kind of mixes, reading and writing with math and problem solving. So there are different types of accountants. So you can be an auditor, you can be a business adviser, you can help with taxes, I kind of do all of those things. But I really like business advising and taxes, because you can really impact people in terms of helping them save a lot of money. But also, knowing about auditing is very important, because you can help people make sure they don’t get audited, or it’s never fun to be audited. But if they are being audited, you can advise them and kind of guide them through what is will typically be considered not a fun thing. So

george grombacher  1:32

I certainly appreciate that. So president’s taxes, what was what was the motivator behind doing the research right in the book.

Charles Renwick  1:43

Certainly, it’s a timely topic, I believe the current president, the former presidents are fairly accomplished people. And so there’s a bit of, obviously spin that goes into the national media. But when you actually look at on paper, what they’ve done and who they are, they’ve made lots of money. Joe Biden made President Biden made lots of money after he was vice president, being vice president is an accomplishment in and of itself. He made a lot of money after he left office, and now he’s president. That’s a pretty incredible thing, just from the standpoint of individual accomplishment. President Trump also a very accomplished person has built in, you know, very large buildings is fairly prolific when it comes to just business ideas, whatever they are, he sometimes gets knocked, because some, you know, people think his business ideas are kooky, or, or, you know, a little bit over the edge or whatever it is, but he no one could really dispute the fact that he’s actually out there doing things. And you know, whether or not he got money from his father, that’s part of the story and taxes, there’s the way that he got his money from his father, there were some tax strategies involved. But as an individual tax preparer I’ve and business advisor, saving people money on taxes is very meaningful taxes for wealthy individuals are 40, or 50% of their annual income. And that’s a very large number. And, you know, for some businesses, Their largest expense, generally, is payroll. So a business of any size, when you get to have 1020 30, import employees, when you look at the profit and loss statement, you know, payrolls up there, there are taxes associated with payroll as well. The next biggest expense, in most cases, in and up for a lot of business, the biggest expense is taxes. So helping a business make money helping individuals keep more money that they make, is really, you can really kind of add value at the margins with tax strategies. So somebody’s making $100,000 a year, if you can save them $10,000 in taxes, which is not uncommon, right? That’s 10%. And that’s a lot of money, right? But like at the margin, that’s a lot of money, like I would rather have that money in my pocket. And then not. So what happened was, I’m trying to help people save money on taxes. And there’s all of this information in the news about the presidents and their taxes. And so, I have a bit of a background in politics as well. I am a political science major, I was naturally interested in it. And wow, just a great opportunity to kind of say, Hey, this is what they’re doing. You can do it too. And it really kind of gets people across the line because there are a lot of people that rightfully so are kind of worried about implementing attack strategy, because they’re not sure whether or not it’s legal. And, you know, for better or for worse, they’re obviously accusations on all sides. I’d say that all politicians are corrupt. But you can feel fairly confident that if the public has seen it, and has seen their taxes, and there’s not like consistent claims of like, hey, this specific thing is wrong, you can do it. Like, there’s some talk about Joe Biden’s tax strategy being maybe a little bit too aggressive, but not really. And if I tell you what he did, and you go look it up, and it turns out, he actually did it. And I’m telling you that it can save you $10,000, then why not do it too? I mean, there’s a lot, it reduces the risk significantly. And that’s those are real numbers, like that happens. And so you know, learn about it and save money, what better kind of thing to talk about? I

george grombacher  5:44

love it. That makes a ton of sense. And if the president’s doing it, well, then why wouldn’t I do that too, right? So level the playing field, right? And yes, to your point, I’d rather have $10,000 than not have $10,000. So these opportunities are available to us. But to your point, again, we are nervous or reticent about it because we don’t want to get a letter from the IRS in the mail. But the leader of the free world is employing these strategies. So they’re available, and actually practically used. Not everybody has every president, do we have access to all the President’s tax returns?

