Episode 51: Benefit From The New Tax Extensions

Announcer:

This is The WealthAbility® Show with Tom Wheelwright. Way more money, way less taxes.

Tom Wheelwright:

Welcome to The WealthAbility® Show where we’re always discovering how to make way more money and pay way less taxes. This is Tom Wheelwright, your host, founder and CEO of WealthAbility®. We are in perhaps the most challenging time, certainly of our lifetime, if not, the history of the United States. We have a government, good or bad, mostly good, I think, has decided to defer our tax payments and our tax filings right now until July. It’s possible they might defer till October, but at least until July. On the surface, boy, that’s really good news. We’re not going to owe money on April 15th because normally on April 15th we would owe both an estimated payment, if you’re in business, for 2020, and pay the remainder of 2019. Instead, that is now been pushed to July 15th. What also presumably will be pushed is the June estimated payment that’s normally due June 15th. It may even be pushed until October. We don’t know.

Tom Wheelwright:

Maybe by the time you hear this it will be, I doubt it. Congress is fighting like crazy over this relief bill and who knows what they’ll come out with. Again, we may know. If we do, we’ll do another podcast. I want you guys to really understand that we have a window opportunity here. We have a potential of owing two payments, three payments, maybe even four payments, 2019, 2020 estimated payment one, 2020 estimated payment two, and maybe 2020 estimated payment three. We may know all of them all at the same time. Here’s our window opportunity. What we’re going to discuss today is how to basically handle the fear of what happens tomorrow. How do we deal with the fear of what happens tomorrow? It’s pretty much everything we can do right now to handle the fear of what we’re dealing with today.

Tom Wheelwright:

How do we handle the fear of tomorrow? Because the piper will be paid. I mean the IRS just sent out some egregious notices to some tax payers saying that if you don’t do what we say, even though you’ve done everything legal, we’re going to come sit on you like an 800 pound gorilla. We’re going to audit you. You may get penalties even though these opportunity these people took advantage of was completely legal, completely conservative, well within the law, exactly what Congress wanted. We have an IRS that on the one hand is being a bully at best and on the other hand we have treasury who’s saying, look, we’re going to postpone your payments. Now here’s the question. When you postpone those payments, are you going to have the ability to make those payments? I mean, you’re talking about the April 15th payment for 2019. You’re talking about your April 15th payment for 2020, your estimated payment first quarter.

Tom Wheelwright:

You’re talking about your potential estimated payment for June of 2020. Then if they postpone it again, you’re talking about perhaps the estimated payment for September. How are you going to handle all of those payments coming due at once and do we really believe that the IRS is going to play nice guy and say, oh, don’t worry, we’ll just give you an installment payment. You won’t have any penalties if you don’t pay. Not for a second do I believe that. I hope not for a second do you believe it, because it will not happen. Based on what we’re seeing at the IRS right now, they are not the kinder and gentler IRS of George Bush of the ’80s, okay. This is a completely new IRS with a commissioner who’s a tax attorney who understands the law, maybe not completely because he’s trying to do things that I think are completely contrary to the law. At the same time, he’s pushing this out and they’re not showing any kind of flexibility here that I’m seeing.

Tom Wheelwright:

What do you do? Okay, now I’m not trying to scare the daylights out of you. I’m already scared. Okay. I’ll be scared for you just because I think the IRS is just being heavy-handed right now. What do you do? Well, we have a unique opportunity. I know that’s a hard thing to think about. We’re in the worst crisis in our lifetime and maybe the worst crisis in the last century. Certainly the worst crisis since the depression of the ’30s and ’40s. What do you do? Well, here’s the good news. Here’s the good news. You’re working from home now. You have some time to reflect. You’re not commuting so you don’t have that travel time. You have an opportunity now to change your life. Most of all, I think you have enough opportunity to change your future and particularly your immediate future.

Tom Wheelwright:

Those of you who have read my book, Tax-Free Wealth, and of course if you have it, I encourage you to do it. It’s on iBooks. It’s on Audible. I mean, even if Amazon is not fast to [luring] it, there are other ways to get it. Remember, the name of the book is Tax-Free Wealth: How to Build Massive Wealth by Permanently Lowering Your Taxes. Here’s the goal right now that I believe should be the goal for every single entrepreneur and everybody who wants to be an entrepreneur. We’re going to have payments due. What if you didn’t have to make those payments? What if those payments shrunk to a very small amount and you all of a sudden had all that cash freed up and you knew you’re going to have that cash freed up? I’m going to tell you right now, here’s how you deal with that.

