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Episode 50: Uncommon Tax Planning with Ricky De Hamer
170 Plays6 years ago
We all need to pay our taxes, but some people hesitate to work with an accountant. If you own a business, you’ve got to get over that attitude. Finding a good accountant who can help with tax planning and so much more isn’t a necessary evil. It’s the right business decision.
On this episode, we’re talking with a fellow business owner and our own tax planner, Ricky De Hamer. Tax laws change in small and large ways all the time, so having a professional who understands business and understands those changes can make a huge difference in your own business.
Tax preparation is just a part of the conversation. We talk with Ricky about tax prep, tax implications for different business entities, and much more. If you wish you knew more about how to find a trusted advisor for taxes and money management, you’ll want to listen in.
Ricky has over 13 years of public and private accounting experience. He’s been a big help to us, for sure. He has served on the Board of Directors for the Accountants Association of Iowa and is currently the President of AAI. He earned his BA in accounting at Central College in Pella, IA.
what you will learn in this episode:
- The importance of audited financials
- How to use a tax professional as a resource as you start out and grow a business
- The impact of the structure of your business
- Differences in business entities
- Taking advantage of legitimate business tax deductions
- What the new tax laws mean for personal deductions
- How non-traditional small businesses (like AirBNB) impact your income tax
- Why you might consider a Health Reimbursement Account and how it differs from an HSA
- Why online tax prep platforms are not the best choice for business owners
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Uncommon Life Project
00:00:02
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life.
00:00:27
Speaker
A life worth celebrating and savoring. Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Philip Ramsey. Hello and welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Uncommon Life Project, where I'm your host, Philip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. Thanks for tuning in to another episode. We have a fun episode for you today, and we're talking to an accountant.
Meet Ricky DeHamer - A Proactive Accountant
00:00:48
Speaker
Dum dum dum. Tax guy.
00:00:52
Speaker
Which is, I think, really important. Obviously, there's a component of business that has to do with taxes. Normally, no one's an expert, and so we thought we'd bring in our expert, the one and only Ricky DeHamer. But before we get him, I wanted to start with a review. We know, and you know, if you've listened to this, it's a big deal for us. So we're going to 100, hopefully. We're at 77 now.
00:01:14
Speaker
Man, it would be huge if you'd rate this for us and even write something and I'm gonna read one that is one of our favorites. And it says these guys are the real deal. Great show, great content, get ready for a mind shift. And that's from mustachio number eight. Thank you very much. Mustachio. Love it. Anyway, okay. Ricky DeHamer is who we're talking to. Brian, what do you got for Ricky DeHamer? His bio. He's a rock star.
00:01:39
Speaker
Ricky is larger than life. He works and owns Dahamer accounting with his father and he is our personal accountant. That's pretty much the best intro you can give. I don't love those long paragraphs. Nobody likes it. Welcome to the show, Ricky Dahamer. Thanks for having me. First off, we've got a lot of questions.
00:01:59
Speaker
One thing that I really want to focus on in this whole episode is just like uncommon things. This is what we've heard most often. With accountants, they're not proactive with their clients. They are just more reactive where they'll get their tax return. Hey, here it is. And then we give them some ideas. Obviously, we're not tax guys. So we always say, hey, go talk to your tax guy. And they do. And immediately they're like, oh, yeah, we can do that. And our clients are like, why don't you tell me that?
00:02:25
Speaker
So Ricky, I would say is one of those proactive guys. We love calling him. We call him all the time. He probably hates it, but we call him super personable. And so one thing I want to talk about through this is just some uncommon ideas. Acts wise. But let's give some time for Ricky to talk.
Ricky's Journey and Business Growth
00:02:40
Speaker
Tell us about your business. How did you get to where you're at? And how did you get to now owning your own tax business?
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, in college, I was always an accounting major, kind of knew that was my thing. Um, and then, uh, out of college, I had a job offer, uh, going into my senior year to fortune 500 company and, um, kind of went that route for a little over six years and did the corporate accounting thing that
00:03:12
Speaker
a variety of different jobs and was able to see many different things. Um, it just kind of got my appreciation for this different kind of aspects of accounting, but it kind of, in the end, I think the most important part was I didn't think I was making a huge difference where, uh, in public accounting and working with individuals and small businesses that impacts a lot larger
00:03:39
Speaker
even though the numbers may be a lot smaller. So it's big for the business owners. It's huge for the business owners. I'll say that. So yeah. So I, so I've been, uh, doing the public accounting, uh, started working with my dad, uh, about six years ago and, uh, acquired a couple of different accounting practices and client lists on the way, uh, uh, have a location in Creston, Iowa.