Charles Renwick  6:29

Well, so that’s part of the story is there’s a bit of history, the income tax hasn’t been around forever. So the income tax has evolved over time, it really is a construct of the Civil War. And so the first part of the book, and I’m a bit of a history buff, too. So I’m kind of like, I don’t know, I just like a lot of things. And I’m curious about a lot of things. And I took some really in depth history classes in college. So part of the book is, is certainly, you know, I’m pulling from some things that I learned and, you know, in other walks of life, I would say, but, um, but the evolution of the income tax, it started during the Civil War, you cannot fund a modern army without a significant tax base. So that Civil War was the first modern war I kind of talked about that. The irony that the South implemented an income tax, a centralized taxing system, you know, is really kind of in the scope of US history. That’s one of the big ironies, I would say in a lot of people don’t realize that when they talked about North and South, I mean, the industrial revolution is was just as important. Obviously, civil rights are still huge. And civil rights today, and social issues still are a bit of dominating the political discussions. But taxes are probably the most the one thing that impacts people more than anything else. And so taxes are a fundamental part of politics. And so I really like that I really kind of, you know, the margins talking about special interest groups, talking about how, you know, there are certain people that do this or that the first tax under George Washington was on whiskey. And today, we would call that a sin tax. And so thinking about now, did he necessarily put that tax in place because he didn’t like alcohol? Not necessarily, but it would be very hard to say that they would have been able to fully establish our taxing authority. If they had put that tax on milk. Right, because, like we the Whiskey Rebellion, there were 13,000 militiamen that put that rebellion down right with with 13,000 militiamen go and squash rebellion over a milk tax, probably not. Like I just don’t think that would happen. So, you know, Lincoln paid tax, even though he might not have needed to. That’s a fact. Right. So Lincoln did a kind of a holier than thou approach. Jimmy Carter did a holier than thou approach. He did his taxes, it showed that he did not owe any money, and he decided to pay tax anyway. Right. Richard Nixon, he was very obviously, embroiled in scandal. One of the big scandals of his career was actually a tax scandal, and no one even knows about it. So it’s great to talk about it. So really, since Nixon, this issues become really big. And the reason I say it’s become big is because, one, the tax rate has increased significantly, the income tax started at only 3%. Now, again, like I mentioned earlier, it’s 40 50% for the highest earners. So this is a material number. There’s more interest in it. What is the President doing? We need to know just from a body politic perspective. DivX you know, do we have confidence in our leader, but then I put a spin on it and say, Hey, like we get to see this tax return? What can we learn from it? Because as a tax preparer I kind of thirst to see these tax returns, because I don’t get to see everybody’s tax returns. But when I get to see them, I get to learn from them. And I get to see Yeah, I mean, it’s 500 pages, Trump’s tax returns, 500 pages just says individual return. And it references business returns that are all individually 100 Plus pages. So Biden’s tax return isn’t as large. But it references a business return, and we haven’t seen his business return. So there’s definitely information, there’s some intrigue, and then what can we use? I mean, it’s fun. I really enjoy it.

george grombacher  10:44

Yeah, I imagine with with the train die that you have being a CPA and a CFA and 15 years in accounting, it is absolutely fascinating to be able to pour through these. So as you are getting to do that, sort of put it put that investigative hat on with your problem solving hat and your background. Are there? Are there hundreds of different strategies? Are there a few what which, which which have been utilized by by multiple?

Charles Renwick  11:15

Well, I tried to break it down into kind of what I call blocking and tackling issues, you know that strategies and tactics, right? So there are definitely lots of little tactics where Hey, doing these little things at the margin help. But what are some of the big strategies, right, the big strategy, I would say, is understanding that our system of taxation is based on laws, and laws have nuances, and nuance creates gray. So there’s, I say this in the book, there’s, there’s black, there’s white, and there’s gray, right? And somebody told me this once you know, you go to jail if you do stuff in the black, so you don’t want to do stuff in the black. So if it says You shall not do this, you do not do it, right. If there’s white, you can operate in the white and you can sleep at night, and that’s great. But you might be able to operate in the gray. And if you’re operating in the gray, and there’s some ambiguity, the best thing to do is keep good documentation. Right? Be honest, and keep good documentation. And if you’re honest and keep good documentation, you’re not committing tax fraud. And you’re really not correct. Like when you’re doing that, as it relates to any law, you’re not really creating much exposure, especially if you kind of reserve for the potential that someone might, you know, disagree with you. And even in the largest companies, their financial disclosures, there’s a required financial disclosure for every large company in this country that says, What are the tax issues that we think might be ambiguous that we are taking? every company, every company in the whole country has a laundry list of things that they’re doing that they think well, maybe someone a reasonable person might disagree, but this is our position? Somebody prove us wrong? Right. So that’s, I would say the big takeaway is, don’t just like, think that this is cut and dry. It’s not there are some things that are cut and dry. If it says check the box, when you have a foreign bank account, you better check the box, right. But other than those very specific things, there’s a lot of flexibility in decision making. And when you make decisions, there’s a cascading waterfall effect that well, if I do this one way, then this is what happens. And this is what happens. And voila, I’ve saved $5,000 You’re allowed to structure your taxes, you’re allowed not to enter into a transaction today and delay it till next year, you’re allowed to do these things that have really on their face, have no legal implications. But if you structure things slightly different, you save a lot of tax. Right. So that’s really the overall strategy. Does that make sense?