Tom Wheelwright:

We have three months, at least, maybe six, but we know we have three months. We have a window of opportunity to create a wealth and tax strategy right now that will build our wealth into the future and seriously impact our taxes now. Now I’m not saying everybody who listens to this or calls in is all of a sudden your tax is going to magically disappear. I’m not talking about that at all. There’s work to do. The good news is most of us seem to have a little more time on our hands. Many people listening, I know, unfortunately they’ve been laid off or deferred or something and they’re going, look, I don’t want to go through this again. I’ve done some, this is just anecdotal evidence, but I have done some questioning when I’m in large groups of people and I’ve asked entrepreneurs in particular, how many of you started your business after you lost your job?

Tom Wheelwright:

Without exception in those groups, it’s over 50%. I started my business after I got fired by Price Waterhouse, so I’m one of those. It’s fascinating to me that so many people go, look, I was at huge risk. I mean, you think about it as an employee, how many clients do you have? One. I mean, I think everybody right now can see that having one client is maybe not the most risk averse way to go about things because what happens if you lose your job and there’s not a new job? You know, it’s one thing when all the restaurants are open. Now my son is a bartender, so he’s challenged right now. We talk about this. I’m going, what happens the next time? I always say, burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. We’ve seen over the last 40 years, I mean, I remember, I’m elderly now, by the way. I’ve learned, I’m elderly, used to think I was middle aged until a couple of weeks ago, now elderly.

Tom Wheelwright:

What we’ve learned is, is that in 1989, 1990, we had a downturn in the market. In 2000, 2001 we had a downturn in the market. In 2008, nine, 10 we had a downturn in the market. Lo and behold, oh my heavens, in 2020 we have a downturn in the market. You go, yeah, but it’s different. We have a virus. We never had a virus before. I’m going, that’s true. There was always going to be a trigger. We didn’t know it’d be a virus. It was just always going to be one thing. I’m going, 10 years from now, are we going to have another downturn? Let’s say we build this back up, which I fully expect us to do. We get back on our feet. 10 years from now, are we going to have another downturn? The answer is absolutely yes.

Tom Wheelwright:

That is the way it works with fiat currency, pretend money. That’s the way it works in our economy because we’re so dependent on confidence going on in our economy. I’m not saying it’s necessarily, it’s not like it’s a bad thing. It’s not a good thing. It’s just a thing. I’m doing my best while I’m protecting myself and my family from the virus. I’m doing my best to protect and I’ve been for years the best for me and my family as far as preparation goes. I’m grateful to have the education that I’ve had and I’m far from perfect. I mean, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I could use a little more toilet paper. Here’s one thing that I’m so grateful for. When I quit my job, I started my first accounting firm, and instead of having one client, I had 10 clients, then 20 clients, then 50 clients, then a hundred clients.

Tom Wheelwright:

Now, I have clients who are hurting and I feel terrible for them and I’m doing everything I possibly can to help them. We’re working long hours as a CPA firm to help them. Our team is great and I love that. They’re very positive. They’re working hard, they get it. Some of our clients are really struggling. We have clients who’ve laid off hundreds of employees, people who’ve worked for them for 20 or 30 years. This is not a happy time from the standpoint of economic reality. It is an opportunity. One thing I actually appreciated about this is the force in me to be more creative, to be more innovative. All of our team now on both companies working from home, WealthAbility® and my CPA firm, everybody’s working from home. We have team meetings on almost daily basis.

Tom Wheelwright:

We see each other’s face. We didn’t use to do that. To me, it’s awesome because I love my team. I have two great, amazing, amazing teams. That’s been some positives, frankly out of it. The challenge is that like everybody else, I don’t want to spend money. Right? I think now more than ever, we have to look at where do we allocate our resources and that’s the way I look at it. Where do we allocate our resources? Now, I’m very grateful we started doing a gardening project. I’m very happy that we allocated some resources here because we got planter boxes, we’re going to be able to grow food. It’s a little late in the season, but not too late for us. There are certain things we can still grow. We’ve got fruit trees.

Tom Wheelwright:

Come the fall, we’re going to have, I mean, tremendous. I mean, I can tell from the blossoms, we’re going to have lots of fruit on our fruit trees. We’re going to be okay that way. Do I wish I’d done a year before? I totally do. We never know when this is going to happen, but I’m good allocating my resources there. I’ve allocated resources to my studio. I’m glad I did that because now I can help more people. I can do these podcasts on a regular basis. I don’t have to worry about my resources and doing that. What’s most important to me though is that we serve our clients and that we serve everybody we possibly can. When you look at allocating resources and going, okay, is sending money to the government a good use of my resources? I’m going to say no, flat out no.

