Tax Planning with Mark Myers

george grombacher 0:15
I’m left with this is George G. And the time is right to welcome today’s guest strong and powerful Mark Meyers. Mark, are you ready to do this? Right into it? All right, let’s go. Mark is the founder of peak profit solutions. He’s a tax savings architect. He’s also a veteran of the United States Marines, helping 1000s of individuals increased profit permanently reduced their annual tax bill. Mark, excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal life smart about your work, why you do what you do.

Unknown Speaker 0:44
Who are George, thanks, again, this is great. Great to be on. Thanks for that question. Personal life I live in Northwest Florida, that is in Los Angeles area for a number of years, but grew up on the East Coast. And I’ve got a beautiful, lovely wife and two young children, one that’s 12, my son’s 12. And my daughter is eight going on 16. And, you know, interestingly enough, George, I started out man with an undergraduate in exercise physiology, a master’s in sports management. So a lot of people ask me, how did you get into tax efficiency, which is interesting, because I moved to New York, after grad school started running really high and health clubs in New York City, moved out to Los Angeles opened a number of different high end health clubs in LA. And I really learned to be an owner operator. So I had that owner operator mindset. And it was all about driving revenue, managing expenses and EBIT dot profit, I was even compensated off of the profitability of the clubs I was running. So I realized after about a decade or so of working really hard, you know, those clubs are open 365 days a year, 16 hours a day, very, very demanding, I realized that it wasn’t the best long term fit for me. So I decided to take my skill set of of operating a business and understand ending business ownership thought process, right, because I was treated like a business owner and go into the consulting business. So started with high end insurance planning, and more private placement investments, but realized over the last decade that there’s a huge opportunity here, because no one is really focusing intently on advanced tax planning, you have your CPAs that are doing their work with they’re mostly tracking and historical work and tax prep and filing, they don’t have the time or the bandwidth to really go when to the 75,000 plus plus pages of code, and really work find those coupons. And of course, Wealth Advisors would love to help their clients with this, but they have so much regulation with the SEC and FINRA, they can’t do anything but sell whatever it is their broker dealer sells tells them that. So I stepped in and said, Hey, there’s a there’s a missing link in this in this a big banks that you know, and I’m the missing ingredient. So that’s been a lot of fun. So what most of my clients come from Wealth Advisors and tax professionals, but obviously, a lot of people just listened to me on podcast that own businesses, or they’re just high income earning w two employees, they might have the, you know, half a million or more and just salary plus bonuses and k one, or maybe they’re getting stock warrants or ISOs are actually used, and they’re just stuck with a big tax bill. So you know, obviously, if they hear me, they they’re welcome to call me directly. So it’s been a lot of fun on this journey. And the net result is, hey, people get to keep more of what they work really hard for. Yeah, I love it. That’s a little bit about me.

george grombacher 3:33
Perfect. I appreciate it. And one of the great things about the show is I get to talk to so many different smart people and get great language. Finding coupons in the IRS code is a great term that I’ve never heard before. So thank you for that mark.

Unknown Speaker 3:51
Oh, that’s literally I actually borrowed that from someone that I was working with and actually came up with it. And I said, I’m gonna use that. And you know, we looked at it, it’s like, people pay. Most people pay retail taxes, but they don’t realize that you can pay wholesale, and it’s totally fun. You just have to find the coupons, and they’re 75,000 pages of tax code. If you know how to navigate that tax code. There’s plenty of coupons. And I work with a lot of smart people that navigate that code, which is an interesting thing. So yeah, thank you. It’s fun. It’s a fun conversation.

george grombacher 4:22
Yeah, if I can get something on sale, I’d rather do that and put the pen retail. So

Unknown Speaker 4:28
absolutely.

george grombacher 4:30
And I don’t want to get in trouble. So there’s that fine line, right because some coupons are or maybe riskier, some are more conservative or my thinking about that wrong.