george grombacher  14:07

It does. I think it’s fascinating. Do you think that most people understand that, but most people don’t pay taxes anyway?

Charles Renwick  14:16

You know, well, even they, so that’s a little bit of a I would say. Even that right? I’m not sure that’s exactly true, right? There’s sales tax that almost like everybody pays sales tax. And so one of the things that I say right, is our current system is not perfect. Right? We have a but we have a democratic system. Right? And the ethics of taxes is not up to the taxpayer to decide the ethics of taxes is our tax system is ethical because it was enacted ethically by a democratic process. Right. And so our democratic process has decided that we don’t One a national sales tax, that’s pretty much the one like alternative to the current tax system that really kind of people get excited about. But the problem with the National Sales tax is it’s very regressive. The The reason it’s regressive is because lower income people spend almost all of their money where higher income people can save, and sales tax is applied on spending, right. And so they have to come up with all these mechanics to try to make it not regressive, and things like that. But the fact is, right now, you know, most people still, like at the local level, pay property taxes, and even if they rent their apartment, the rent is covering the property taxes. So they’re paying property taxes, and they’re paying in sales tax. And then at the national level, you’re absolutely right. The the national income tax is primarily borne by businesses and higher income individuals that make over $100,000. Right? So there is that thing, but once you get into that bracket of over $100,000, then you can really save in a powerful way. But even if you’re below that bracket, you know, why not save an extra $3,000? Or why not structured things a little bit differently to get a bigger refund. And I think that’s completely appropriate. If you have three kids, and you’re not properly structuring your taxes, you might be overpaying or not getting what is considered your, you know, fair share back. Right. So and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. That’s if we don’t like it, vote for someone else.

george grombacher  16:38

I think that that’s all really well said. And I appreciate that, that our tax system is ethical because it was put in place through a democratic process ethically. And therefore these are available to us. And when done correctly, there was an opportunity to pay less taxes ethically. And I wanted to ask you about what is that, for lack of a better term, a threshold? You mentioned $100,000, but even people that are making a little bit less than that do have an opportunity to do it. So if somebody’s listening to say, you know, this is this is interesting, I’m interested in having more money. How do I know if if doing this kind of tax planning is is right for me? And how do I get started?

Charles Renwick  17:18

Sure, yeah, this is what I call is the juice worse worth the squeeze? Right? Because there is some area where cost of compliance comes into question, right? Like, if you go and talk to accountants, accountants aren’t free, like if you only save $1,000, but the accountant charges you $1,000 Is it worth it? So one of the things that, you know, that kind of someone should think about, obviously, they should weigh the pros and cons. Since wise, how much can I save, but also, you know, just tax preparation, in general isn’t free to start with. So if you’re going to be compliant, and you’re going to be paying for TurboTax, you’re already paying 100 $150. So you have to consider while I’m already paying that, if I were to pay an extra 600 $700 a year for to actually talk to someone and have a strategy, it really only takes one thing over the course of even five years, that that could really pay for it all. So you don’t necessarily Well, you don’t know what you don’t know. Right. And so just structuring things slightly different. Anybody that has their own business, I would say they’re doing themselves a disservice if they do not have a tax advisor. If you have your own business, if you get any money via 1099, you need to be you need to have an accountant, because the opportunities to say 501,000 2000 $10,000, that’s low hanging fruit, right? And you might not know and you sleep better, right? Because you have a professional doing it. And so at the margin, right, even $40,000 of self employed income, it’s very cost effective in the way that it can structure it, especially with kids, where you can kind of if you’re married with kids, like there’s just so many opportunities, I would say that, you know, educate yourself is free, read some books, read this book, but there’s lots of other books on Amazon for $10 $20 $30 that you read them once and you kind of know the general idea of where you can play and where you can kind of save money, that to me, that’s money well spent for any small business owner, because $10,000 a year is a lot of money. And if you reinvest that in your business, or you put that in your kids college savings account, there’s tax, free college savings accounts, you know, they’re all of these things, and it’s life changing money if you do it, right.