Tom Wheelwright:

Yet I have a legal obligation to do so. What do I do? There are certain things we can do, it’s like we can maintain our car and not have big repairs. We can maintain our health and not have big health bills. We can maintain our house and again, not have big repairs. A lot of it is what are we going to do to prepare so that we can have more money? How do we allocate our resources? Nobody’s investing right now. We’re all waiting on this thing to say, okay, are there going to be bargains? I think so. If there are going to be bargains, are we going to be prepared to actually take up those bargains? Some people who aren’t prepared, they’re going to lose and we know they are. They lost an eight, nine, 10. I was one of those, by the way.

Tom Wheelwright:

There are some people who, they started investing in 10, 11, 12 and they’re going to struggle. They’re going to struggle with some of their real estate. They might struggle with some of their oil. They might struggle with some of their businesses and there are going to be opportunities. Now, here’s the other thing. Some of you and my heart totally goes out to you because I think about my employees every day, okay? Some of you have at least temporarily lost your jobs. My heart absolutely breaks for you. I think, what if we had to lay off employees? It would kill me. I get it. What I also get though is that ever since I started my business, I have not worried about putting food on my table. I am not worried about is my single client, my employer going to fire me, either because of something I did or despite of all the good I did.

Tom Wheelwright:

The biggest challenge I think I see right now is that there are a lot of good people that are really good employees that had to be laid off because otherwise the business goes under and there never going to be a job again for them. What do we do? I think this can be a turning point in our life. Let me tell you about when I got fired by Price Waterhouse. Now, there was no economic crisis going on when I got fired from my job. My only economic crisis was my economic crisis. I had a stay-at-home wife and two young children. I had a little bit of severance and that’s what I had and I had credit cards. That’s it. I went out and I beat the streets and I built a business and I worked and worked and I got good advice from good mentors.

Tom Wheelwright:

I got some really good coaching. I met some really good people. Eventually, nine months later, 10, 11, 12 months later, I survived and all of a sudden I was strong. A year later, two years later I was overwhelmed with work. I remember very clearly telling my wife at the time that even if I only made $40,000 a year, $30,000 a year for the rest of my life, I was never going back to work for somebody else. That’s how important that is to me. I love being in business. I love, love, love being in business and I love being able to serve not one client, some big company, but being able to serve hundreds and thousands of people. That’s what gets me up in the morning. Being able to help you guys through this crisis is one of my greatest joys in life right now.

Tom Wheelwright:

We get into our heads a little bit. I was getting in my head a little bit and I told my wife Luanne, I said, Luanne, I’m going to go do this podcast. She says, are you sure? Are you sure you’re good with this? I said, absolutely. This is what I need to do. Serving other people, helping them be prepared is what feeds my spirit. Okay? This is the great thing about being in business. Those of you who are in transition right now, I strongly encourage you think about starting a business. It’s inexpensive. You can do it practically for free, okay? Assuming you’ve got access to a computer somewhere, you can start a business. Now, actually, technically you could start a business without a computer. Little more difficult, but you could be delivering for Instacart.

Tom Wheelwright:

You could be delivering for Grubhub, Uber Eats, et cetera. Okay? That’s a very high need business right now. Grocery stores have big needs of clerk, but those are jobs. But my point is that this is an opportunity to change, to transform our lives. I’m going to use Robert Kiyosaki’s word. He’s using the word metamorphosis or transformation right now because I believe he’s right from the standpoint, certainly that this is an opportunity that we’ve never had before as a country or a global economy. This is an opportunity each of us have right now to change our lives. Here’s the great news. The tax law is set up to reward business owners, no matter how big or small your business. The tax law is set up to reward investors in real estate, energy, and business. It’s not set up to reward you going into the stock market.

Tom Wheelwright:

I’ve got it. I’m going to be completely open and honest with everyone, investing in the stock market, I’ve never been a huge fan of. Now I’m not an expert at it so that’s part of it. I’m a big believer that you find something you absolutely love the way I love business and that’s what you do and that is what you do. Now is the time I think we have to do a little bit of self-discovery. Frankly, little bit of self-evaluation, but more than anything, it’s a time that we get our plan of action together so that A, we can reduce our taxes permanently so that we don’t have to make that payment in July or we actually create a loss this year. Not because we’ve lost money. I mean, that’s one of the ways to create a loss, not my recommendation.