00:04:06
Speaker
along with a location here in Des Moines and just kind of been going that route. The location in Creston has got another acquisition to it. So own an office building and have seven employees there. So we're growing and moving and shaking.
00:04:24
Speaker
Okay, so let's just jump
Financial Statements & Business Loans
00:04:26
Speaker
right into it. Here's one of the things that we see huge with starting businesses is the banks look at you like you have the Blue Blondic plague. It's your ostracized because of one thing and one thing only. You haven't been in business for two years. And so my personal testimony with Ricky and the accountant type of
00:04:47
Speaker
I would say role on my team or person is that we got a loan from the bank before that two years because we had audited financials so my first question is how important is having audited financials for the average business person.
00:05:04
Speaker
Most businesses don't have any actual official financial statements. So if you're using QuickBooks or spreadsheets or just even your tax return, there's not an actual financial statement there that
00:05:21
Speaker
bank sees that's going to get you anywhere. So the term audited financial statement, technically it's called a compilation or a compiled financial statement, but that has to be done by a licensed public accountant. Someone has to sign off on that that says,
00:05:43
Speaker
this is as good as we know it is. And we're basically kind of ensuring that this financial statement is correct. So there's a lot behind that where the bank is saying, okay, now we have a professional
00:05:58
Speaker
That does accounting that says, you know, these are these are the real deals so that that means something to the bank and That's what I do for most of my small business clients is a compiled financial statement so they could any month that we're working on their financials they could take most recent months to their banker and use that to start that loan process so yeah, that's
00:06:24
Speaker
So here's my question when should a client come to you in the infancy of a business from the idea to then having you do their numbers when would you say the ideal moment that they're like reach out to somebody you or somebody like you. I think i think you should reach out to an accountant right away if i think i'm gonna start a small business.
00:06:46
Speaker
You need to get a hold of them. Now, you might not need to partner with them on a regular basis and they're doing all of your accounting and you might not be there yet. And I still have quite a few new small businesses that aren't, which is fine, but get a game plan together, talk to them, make sure that there's not anything that you're missing because there's always something that you need to talk about.
00:07:13
Speaker
it's going to prevent some surprises when it comes time to do your taxes. Definitely. Thank you, Ricky, for walking through that.
00:07:22
Speaker
I think one of the biggest challenges we see for a lot of business owners is starting to not only pay yourself a salary, but also to withhold tax. And I think that's equally as big a part of the front end of building a business or being an entrepreneur is to avoid that year end surprise of like, Oh, you owe this taxes when you're a business owner. That is so naive to me.
00:07:49
Speaker
Well, so the structure of the business is what would depend on if a business owner is going to run payroll or not. So if I'm in a new business, I'm just starting out, I might be the only person, I have no employees. In that case, it may not make sense to get to that point yet. You might just be doing estimated tax payments quarterly through basically your personal income tax return.
00:08:19
Speaker
But when you get to the point where it's like, I need to make a change, I'm either hiring employees or my business is taken off enough where this is my livelihood. This business is all that I do. It's not a side business. This is my thing. At that point, it's probably makes sense to get you set up with payroll and doing withholdings and having a plan throughout the year or so
00:08:45
Speaker
when it comes time to do your tax return, you don't owe a bunch of money and you're trying to figure out how are you going to come up with this? So usually just setting some sort of base salary or wage that you know is reasonable for your business. Everyone's different. And then trying to get to the point where you can withhold income taxes
00:09:09
Speaker
for federal and state so that when it comes time towards the end of the year, we're not trying to make up a lot of tax. So it might be the case where you might need to do a bonus or make it adjustment because you've over withheld. But usually when I'm working with a business on a monthly basis, we're kind of staying on top of that. So it's one of the advantages of having that relationship with the accountant that you kind of go back and forth that, you know, it just prevents that much more surprises and that
00:09:39
Speaker
accountant knows your business that much more, so they're able to give that much more advice. I think we touched on something I want to dive in on quickly, is the structure of your business.
Business Structures & Tax Implications
00:09:50
Speaker
You can be an LLC, you can be a C corp, you can be an S corp. I'm sure there's more. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I want you to walk through each one of those and maybe why you would think about an S corp. This is one that we see a lot, Brian and I.