george grombacher  19:51

Well said. Well, Charles, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you and engage with you and where can they get their copy of all the press? residence taxes, what we can learn and borrow from the high stakes world President tax pain?

Charles Renwick  20:07

Well, so I have an accounting firm that’s CMR tax.com. That’s C as in Charlie, and is in Marco Rs in Roversi. Mr. tax.com. I have the books website is POTUS dot tax, and then the books available on Amazon. And, you know, I’m just really excited to have this opportunity to kind of share something that I’m so passionate about. And I really thank you for having me on the show.

george grombacher  20:35

Yeah, it was a pleasure. If you enjoyed this as much as I did show Charles your appreciation and share today share with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to cm our tax.com and figure out if this planning that we’ve been talking about is right for you go to POTUS pod US DOT tax. It’s a great website, by the way, Charles, nice work on that. And then you can pick up your copy of all the President’s taxes there or certainly Amazon which is where we buy everything. Thanks. Good, Charles. All righty. Take care. Appreciate it. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

george grombacher 0:02
left over the storage G and the time is right welcome. Today’s guests are on the prowl for Charles Rennick. Charles, are you ready to do this?

Charles Renwick 0:09
Yes, sir. All right, let’s

george grombacher 0:10
go. Charles is a CPA and a CFA. He’s a business and accounting adviser. He’s the author of all the President’s taxes what we can learn and borrow from the high stakes world of President tax pain. Charles excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal life’s more about your work, and why you do what you do?

Charles Renwick 0:33
Well, thanks, thanks for having me.

You know, I’ve I’ve kind of been an accountant now for 15 plus years, and I really enjoy it because it’s a problem solving profession. And it kind of mixes, reading and writing with math and problem solving. So there are different types of accountants. So you can be an auditor, you can be a business adviser, you can help with taxes, I kind of do all of those things. But I really like business advising and taxes, because you can really impact people in terms of helping them save a lot of money. But also, knowing about auditing is very important, because you can help people make sure they don’t get audited, or it’s never fun to be audited. But if they are being audited, you can advise them and kind of guide them through what is will typically be considered not a fun thing. So

george grombacher 1:32
I certainly appreciate that. So president’s taxes, what was what was the motivator behind doing the research right in the book.