Tom Wheelwright:

Okay, but there you can create a tax loss. They’re talking about being able to carry that back five years. Well, guess what? I don’t know about you, but a lot of us had really good years the last few years. We paid a lot of tax. A lot of people paid a lot of taxes. Well, guess what? What they’re talking about is you’re going to be able to carry that back. I think that’s a provision that’s going to become law. You’re going to be able to carry back and get that refund. Not only are you not going to have to pay your April estimated payment, your June estimated payment, and maybe not even your September estimated payment. Now, I’m not guaranteeing this. I want to be really clear. Not everybody will do the work. Not everybody will do what they have to do.

Tom Wheelwright:

We’re not going to be able to reduce your taxes to zero the first year. It’s not going to happen. I want to be perfectly clear. That is not likely to happen. It’s possible, not likely. What I will tell you though is that it’s possible to reduce them enough that you actually have even possibly a loss to carry back, or do we have an opportunity to reduce it so at least it’s manageable? Absolutely. I am completely confident in that. I’ve just looked at too many tax returns for business owners. I know that on average we’re going to see a reduction in taxes by 10 to 40% permanently within three to four months. I know. Look at your tax liability and look at what if your taxes went down by 10 to 40%. What would that do to your cashflow? My guess is it would be a lot more for many of you, if not most of you than anything.

Tom Wheelwright:

We’re looking at how do we handle fees and all that kind of stuff, but anything that you might pay a professional. On top of that, there are going to be opportunities more people became millionaires during the depression than any other time. I have clients, personal clients that made a boatload of money in eight, nine, 10, 11, not because they were greedy, because they were smart. They’d prepared for it. They were smart, they had a plan of action, they were educated. My strong recommendation is now is an opportunity that we’re never going to get back. We have a window opportunity here, three to six months to reduce our taxes, build a plan of wealth so that when those bargains come, whether it’s stock market bargains, real estate bargains, oil and gas bargains, those are coming. Business bargains, those are coming. This country and most countries are going to be on sale.

Tom Wheelwright:

The question is, are you going to be ready to participate in that sale? Are you going to have just hunkered down and said, you know what, I’m just going to go get another job. I totally pray that you will consider this opportunity, this window of opportunity to reduce your taxes permanently and to build your wealth. I’m not suggesting be greedy. Okay? Don’t go be buying 200 rolls of toilet paper. I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m suggesting, look, you want to be prepared. You want to have an opportunity here instead of you’re hurting right now. What if you could be ready in six months from now or three months from now, or a year from now when this turns. What if you could be absolutely ready? Lower your taxes so that you’ve got cash available and be able to go out and make some good investments. What if you could do that? I’m telling you right now, this is not just possible.

Tom Wheelwright:

We’ve had hundreds and thousands of people do this over the last 15 years. We’ve watched them do it. We watched them do it in 2008, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. I mean, we’ve watched this. We watched people do it in 2003, four, five because this is our mission. I want to help you any way we can. Please call WealthAbility®, go to our website, schedule a call, no charge. We will talk to you. We will help you. We will do whatever we can so that you can then get into a plan where instead of paying the government thousands and thousands of dollars, okay, you get into a situation where your tax advisor, your CPA, yes, you’re going to pay them a small amount, but the result is going to be a large amount in your pocket. It’s just like, I remember years and years ago when people used to change their own oil, FRAM oil filters had this great commercial and the mechanic goes, you can pay me now a little bit or you can pay me later a lot. That’s what’s going on.

Tom Wheelwright:

My encouragement, my strong encouragement is let us help you. Let us be there for you. Our members are ready. They’re willing, they want to help. They’re not greedy, they’re not greedy at all. They want to serve and they are prepared to serve. We have potential loans coming down. We have tax opportunities coming. If your CPA doesn’t have a great network of people helping them, this may be the time to say, look, I’m going to find a network of CPAs that can do that. If there’s a way we can help you, please give us a call at WealthAbility®. Go to wealthability.com. Get a free consultation. We’re not going to charge you for that consultation at all. We’re going to help you really any way we can, because when we do that, it’s going to build us, it’s going to build you. You’re going to have way more money, pay way less taxes, and most important, you’re not going to be afraid of what’s going to happen tomorrow. See you next time.

Announcer:

You’ve been listening to The WealthAbility® Show with Tom Wheelwright. Way more money, way less taxes. To learn more, go to wealthability.com.