5 Non-Obvious Tax Saving Strategies for Your Accounting Clients
Summary
- Lightweight Marketing Consulting Opportunity
- Charitable Giving
- Bird in the Hand, Two in a Bush
- Selling Appreciated Assets
- The Augusta Rule
Resources
- Reach out to Mark via Peak Profit Solutions
- https://jetpackworkflow.com/blog/how-to-value-cpa-firm/
- https://jetpackworkflow.com/blog/3-ways-to-get-more-profit/
- https://jetpackworkflow.com/blog/the-secret-leverage-behind-workflow-audits/
In this “Growing Your Firm” podcast, CEO and founder of Jetpack Workflow, David Cristello, discusses five tax-saving strategies for accounting clients. He interviews Mark Myers, the founder of Peak Profit Solutions. During this interview, Mark gives insight into several different ways to save on taxes in your life.
Meet Mark Myers
Mark Myers is the founder of Peak Profit Solutions, and he’s a Tax Savings Architect. As stated on his website, “Peak Profit Solutions and its affiliate partners have helped thousands of individuals increase profit and permanently reduce their annual tax bill to help them better grow their business and accelerate their wealth.” Mark has worked with many clients on how to lower tax burdens. Mark gave us five strategies to start with:
1. Lightweight Marketing Consulting Opportunity
The first strategy Mark brings up is the Lightweight Marketing Consulting Opportunity Strategy. In an imagined scenario, an individual structures an entity that supports their main entity. They can structure their entity in a way where the only individuals who would benefit are:
- The owner
- Owner’s family
- Whoever else the owner wants to attach
You can also find a way to allow working employees to take income–but it’s not categorized as income.
Instead, it’s shown as a benefit. Taking money out of the corporation as a benefit means that it’s not taxable to the person receiving it. Some of these benefits can be created with no expense, so there’s none to the company. Yet, the dollars can’t be distributed to the employee as a nontaxable benefit. In short, you are creating deductions that have no cost. You’re then able to get that money to the employees of the entity at a no-tax ramification.
In this strategy, there are two levels of tax efficiency:
- Above the Line
- If you are a business owner, you are looking at how you can acquire tax savings before they move on to your 1040. You are trying to find a different entity to support your entity.
- Outsourcing is involved.
- Below the Line
- Through “BTL,” you try to target different groups of consumers by creating specific and characterized advertisements. The goal is that these advertisements will linger on the viewers.
- More conversation-based.
2. Charitable Giving
This applies to anyone that has a high tax build.
Whether an individual is concerned about their W2, 1099, has a small or medium-sized business, or any other related example, their tax build can become an income source. This income source can come from passivity or real estate that they own.
With charitable giving, you give something away to a charity and then take a tax deduction for it. This tax deduction and charitable process can become profitable for you.
What if you were to buy an asset you knew you could give away? You could purchase this asset that a charity would like to have at a significant discount to its fair market value. You could then give this to a charity as a gift. It’s a win-win situation for you and the charity.
Another way to put it: what if you buy something for a dollar and give it to a charity at a four-dollar deduction? What if you can purchase this asset and give it to the charity during the same year?
In this scenario, you won’t have to hold onto this asset for a longer period and hope that it goes up in value. A high-income earning taxpayer can purchase something for a dollar and either:
- Keep it because it’s more valuable now than when they bought it.
- Give it to a charity for a four-dollar deduction.
Imagine: you’re buying laptops for a nonprofit that does after-school activities. You buy ten laptops at a discount and donate them to the nonprofit as a gift. Then, you have write-offs assuming it is not exceeding the 30% income of the year. Or, you buy a building and give it to a local nonprofit. Through that, you get a tax credit.
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3. Bird in the Hand, Two in a Bush
“Bird in the Hand” refers to the two dollars that come out of that previously mentioned four-dollar deduction.
For example, you set up an LLC that specifies services that acquire solar assets. You structure your LLC where, with every dollar you spend to obtain solar assets, you’re going to end up saving at least a dollar in tax in the same year–meaning that the IRS or the federal government just purchased the solar assets for you. Mark says he’d take that same dollar and fund his theoretical solar company. The same dollar gives him a dollar that doesn’t have to be sent to the IRS.
Mark also refers to this process as “Two in a Bush” because you got your return of capital back on your tax savings.
That dollar would’ve gone to the IRS–now it funds your solar company and you own a solar asset. Usually every dollar you own an asset for will give you at least two sometimes three dollars back in cash flow in the next 25-30 years. Through this process, the IRS purchased this tax-flow-producing asset for you and, in turn, you’re going to get two or three dollars back overtime in the form of cash flow for the solar project.
4. Selling Appreciated Assets
This is targeted at anyone that has a highly appreciated asset and is looking to sell it and get long-term capital gains.
If you’re selling a highly appreciated asset–as long as you can structure your sale appropriately prior to a contract being inked–you can legally either:
- Defer the tax in perpetuity
- Eliminate the tax
- Depends on the structure you choose/the method you go about selling your asset.
Some trust is structured in somewhat of an installment note. Yet, you can control it. Now, the asset that has been sold inside that trust–there’s no taxable event unless you move money outside of the trust, meaning, you can save a ton of transaction tax over a 10-20 year period.
You’re not having taxes on those transactions, or you just have a little bit of tax on the installments that you’re taking out.
On the flip side, there’s an elimination opportunity where you can take the bigger sale and take the dollars generated from the asset sale. Then, you would shift this sale into a private placement life insurance policy.
5. The Augusta Rule
This is for anyone who has their own business that is structured as an S Corp, LLC, or C Corp.
In Augusta, GA, an individual gets a green jacket every year because of the Masters Tournament. People rented their homes to individuals who wanted to watch the Masters Tournament live. These Augusta residents found out that, if they had a primary or secondary residence that isn’t an income-producing property, then they have the right to rent that residence to a third party up to a certain amount of days per year. As long as they followed all of the legal rules, then the money they received for rentals is not taxable. This phenomenon is called the Augusta Rule.
You might not want a stranger inside of your home for the sake of tax-free income. Mark suggests that your business is a person, so why not have meetings at your home for the purpose of things you need for your business? You can easily implement these things for people who need them. You can essentially take the Augusta Rule and rent your primary residence for business purposes. The income you receive is then not taxable.
As a Tax Savings Architect, Mark thinks his five non-obvious tax saving strategies can help anyone who is interested in making their life a little bit more tax-free.
To learn more about Mark’s strategies, listen to the full podcast above. Make sure to share with a fellow firm owner who needed to hear Mark’s advice.
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