Unknown Speaker 4:43
Now, George, great question. And you know, there’s a there’s a judge. He was a Second Circuit Court of Appeals judge named named learning Han, no longer alive but very well quoted, especially in tax courts and in this space. And he basically said there’s an America there’s two systems there’s two tax systems. One for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both are legal. Right? So essentially what what tax system? Do you want to use the former the uninformed, because guess what? 56 of the top Fortune 500 companies had billions in profit, they paid zero tax, most of them got a tax rebate. How does that work? A lot of the wealthiest individuals pay significantly lower tax than others that make less How does that work? Well, they don’t just have a CPA and a wealth advisor. They’ve got a team of accountants, probably multiple attorneys and business strategists that essentially go to work. And look at that black and white to answer your question, George, the black and white text that’s in the code. If you follow it black and white, and don’t go into the gray, then the coupons are fine. If you start manipulating things and going over the line, then of course, it could be great. And of course, the net result could be like it could be that the IRS says and we don’t really like what you’re doing. And if you want to take it to take it to a client, you go to the tax courts and the tax courts decide a lot of people don’t realize IRS doesn’t make a call, they’re just kind of I’m going to be kind here, they’re they can be bullies at times. Remember their business’s revenue, when they don’t get revenue, which is your tax dollars, they are not doing a good job in business. So just note, we I ascribe to the black and white principle, time tested, most of the solutions that I’m bringing into my house to utilize with clients have been vetted by a number of different tax professionals, including conservative CPAs. And including, you know, aggressive tax attorneys, not that all tax attorneys aren’t aggressive and not at all CPAs are conservative. However, that’s a really want to make sure that we’ve got the right resources to offer.

george grombacher 6:50
Yeah, no, I appreciate that very much. And that’s a, that’s a really interesting thing. That it’s not that the IRS is going to be making these final determinations that it’s that these are going to be adjudicated in tax court. So the IRS Internal Revenue Service, their job is to collect revenue and give it to the United States government. And they are they are following the laws that are made by the Congress. And how does the rest of it work? So so they call me and say, Hey, George, we don’t think he did this. Right, I say, I think that I did. And then it gets referred to a court.

Unknown Speaker 7:40
Well, you know, it usually is a little bit more, a little bit more of a process. So but your internal revenue service is essentially there to collect the revenue. And they’re only going to tell you that they think that you underpaid, if you’re obviously stepping over the line, or they think that you’re stepping over the line. And here’s what happens, the IRS auditor says we’re auditing you, and we’re gonna take a look at this. And they say, show us your documentation for what you did. So obviously, the easiest things that most people don’t do is keep really good documentation, even for their expenses. But we’re not really going we’re I’m not telling people to do better job keeping up with their expenses and keeping notes on basically how to help them utilize the code. So everything that we do is well documented. So if for some reason, an IRS auditor, and a lot of times these auditors just know, they hired, I don’t know, some ridiculous amount recently. And also noted that they would be armed, which was an interesting statement. But if they, they may be much less understanding or knowledgeable of that tax code than the accountant that they’re working with that essentially file the tax returns. I’m not saying that they are. But I’m saying that a lot of the lot of times that can be the case. And this is communication I’ve had with a number of tax professionals that have essentially gone through audits, because it’s just happened, you know, you just get your number call. But at the end of the day, you’re going to tell why you did what you did, you’re going to show your documentation, paper rules, if you have to show this as the code. This is how I applied the code. This is my documentation for the code. And a lot of times, what they’ll do is they’ll just walk away, they’ll realize this is a point that we don’t want to pick, because it’s in the rulebook, right? They they have to follow this same set of rules that we do. They can’t they don’t have any extra right to change or manipulate. Same rules apply for them as as us and of course, if for some reason they’re pretty firm in that lease. We’re looking at what you did, and we think that it’s over the line. They still have to go to tax court to basically have the tax court determinant which is a third party independent. Got it?

george grombacher 9:40
Thank you. All right. So learn at hand talked about how there’s two tax systems one for the informed one for the uninformed. I’m somebody who’s making $150,000 a year or up a million dollars a year I’ve got, I’ve got stock options. I’ve got investment I’ve got just I am somebody who is who has revenue coming in who’s making pretty substantial amount of money or income, do I have to have a unique situation to take advantage of some of these coupons? Or are some of them them for for most everyone that I’ve just described,