00:10:09
Speaker
Is when they're making over you know, let's say fifteen thousand dollars, but they have no corporate entity Set up is that one like would that be maybe a benefit for looking that so I guess talk through it You're the expert. I should stop talking Walk through those. Yeah, so
00:10:27
Speaker
I'd say every small business needs to have some sort of entity in place. So I'm starting, I'm putting together all of my information, setting up a business banking account, doing those things. Well, I need to have at a minimum, a single member LLC in place.
00:10:45
Speaker
What that's going to do is it's going to give you a little bit of liability protection. You're going to have a separate checking account so everything stays separate. When you have personal and business transactions mixed together, it gets ugly quick. You need to keep everything separate. It sounds like more work, but in the end, it's going to be a lot less work.
00:11:05
Speaker
And then once you get to the point of it's your livelihood, you're making money, then it makes sense to probably look at that S-corp or C-corp route. The big difference between those two is the S-corp, I'm still going to get taxed on it personally. So there's a form called a K-1 that says, this is how much money you made. It goes on your personal income tax, you're turning your tax on that on top of your W-2.
00:11:35
Speaker
where the C corporation, the difference is I'm getting a W2 from them, and any money I get outside of that is a dividend, which is also taxable, where the distributions in S corp are not additional tax where the C corp got taxed on its income. So there's variations in there. And the reason why people go S corp versus C corp is the S corp
00:11:57
Speaker
Generally, you're gonna end up paying less taxes. This is kind of what the bottom line is. And the C corp, the reason why people choose that over the S corp is health insurance and those sort of benefits. You get more options in the C corp than you do with the S. So every business is different. Every person's needs are different.
00:12:18
Speaker
So for any sort of blanket statement, say, hey, every business needs to go to this entity at this point. It's just not realistic. That's why you need to have that relationship with your accountant to say, hey, my business is now doing this and this is kind of my personal needs. What fits that? And you get to that point. I absolutely love that because that's the way Brian and I are consultants, more consulting, like tell me what you want your life to look like. And then let's try to figure out some tools and resources
00:12:46
Speaker
To get you there faster that's the way to do it instead of like going to a guy who's like i'm just gonna set up with this that the other no need to know what what you're wanting from the business. The type of things that you want the business to do all those questions would help you formulate a true i'd say plan on what kind of entity to start or create.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, and realistically, most of the businesses that I see small businesses are S corporations just because that fits most people, not that it's the right or wrong answer. That's usually the direction most people are going in. Yeah, and I think this is interesting because LLCs, let's just be honest, that's what uncommon wealth is.
00:13:28
Speaker
And so you can be taxed as an S corp. You can be an LLC taxed as an S corp. And to change that model is one piece of paper. You sign it. Form 2553. Ta-da! I love it. So yeah, it's really, since it's a tax election, it's not that complicated to go from an LLC to being taxed as an S corporation.
00:13:52
Speaker
Ricky, you hear a lot in, you know, especially leading up to politics and with Trump in the White House, I'm not trying to get political, but the tax code is designed for businesses and to take risk because we employ people. We're investing in different things. We're creating products and services. And so can you walk our listener through the tax code? You kind of hear these things about loopholes and all this stuff. But a lot of it is for, I'd say most businesses,
00:14:20
Speaker
legitimate stuff because we're doing things to create new products and services and taking risk in the marketplace.
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah. So the big change happened in 2018 for small businesses where there's a qualified business income deduction or QBI. Sometimes people call it 199A. There's a couple of different terms for it, but the bottom line of this deduction is you get a 20% deduction from your profit.
00:14:51
Speaker
on your income tax return if you're a pass-through business. So S-Corporation, LLC, C-Corporation does not count. So this deduction is a new deduction that didn't exist before. So small businesses are paying less tax when they're in S-Corporation and LLC than they've done in the past. So that's one
00:15:15
Speaker
reason why as far when I'm giving people advice on accelerating depreciation and trying to, you know, get, they're trying to lower their profit numbers much. It's like, well, this deduction might not be around in the longterm, hard to predict tax law. And it probably makes sense to use this 20% deduction because it's here right now and we don't know about tomorrow. So I think there's, there's some things to take advantage of.
00:15:42
Speaker
that you may not have had an opportunity to take advantage of before because it's a new tax law. So there's definitely small business tax law to help small businesses. The C corporation in that tax law, they switched the tax rates down to them for 50%. But now if you're a small business, you're probably getting taxed at 10, now you're up at 15. So it didn't actually help the small businesses on the C Corp side.