Charles Renwick 1:43
Certainly, it’s a timely topic, I believe the current president, the former presidents are fairly accomplished people. And so there’s a bit of, obviously spin that goes into the national media. But when you actually look at on paper, what they’ve done and who they are, they’ve made lots of money. Joe Biden made President Biden made lots of money after he was vice president, being vice president is an accomplishment in and of itself. He made a lot of money after he left office, and now he’s president. That’s a pretty incredible thing, just from the standpoint of individual accomplishment. President Trump also a very accomplished person has built in, you know, very large buildings is fairly prolific when it comes to just business ideas, whatever they are, he sometimes gets knocked, because some, you know, people think his business ideas are kooky, or, or, you know, a little bit over the edge or whatever it is, but he no one could really dispute the fact that he’s actually out there doing things. And you know, whether or not he got money from his father, that’s part of the story and taxes, there’s the way that he got his money from his father, there were some tax strategies involved. But as an individual tax preparer I’ve and business advisor, saving people money on taxes is very meaningful taxes for wealthy individuals are 40, or 50% of their annual income. And that’s a very large number. And, you know, for some businesses, Their largest expense, generally, is payroll. So a business of any size, when you get to have 1020 30, import employees, when you look at the profit and loss statement, you know, payrolls up there, there are taxes associated with payroll as well. The next biggest expense, in most cases, in and up for a lot of business, the biggest expense is taxes. So helping a business make money helping individuals keep more money that they make, is really, you can really kind of add value at the margins with tax strategies. So somebody’s making $100,000 a year, if you can save them $10,000 in taxes, which is not uncommon, right? That’s 10%. And that’s a lot of money, right? But like at the margin, that’s a lot of money, like I would rather have that money in my pocket. And then not. So what happened was, I’m trying to help people save money on taxes. And there’s all of this information in the news about the presidents and their taxes. And so, I have a bit of a background in politics as well. I am a political science major, I was naturally interested in it. And wow, just a great opportunity to kind of say, Hey, this is what they’re doing. You can do it too. And it really kind of gets people across the line because there are a lot of people that rightfully so are kind of worried about implementing attack strategy, because they’re not sure whether or not it’s legal. And, you know, for better or for worse, they’re obviously accusations on all sides. I’d say that all politicians are corrupt. But you can feel fairly confident that if the public has seen it, and has seen their taxes, and there’s not like consistent claims of like, hey, this specific thing is wrong, you can do it. Like, there’s some talk about Joe Biden’s tax strategy being maybe a little bit too aggressive, but not really. And if I tell you what he did, and you go look it up, and it turns out, he actually did it. And I’m telling you that it can save you $10,000, then why not do it too? I mean, there’s a lot, it reduces the risk significantly. And that’s those are real numbers, like that happens. And so you know, learn about it and save money, what better kind of thing to talk about? I

george grombacher 5:44
love it. That makes a ton of sense. And if the president’s doing it, well, then why wouldn’t I do that too, right? So level the playing field, right? And yes, to your point, I’d rather have $10,000 than not have $10,000. So these opportunities are available to us. But to your point, again, we are nervous or reticent about it because we don’t want to get a letter from the IRS in the mail. But the leader of the free world is employing these strategies. So they’re available, and actually practically used. Not everybody has every president, do we have access to all the President’s tax returns?

Charles Renwick 6:29
Well, so that’s part of the story is there’s a bit of history, the income tax hasn’t been around forever. So the income tax has evolved over time, it really is a construct of the Civil War. And so the first part of the book, and I’m a bit of a history buff, too. So I’m kind of like, I don’t know, I just like a lot of things. And I’m curious about a lot of things. And I took some really in depth history classes in college. So part of the book is, is certainly, you know, I’m pulling from some things that I learned and, you know, in other walks of life, I would say, but, um, but the evolution of the income tax, it started during the Civil War, you cannot fund a modern army without a significant tax base. So that Civil War was the first modern war I kind of talked about that. The irony that the South implemented an income tax, a centralized taxing system, you know, is really kind of in the scope of US history. That’s one of the big ironies, I would say in a lot of people don’t realize that when they talked about North and South, I mean, the industrial revolution is was just as important. Obviously, civil rights are still huge. And civil rights today, and social issues still are a bit of dominating the political discussions. But taxes are probably the most the one thing that impacts people more than anything else. And so taxes are a fundamental part of politics. And so I really like that I really kind of, you know, the margins talking about special interest groups, talking about how, you know, there are certain people that do this or that the first tax under George Washington was on whiskey. And today, we would call that a sin tax. And so thinking about now, did he necessarily put that tax in place because he didn’t like alcohol? Not necessarily, but it would be very hard to say that they would have been able to fully establish our taxing authority. If they had put that tax on milk. Right, because, like we the Whiskey Rebellion, there were 13,000 militiamen that put that rebellion down right with with 13,000 militiamen go and squash rebellion over a milk tax, probably not. Like I just don’t think that would happen. So, you know, Lincoln paid tax, even though he might not have needed to. That’s a fact. Right. So Lincoln did a kind of a holier than thou approach. Jimmy Carter did a holier than thou approach. He did his taxes, it showed that he did not owe any money, and he decided to pay tax anyway. Right. Richard Nixon, he was very obviously, embroiled in scandal. One of the big scandals of his career was actually a tax scandal, and no one even knows about it. So it’s great to talk about it. So really, since Nixon, this issues become really big. And the reason I say it’s become big is because, one, the tax rate has increased significantly, the income tax started at only 3%. Now, again, like I mentioned earlier, it’s 40 50% for the highest earners. So this is a material number. There’s more interest in it. What is the President doing? We need to know just from a body politic perspective. DivX you know, do we have confidence in our leader, but then I put a spin on it and say, Hey, like we get to see this tax return? What can we learn from it? Because as a tax preparer I kind of thirst to see these tax returns, because I don’t get to see everybody’s tax returns. But when I get to see them, I get to learn from them. And I get to see Yeah, I mean, it’s 500 pages, Trump’s tax returns, 500 pages just says individual return. And it references business returns that are all individually 100 Plus pages. So Biden’s tax return isn’t as large. But it references a business return, and we haven’t seen his business return. So there’s definitely information, there’s some intrigue, and then what can we use? I mean, it’s fun. I really enjoy it.

george grombacher 10:44
Yeah, I imagine with with the train die that you have being a CPA and a CFA and 15 years in accounting, it is absolutely fascinating to be able to pour through these. So as you are getting to do that, sort of put it put that investigative hat on with your problem solving hat and your background. Are there? Are there hundreds of different strategies? Are there a few what which, which which have been utilized by by multiple?

Charles Renwick 11:15
Well, I tried to break it down into kind of what I call blocking and tackling issues, you know that strategies and tactics, right? So there are definitely lots of little tactics where Hey, doing these little things at the margin help. But what are some of the big strategies, right, the big strategy, I would say, is understanding that our system of taxation is based on laws, and laws have nuances, and nuance creates gray. So there’s, I say this in the book, there’s, there’s black, there’s white, and there’s gray, right? And somebody told me this once you know, you go to jail if you do stuff in the black, so you don’t want to do stuff in the black. So if it says You shall not do this, you do not do it, right. If there’s white, you can operate in the white and you can sleep at night, and that’s great. But you might be able to operate in the gray. And if you’re operating in the gray, and there’s some ambiguity, the best thing to do is keep good documentation. Right? Be honest, and keep good documentation. And if you’re honest and keep good documentation, you’re not committing tax fraud. And you’re really not correct. Like when you’re doing that, as it relates to any law, you’re not really creating much exposure, especially if you kind of reserve for the potential that someone might, you know, disagree with you. And even in the largest companies, their financial disclosures, there’s a required financial disclosure for every large company in this country that says, What are the tax issues that we think might be ambiguous that we are taking? every company, every company in the whole country has a laundry list of things that they’re doing that they think well, maybe someone a reasonable person might disagree, but this is our position? Somebody prove us wrong? Right. So that’s, I would say the big takeaway is, don’t just like, think that this is cut and dry. It’s not there are some things that are cut and dry. If it says check the box, when you have a foreign bank account, you better check the box, right. But other than those very specific things, there’s a lot of flexibility in decision making. And when you make decisions, there’s a cascading waterfall effect that well, if I do this one way, then this is what happens. And this is what happens. And voila, I’ve saved $5,000 You’re allowed to structure your taxes, you’re allowed not to enter into a transaction today and delay it till next year, you’re allowed to do these things that have really on their face, have no legal implications. But if you structure things slightly different, you save a lot of tax. Right. So that’s really the overall strategy. Does that make sense?

george grombacher 14:07
It does. I think it’s fascinating. Do you think that most people understand that, but most people don’t pay taxes anyway?