Unknown Speaker 10:17
some of them are universal key funds, right. So whether you’re a W two, whether you’re a business owner, whatever your situation is, it really just has to do with your income level. So there’s two or three or four, and I have well over a dozen different efficiencies that I integrated, because sometimes it takes a little bit of building blocks, you know, you have above the line planning if you’re a business owner, because if you can control your the way your business works, and the way you’re structured, and the way you receive income, and there’s below the line planning for business owners, or non business owners, the below the line planning is generally universal. Right? There’s, there’s solutions out there that you can, that you can participate in, the government wants you to participate in, for example, solar, solar energy for the last decade or 15 years, the federal government has said, We’re gonna give benefits to house homeowners that put solar on the roof of businesses and banks that invest in solar in the institutional space. So that’s something that a lot of people don’t realize that the government will actually purchase your cash flow producing asset, which is solar doesn’t have to be on your roof, it can be on a nonprofit. And you just call it the cash flow for many, many years. So that’s a pretty, that’s a pretty nice deal. If the if you’re if the federal government will purchase your cash flow producing asset because you’re willing to basically own it. Now you just sit back and collect the cash flow. So those are some of the universal tax codes or universal coupons that are out there for just about anybody to eclipse doesn’t make sense until you start getting into the higher tax brackets, though, because we’re looking at taking depreciation for the on the deductions on the depreciating asset, not the solar, we’re also looking at what the federal government gives you, which is a tax credit, right dollar for dollar, which actually went up with a new inflation Reduction Act. So cool things coupons are in there. But just that note, generally speaking, some of the lowest level coupons, we want to see people paying at least 10 or $15,000 a year in taxes to make the lower level coupons work. And of course, the more they’re paying in taxes, the more opportunity opens up, you know, there might be five or six strategies that someone can integrate if they’re paying a million dollars or more in tax. Whereas if someone had with a quarter of a million in tax, they might be only two or three strategies, or one or two. And of course, if they’re business owners, it gets a lot more complex, or it can get more complex doesn’t mean not that it’s hard to implement. But it’s just because now you’re doing above the line and below the line planning because they can control how their business operates. And of course, how cash flow moves through their business or businesses to them.

george grombacher 12:48
How much of it is is looking backwards versus forwards? Is it possible to go back and change things?

Unknown Speaker 12:57
It means it is now it’s obviously much more efficient to have a forward looking approach. And a lot of the solutions that I help business owners implement, particularly business owners, but also w two, especially for the solar is forward looking right, the more time in the calendar year or your fiscal year, depending on how you’re you know what your business is, or how you’re taxed. The more time you have, the more tax savings you can receive, right? So if you started this program, and if your regular calendar year, January, December, and you started one solution in March versus August, then you’d have that many more months to basically cut coupons. So for thinking is always better, but just know, I mean, even though it’s December, people reach out to me now that have a tax problem, I can give them usually one or two solutions that can reduce their taxes by maybe 20 30%, maybe a little bit more right off the bat. And we only have 30 days to do it. But there are some options that do what you want to end returns. And those amended returns will let you go backwards in time and say, Hey, Mr. either s or Mrs. IRS agent. federal government says I have this credit. And I don’t need it this year. But it says that I can go back and get a refund for one, two, maybe even three years in the past. So sometimes when I’m working with someone, we can go back and they have big years, or the last two or three years, we can go back and get 75% of their federal tax bill back refunded. So that becomes a nice little smiling moment for for the for a lot of the people I’m working with.

george grombacher 14:31
Yeah, for sure that the better put a smile on somebody’s face mark for goodness sakes. That doesn’t make you happy. Is there anything so when when when when when you’re working or people who are listening and they are making a substantial amount of money paying a good amount of taxes and they have an accountant or CPA that they’re working with they have a financial person of some kind? What kind of pushback, if any would they expect from their advisor, if they said, Hey, I was listening to this podcast and this guy, Mark was talking about being able to save a bunch of money. Do you think that that’s something we should explore?