00:16:09
Speaker
But, you know, it's basically just trying to increase kind of like an economic boost because most C corporations are large businesses. So in their mind, that's the C corporations are going to spend more money on employees or equipment or other things that will increase sales somewhere else. Gotcha.
Tax Law Changes & Strategies
00:16:32
Speaker
Now I want to flip over to the personal return because we hear this a ton and I think it hasn't been really clarified and you have a great way of breaking this down. Walk our listeners through the main four things now in terms of itemizing deductions on your personal return versus what it was kind of pre-Trump
00:16:51
Speaker
Because I think you break this down when a lot of people think they're deducting all this mortgage interest or, you know, they're a couple thousand dollars to charity and in the large part now they're not. And so I think if you can frame that in, that'd be super helpful. Yeah. So, itemized deductions before, so the standard deduction has always been the amount of, I either use a standard deduction or itemized, whatever is better.
00:17:16
Speaker
And if you were married filing joint in the past, you were getting approximately about $12,000 in a standard deduction. So if you had more deductions for mortgage interest, property tax, state income tax paid, charitable contributions, those things over 12,000, you itemized.
00:17:35
Speaker
And from the personal income tax repair side, I'd say most of the people that I do their tax return were itemizing a very high percentage, probably over 80% of tax returns were itemizing. And Iowa, the standard deductions, very small. It's just a few thousand dollars. So everyone itemizes Iowa.
00:17:55
Speaker
So, that was kind of the past that we had lived in where everyone itemized. And then there was also a deduction called personal exemptions. So, everyone got a deduction for everyone that was listed on the tax return. So, if you had mom and dad and two kids, you had four people times the personal exemption amount. So, they got rid of the personal exemptions, increased the standard deduction to 24,000 in the married filing joint example.
00:18:23
Speaker
and also put a limit on state income taxes paid, including property tax at $10,000. So it's that much harder to itemize, where as a personal income tax preparer, those 80% that were itemizing before, it's probably like 20%. It's changed drastically. So those people that are having those higher mortgage interest amounts and they're charitable and they're paying state income tax, they got
00:18:52
Speaker
14,000, because the 10,000 limit, sure they're going to hit that, especially in Iowa and the property taxes. But we're looking at $14,000 between mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Probably are those that's main two. That's a lot of, for a lot of people to get into that. And then on top of that, that's just to get a dollar of a deduction. So you come up with $24,001, you got $1 deduction more than the person just uses standard.
00:19:18
Speaker
So for the people that are charitable, and they're getting to that point where they're right at that $24,000 mark, that's where there's donor advice funds. And me personally, what I like to call the first 10% is when I'm given my 10% to church,
00:19:38
Speaker
I'm also going to give my 10% for the next year at the end of the year. So I might double up contributions in one year. So I itemize that year. And then the next year, I use standard deduction. So then I can at least use my deduction that way.
00:19:54
Speaker
So I think that's just one of the strategies that is really good. So I just want to walk through that again. So you basically give your charitable giving and you squeeze them in one year. One's January 1st. The next one that you're going to give for that year, if you're going to go for this itemized deduction, would be December 31st.
00:20:12
Speaker
So for you, it does kind of feel like a year, but for tax reasons, it's all in one year. And so the next year then going to the standard deduction. So that's just, I think I wanted to clarify. Yep. Yep. And that's exactly right. And obviously from a cash flow standpoint, might not be realistic for everyone.
00:20:29
Speaker
But it's one of those things that if you're at that point and you're so close, especially the accountant in me, it's like, I gotta make this work. I gotta figure out how I can use this. And the donor advice fund also works too, where I can put all the money in this donor advice fund.
00:20:46
Speaker
And maybe it's a couple years worth of contributions and then they, um, do the contributions based upon your timeframe that you give them. And sure, it still went out two or three years over that same time span, but because you put it in day one, that's when you get that deduction. So it works similar, but you know, it's just, there's options there. So it's just, well, I can't itemize now. I'm just going to move on. Like, no, there's, there's some saves we can still figure out. So some uncommon ways.
00:21:13
Speaker
Yep. And then for Iowa, you're looking at itemizing probably no matter what. So at least for our state, there's not a lot of planning that goes involved in that. So it's really about federal, which is your big income tax one anyways. Okay. So let's go into some quirky things that you can do now with
Tax Considerations for Non-Traditional Businesses
00:21:32
Speaker
the tax code. Cause there's all these different businesses coming up, Airbnb, Turo, how in the world does that affect taxes? And let's just talk through those. So go ahead.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah, so I consider these kind of non-traditional small businesses. So when someone's saying, hey, I don't have a small business, I have a W2 job, I don't have a lot going on. It's like, well, there's other things that you may be doing on the side, including the Airbnb and Turo. So those are small businesses from the standpoint what the IRS is concerned.
00:22:08
Speaker
They're going to go on your Schedule C as self-employed income, and you're paying self-employment tax on these things. That's one thing to think about is when I'm paying this additional 15.3% on top of my income tax, I want to make sure I'm getting all of my deductions in there.
00:22:25
Speaker
Just because I got a 1099 from Airbnb and it's this amount, well, you probably had some expenses. Did you run the water last month? I mean, there's some utilities and some other things going on. So there's things that you need to make sure are getting included. This kind of goes back to the, you need to have a relationship with accountant to make sure that they understand what you're up to so that they could say,
00:22:53
Speaker
this is the deductions you need to look out for. So we're not just paying an additional 15.3% plus income tax on your Airbnb 1099. And same thing with Truro, more and more people are renting out their cars, especially in larger cities, and those numbers can add up as well. So there's a lot to gain, I think, because you're talking about income that's
00:23:23
Speaker
off of assets that you already own, but we're also talking about there's some expenses that you need to make sure you include too, because the taxes will come back to bite you if you don't get those deductions you should put in there.
00:23:36
Speaker
Ricky, one of our favorite things to help people with, and I think one of the objections we get or one of the biggest hang ups for people doing something entrepreneurial is benefits and more specifically health insurance. And so we've helped a lot of families evaluate some of these Christian sharing organizations, which you can't deduct that premium.
00:23:58
Speaker
But it does get you out of the penalty for, you know, if you don't have a health plan, that counts as a health plan. But one of the things we've gravitated towards is an HRA. Can you walk our listener through kind of the difference between an HRA and how it could be beneficial?
Health Reimbursement vs. Savings Accounts
00:24:14
Speaker
Yeah. So, so the health reimbursement account is becoming more and more popular because the restrictions on it aren't nearly the same as health insurance. So there's a lot of, a lot of small businesses out there that want to offer health insurance to their employees, but it's just not realistic. It's just too expensive. So with HRAs, if I'm a small business and let's say I'm an S corp,
00:24:44
Speaker
I can offer an HRA to all of my employees just as long as it's non-discriminatory. So everybody has the same policy. Everybody gets the same amount.
00:25:00
Speaker
depending upon the policy and the program and everything in place, these people have medical expenses, they come back and they get it reimbursed through this HRA. And essentially it's like, it's not necessarily health insurance, but it's like it wherein you don't have to pay all this out of pocket and you didn't really get it deducted anywhere where the employer in this case gets to deduct it as an employee benefit.
00:25:27
Speaker
and the employee, which may be the same case in S Corp, there's going to be employers and employees are both the same, which there's some limits on the owner if there's an employee situation. But yes, in the end though, you're going to be paying less for health insurance and you're able to deduct it on your business. So it's a nice little way to do that.
00:25:55
Speaker
Yeah, I just want to go through this because this is super cool and super confusing sometimes. So everyone knows normally the HSA. The problem with the HSA is you have to fund that HSA account. And it's usually for employees. Well, this one, business owners as entrepreneurs, the last thing we want to do is have an account to the left that we can't touch.
00:26:14
Speaker
no matter what the benefits is, because we just know we need cash flow to start a business or do whatever. This HRA allows you to have kind of a earmarked account, kind of like an HSA, but it's an HRA where you don't necessarily have to fund it. But every time you have a medical expense, if you have this account set up, then you can now deduct that fully if you qualify. So that's asterisk there.
00:26:40
Speaker
Well, and also with that HSA, another kind of challenge that people have is it also has to be coupled with health insurance. So that's where, you know, HRA, you don't have to get into that challenge. I mean, they may have health insurance still, but basically any of the out of pocket expenses could still go through this. So it's a really cool instrument, I think, for sure.
00:27:03
Speaker
What has it been like, I think for you, you know, you're a business owner. I think that's one of the, one of the other reasons we like working with you. Um, it's cause you're doing this stuff as well. And so you just recently bought a business on a different town and you're doing these entrepreneurial things. And I think it's important that, you know, a lot of people have access to each and our block or TurboTax and that type of thing. But like, what is that switch?
00:27:31
Speaker
You know to kind of start working with an account versus maybe one of these maybe a more employee related type outfits or software.
00:27:41
Speaker
Well, probably because I'm an accountant. My, my opinion is, is probably from day one, I rarely see anyone that's like, you know, probably should just do TurboTax with this one. It just, so that the only ones that really are like, yeah, this, this could get done by yourself is like a kid's tax return where they're, you know, they're, they're working summer job. They have a W two and that's all they have.
00:28:06
Speaker
And the fee for those that we're charging isn't much more than what turbo taxes get to charge them. So it's not going to be life-changing for them, but for anyone who's getting that's actually on their own, they're on their own tax return, in those cases, let's say they're the most simple tax return, they're single, they have no kids, they don't have a house.
00:28:29
Speaker
Are they going to stay that way forever? I mean, I would assume not. So when it changes and they get something more complicated in their life than that, they should have an accountant there to help them through that.
Amending Tax Returns & Missed Deductions
00:28:44
Speaker
And if they're just starting that relationship right when that time happens, it just depends on how that works out in the timing, but it may be too late and they've already have gone down a path that doesn't make as much sense as another one.
00:28:58
Speaker
Totally. So what if you do realize that a couple years ago or last year, you really messed up or you thought you could maybe get a deduction that you did. Could you even go back at that point? So you can amend back to three years. So that's where you just go into your account and say, Hey, there's some deduction or something that we had missed. And I want to get that included. So if you go, you can go back three years after that, you just lose
00:29:24
Speaker
but you can get amended and there's a process for that. It's a little bit more cumbersome than your regular filing, but otherwise it's something that I see probably more than I'd like to, but it's not too challenging.
00:29:43
Speaker
One of the buzzwords that we hear a lot, and I think it's been Tony Robbins talks a lot about it. There's been a lot more people promoting this, but is the word fiduciary. And so in our business, we have to have the client's best interest in mind and all of our decisions, disclosures, and that has to be very clear from the forefront. I believe your industry is the same way. You act as a fiduciary for your client's return. Can you kind of shed light on that?
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah. So any tax return that I do, um, every client signs an engagement letter and in that engagement letter it states, you know, basically I'll be doing my best job to do their tax return at the end of the highest level that I can, the most accurate. And they're also providing me with the most accurate information as well. So it's, it's kind of almost like a,
00:30:38
Speaker
A partnership agreement that says, hey, both of us are doing our best to get this to the best level that we can. And it kind of outlines all of those things. It's a nice read. It's about four pages if you really want to look at it. But I'd say most people get a little bored reading one of those.
00:31:00
Speaker
Engagement letters, I'd say pretty much any practice that we have, if it's working with a business or payroll or income tax returns, you're going to sign an engagement letter and it's really good for us as the accountants and also for the clients so they understand what they should expect to get.
00:31:18
Speaker
One of the things we've touched on in a previous episode that I think is maybe a good place to leave off for our conversation today is kind of like financial guilt and shame. There can be a lot of emotion wrapped up in taxes.
00:31:33
Speaker
parents may have made a bad decision in a business or all those different types of things. And there's just kind of a potential to get sideways with taxes, especially as an entrepreneur. And I think one of our biggest message was, you know, if you're really avoiding talking to somebody about your finances or your situation, the first step is just admitting you need help.
00:31:56
Speaker
And so can you kind of share with our listeners maybe like what it's been with your experience, helping people maybe dig out or get things cleaned up and just the importance of that moving forward, not only financially, but maybe even just psychologically.
00:32:12
Speaker
One person I think of mine is actually one that we've both worked on where we had to go back and amend every one of those years we could possibly could for the three years because there was something that was done incorrectly and went back and
00:32:28
Speaker
amended a return and they ended up getting a bunch of refunds and money back. And in that regard, it was beneficial financially quite a bit for them. But I think the thing is when you get your tax return done or you
00:32:43
Speaker
or you haven't gotten it done, there is some guilt there where like, I don't want to talk to somebody about amending this because I know I messed up or maybe you did it yourself on TurboTax, which I usually get each year and they just messed up on something and they got a letter from the IRS, I'll just pay it. It's like, well, no, you don't know if that letter from the IRS is right. I see it all the time where
00:33:08
Speaker
It says they owe thousands of dollars and they don't. Just come in, have someone look at it, and don't just write a check. Have them look at it. That's good. Okay, so I'm going to piggyback off that. What are the biggest whiffs that you've seen people on their taxes bring you in regards to taxes that they either don't deduct or they completely miss? What are some of those?
00:33:29
Speaker
So I had a tax return this past year where they went to the two letters with a block. And it was that same tax year, and they knew that something was wrong. And they're like, I don't know what's wrong with our tax return. It seems like our taxes are a lot higher than they were in previous years. I'm thinking, well, with the new rules, it's possible. Just because you owe more got a big re-flight. Just because it's changed enough may not mean it's wrong.
00:33:57
Speaker
Well after looking at they had no deductions on their tax returns like oh you want a house don't you oh yeah oh you have you have a car right you know you kind of go through some of these deductions and they just weren't on there and went through and.
00:34:14
Speaker
change the taxes and amended it and got them some more money. But in some of those cases, in that case, I think that went down to the preparer. But in some other cases, you just may have forgotten where like always people forget their car registration. The likelihood of you remembering your car registration is probably zero.
00:34:33
Speaker
There are some things like that where you just remind everybody, it's like, oh, you forgot car registration or some of these. The mortgage interest one, everyone remembers. There's some other ones that everybody gets. It's just trying to remind people of those more basic ones. Unfortunately, it happens where people get a tax return filed, hopefully not by us, that are missing deductions.
00:34:58
Speaker
Okay. So I want to talk about how do people engage you and like, what are your fees and then how do they get in touch with you if they want questions answered or this, that,
Contacting Ricky DeHamer & Fee Structure
00:35:07
Speaker
and the other. Yeah. So if someone's trying to get ahold of me, I got a website where you can request a meeting or have a question. You can send it through there. So that's fine. It's a dehameraccounting.com. So D E H A M E R then accounting spelled out.com.
00:35:28
Speaker
So there you can kind of request all of those things and also I email the emails on there and that's ricky at behavior accounting.com. But those those are usually the two main sources of getting a hold of me. And then obviously a phone number, we have that too. So it's kind of any way is fine. Generally, people are
00:35:54
Speaker
like and to send emails and we'll follow up maybe if a meeting if we need to. But yeah, it's not going to be too hard to get ahold of me. I always have my phone on me.
00:36:06
Speaker
Then as far as fees go, for a small business that's just started up, I'm going to recommend probably the lowest amount of fees I can possibly charge because I understand as a small business, when you start up, you don't really have anything.
00:36:26
Speaker
you're trying to cut back on buying the nice paper. You're buying the bad paper, you're finding the generic staples. It's as cheap as you can get on some things, but don't go as cheap as you can go on some of your professional services. Because if you just skip out of it and then come time to do your tax return trying to get everything fixed, it's going to end up costing you more money than it would just to get someone going and
00:36:52
Speaker
having someone do your accounting or help you out throughout the year. So realistically, for less than $200 a month, you can have someone do just the tax part of your business where you're handling all the accounting side. And obviously, if you're
00:37:07
Speaker
If I'm doing everything, or doing at least the accounting side and the taxes, generally, I'm going to probably charge at least $400 a month for that. Personal income tax returns, they're all over the board. I'll get someone with just a W-2 and the next person has 25 states that they worked in. It's still all over the board.
00:37:27
Speaker
on average, your tax return is going to be right around $350. Some are going to be less, some are going to be more. So that's just kind of a general look at it. Man, this has been super, I'd say, enlightening about all this stuff. Thanks for getting on. And man, I just want to
00:37:47
Speaker
We've loved working with you and i say the clients that we have mutually is some of my favorites because we can call ricky and kinda talk on behalf of the client obviously that confidentiality and it's been really efficient in some strategies that we've like to go through for the client would have to call the client and say we need to set up another meeting with your account that's pretty.
00:38:09
Speaker
It's pretty slick and seamless. So thanks again for all you have done for us in our practice and also all the clients that you've helped save in taxes. And so it's been super fun just to get to know you a little bit more. And we're excited about the future. And so yeah. Thank you guys. And it was nice to have you on. So guys, you've been listening to the Uncommon Life Project. I've been your host, Philip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. Thank you so much for listening and go out and be uncommon. Love it. See you later. Goodbye.
00:38:39
Speaker
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