Charles Renwick 14:16
You know, well, even they, so that’s a little bit of a I would say. Even that right? I’m not sure that’s exactly true, right? There’s sales tax that almost like everybody pays sales tax. And so one of the things that I say right, is our current system is not perfect. Right? We have a but we have a democratic system. Right? And the ethics of taxes is not up to the taxpayer to decide the ethics of taxes is our tax system is ethical because it was enacted ethically by a democratic process. Right. And so our democratic process has decided that we don’t One a national sales tax, that’s pretty much the one like alternative to the current tax system that really kind of people get excited about. But the problem with the National Sales tax is it’s very regressive. The The reason it’s regressive is because lower income people spend almost all of their money where higher income people can save, and sales tax is applied on spending, right. And so they have to come up with all these mechanics to try to make it not regressive, and things like that. But the fact is, right now, you know, most people still, like at the local level, pay property taxes, and even if they rent their apartment, the rent is covering the property taxes. So they’re paying property taxes, and they’re paying in sales tax. And then at the national level, you’re absolutely right. The the national income tax is primarily borne by businesses and higher income individuals that make over $100,000. Right? So there is that thing, but once you get into that bracket of over $100,000, then you can really save in a powerful way. But even if you’re below that bracket, you know, why not save an extra $3,000? Or why not structured things a little bit differently to get a bigger refund. And I think that’s completely appropriate. If you have three kids, and you’re not properly structuring your taxes, you might be overpaying or not getting what is considered your, you know, fair share back. Right. So and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. That’s if we don’t like it, vote for someone else.

george grombacher 16:38
I think that that’s all really well said. And I appreciate that, that our tax system is ethical because it was put in place through a democratic process ethically. And therefore these are available to us. And when done correctly, there was an opportunity to pay less taxes ethically. And I wanted to ask you about what is that, for lack of a better term, a threshold? You mentioned $100,000, but even people that are making a little bit less than that do have an opportunity to do it. So if somebody’s listening to say, you know, this is this is interesting, I’m interested in having more money. How do I know if if doing this kind of tax planning is is right for me? And how do I get started?

Charles Renwick 17:18
Sure, yeah, this is what I call is the juice worse worth the squeeze? Right? Because there is some area where cost of compliance comes into question, right? Like, if you go and talk to accountants, accountants aren’t free, like if you only save $1,000, but the accountant charges you $1,000 Is it worth it? So one of the things that, you know, that kind of someone should think about, obviously, they should weigh the pros and cons. Since wise, how much can I save, but also, you know, just tax preparation, in general isn’t free to start with. So if you’re going to be compliant, and you’re going to be paying for TurboTax, you’re already paying 100 $150. So you have to consider while I’m already paying that, if I were to pay an extra 600 $700 a year for to actually talk to someone and have a strategy, it really only takes one thing over the course of even five years, that that could really pay for it all. So you don’t necessarily Well, you don’t know what you don’t know. Right. And so just structuring things slightly different. Anybody that has their own business, I would say they’re doing themselves a disservice if they do not have a tax advisor. If you have your own business, if you get any money via 1099, you need to be you need to have an accountant, because the opportunities to say 501,000 2000 $10,000, that’s low hanging fruit, right? And you might not know and you sleep better, right? Because you have a professional doing it. And so at the margin, right, even $40,000 of self employed income, it’s very cost effective in the way that it can structure it, especially with kids, where you can kind of if you’re married with kids, like there’s just so many opportunities, I would say that, you know, educate yourself is free, read some books, read this book, but there’s lots of other books on Amazon for $10 $20 $30 that you read them once and you kind of know the general idea of where you can play and where you can kind of save money, that to me, that’s money well spent for any small business owner, because $10,000 a year is a lot of money. And if you reinvest that in your business, or you put that in your kids college savings account, there’s tax, free college savings accounts, you know, they’re all of these things, and it’s life changing money if you do it, right.

george grombacher 19:51
Well said. Well, Charles, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you and engage with you and where can they get their copy of all the press? residence taxes, what we can learn and borrow from the high stakes world President tax pain?

Charles Renwick 20:07
Well, so I have an accounting firm that’s CMR tax.com. That’s C as in Charlie, and is in Marco Rs in Roversi. Mr. tax.com. I have the books website is POTUS dot tax, and then the books available on Amazon. And, you know, I’m just really excited to have this opportunity to kind of share something that I’m so passionate about. And I really thank you for having me on the show.

george grombacher 20:35
Yeah, it was a pleasure. If you enjoyed this as much as I did show Charles your appreciation and share today share with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to cm our tax.com and figure out if this planning that we’ve been talking about is right for you go to POTUS pod US DOT tax. It’s a great website, by the way, Charles, nice work on that. And then you can pick up your copy of all the President’s taxes there or certainly Amazon which is where we buy everything. Thanks. Good, Charles. All righty. Take care. Appreciate it. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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