Unknown Speaker 15:10
Question, George, thank you for asking it. Advisors generally love me. And the reason for that is because I just find money that their client never knew they had, and they didn’t even know they had access to. And generally, when that happens, the advisor has more money to shepherd for them. Right, because the advisor is there to increase, increase and accelerate their wealth growth and their wealth preservation. And I’m just clipping coupons and showing them that they actually have more money at the end of that rainbow. Right. When they send their money off to the taxman, there’s actually more money left over. And you know, if they’re a wise individual, they hopefully will work with their financial advisor and say, you know, all that planning that we talked about doing, but I wanted to get to a certain point, we’ll actually have that additional additional income now, to go ahead and do that planning. And I don’t step on their toes, I’m not going in there and saying, Oh, we’re gonna do a cash balance plan, or we’re gonna do a defined benefits plan, or all the things that advisor to do, I’m doing, I’m really finding the money. And the advisor in that business owner, or that individual can literally do what with it what they’d like. Now, on the flip side, I don’t replace CPAs. Either, I don’t do tax preparation, work on do tax filing work. So when I’m working with a business owner, and their wealth advisor, sometimes they say, Well, let me have my CPA, take a look at it totally fine. And I’m willing to speak to the CPA and I never want to create any type of resistance or any feeling that they’re not doing their job. Because remember, they’re 75,000, pages, Taxco, most of these accountants are overwhelmed, and they’re not licensed or they’re not there, their focus is just taxes, generally, tax prep, tax filing, and maybe some, a little bit of for planning, but most of them don’t do for planning, most of them do historical planning. So just know, CPAs are generally going to be very much more conservative. But as long as I can take the time, and show them the road and show them the codes, and then they’re gonna say, Great, I like it, or you know, what’s up to my client, or sometimes CPAs can be a little, I’m not gonna sign off on decimal. A lot of times when that happens, if the if the person I’m working with understands what we’re doing, and they feel that it’s okay, then I have dozens of CPAs, that I would be willing to refer them to that already have clients that use this, and I’ve used this for a long time. But again, that’s never what I want to do. I always like to make a new relationship with CBA. Because if they get it, and they’ll probably get enlightened, introduce me to two or three or four or five clients. So that’s how that kind of plays out. But again, I’m there for to be an addition to the team, not a replacement to the team. It’s exactly the a fun process as well.

george grombacher 17:41
Yeah, for sure. The more heads you can put together, mark the better. So

Unknown Speaker 17:46
it’s right that oh, you know, let me say one thing on that. When you build a house, you know, if it’s a very simple house, you might have a contractor and maybe you know a couple of other people that put it together. But the more complex your house gets, the more people you need to build it correctly. If you just add a car, like if you just had a carpenter, and you were building some extravagant building, then it probably wouldn’t turn out. So unit up a brick mason, a concrete Mason, an architect and engineer, you know, commercial level, electricians, all these people are putting it together to make that house for that building. Do what it does, or a baseball team, you don’t have to every player. So smaller businesses that start it and get become medium businesses, and they still are doing really well revenue, a lot of times they still have half the team on the field. They don’t have all the people building the building that they need to build, or they don’t have, they don’t have a left field or they don’t have a shortstop. So it’s really when they start working with me, I’m like, Okay, now we’re bringing in the shortstop and the left fielder, and I’m not replacing anyone, but now they have the team they need to essentially handle one of their biggest expenses, right? They need to treat their taxes like a key element of their business like a profit center, that treat it like a profit center because it is in their in their ability to reduce that expense. Then guess what? The shareholders or the owners or the partners? They’re keeping a lot more.

george grombacher 19:10
I love it. Well, Mark, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you and how can they engage with you? Thank you,

Unknown Speaker 19:18
they just go to my website, peak profit solutions. And that’s the portal and Pete profit solutions.com. I have a little bit about me, you they can easily just book an appointment, I have a calendar where they can literally go to my calendar and find a 2030 minute appointment probably would be ideal. Just a complimentary 30 minute appointment within 15 to 20 minutes just a conversation, I can determine what opportunities are available. So it wouldn’t be a waste of time has been 15 or 20 minutes with me no cost. And of course depending on the complexity of it, we determine how to move forward with exploring those opportunities. And I do have some links on my site that allow for people To get more information if they don’t want to jump right into a conversation with me to, you know, case studies or just a little bit about how I interact with CPAs, or how I interact with Wealth Advisors, or they’re just a high income earning, you know, individual and they’re like, Hey, I just want to learn more about what you do. They can obviously click on those links and I can send them some things to look at. Perfect.

george grombacher 20:22
Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did show, mark your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to peak profit solutions.com and click the link to schedule some time with Mark, find out. It sounds like spending the 2030 minutes just to know one way or another if there’s opportunities if any of these coupons will save you some money in your life and your situation. Definitely worth knowing. Thanks again, Mark. Thank you, George. It was a pleasure. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai