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We’re not overpaying. No, we’re not overpaying. We’re not overpaying anymore. The tax code’s complicated, boring, and overrated. You don’t want that, you want a pro. One thing that you should know: this is a radio show. It’s not tax advice, don’t take it that way.

Steven Jarvis: Hello everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services Podcast, Financial Professional’s Edition. I am your host, Steven Jarvis, CPA, and in this show I teach financial how to deliver massive value to their clients through tax planning. As we’ve wrapped up tax season here I’m so excited to have a fellow CPA as a guest today on the show. With me today is Marcus Mire of MireGroup CPAs. Marcus, thanks for being here.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, thanks for having me, this is going to be great.

Steven Jarvis: I’m excited for our conversation today because you spend your time in a little bit different area than I focus, which is you work a lot with small businesses, or businesses of all kinds, and so this is a question I get from advisors, because there are so many possible opportunities when it comes to tax planning and businesses, but it’s a little bit less common that it’s a CPA bringing these opportunities as opposed to a financial advisor. So tell us a little bit about your firm and how you approach this as far as working with businesses.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, so we started about a little bit under two years ago, I was a partner in a more traditional CPA firm, and myself and three others left for MireGroup really the vision of just working more closely with our clients, and really doing that with a focus on technology, specifically cloud-based software and apps in the client experience. And so what we do a lot of what I call back office services, meaning we like to work with our clients pretty closely where we’re handling, and bundling, tax, tax planning, but with accounting and payroll. And really just because we found that if we handle those things, or are heavily involved, that the data becomes much more richer and better, and we can proactively do planning for tax purposes, whether that’s the business, and lots of times really what that means is the underlying individual, because it’s a flow through entity in most, I say most cases, probably 99% of the cases we’re not dealing with a C-corp, so we’re dealing with a flow through, a partnership, or an S-corp.

Marcus Mire: And so we’ve just found that it’s a much better relationship when we have the data via the cloud and it’s up to date, so we either do it or we work closely, and that allows us to do the things we like to do, which is get a little bit more deeper with the clients, do more advisory work. You hear that term thrown out a lot, advisory, and really what that means is just giving ideas. And so we found the best way to give ideas and to help your clients is to have good data, and so we want to be where the data is, in the cloud with them.

Steven Jarvis: Yeah, that’s awesome. I really like that, that advisory is just giving ideas. That seems like such a simple way to put it, but it gets missed so often. So on the financial planning side, you’re seeing more and more often that advisors will list that, hey, I do tax planning. But what we’re not really seeing yet is a real consistency as to what that actually means. And so I love that you talked about having the data and then, okay, great, let’s take that data and give ideas, that’s constantly working with advisors on, hey, let’s get all the tax returns, which of course you already have for your clients. So as you work with businesses, give some examples of those kinds of ideas that might come up.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, I mean, it’s as simple as you would think, and it can be very complicated. It could be as simple as, “Hey, because we work with you often, we notice that you have these 20 subscriptions that you pay for, do you even use these?” It could be as simple as that, or, “Hey, we notice that you,” and I think you mentioned this when you and I talked on my episode is, “are your children on the payroll? Could there be an opportunity for that?” Or, “Hey, I notice advertising and marketing costs normally are 10% of sales and now they’re 17%, what’s going on there?” And really, when I say advisory is just giving ideas, it’s just that. Another example could be, “Hey, we notice that your credit card fees are up as a percentage of sales, have you thought about ACH, is there opportunities to put your clients on a subscription model where you’re not charging with a credit card, but instead you’re charging via ACH?”

Marcus Mire: So having the data, I’ll probably say this a lot, helps us to go back to those things, and then constant client communication, what we’re talking and they’re bringing up ideas, just allows us to help them with things that we might not otherwise know, because they bring them up in meetings. And so it’s anywhere from a complex tax plan about, like I did this year with a client where I said, “You’ve got multiple S-corps, and we should be thinking about how to plan for your salary in terms of maximizing the QBI,” on somebody that made, they made like $3 million, so we were really planning for their QBI and their salaries. Again, all the way down to, “Hey, you’ve got these 20 subscriptions and you are only using four.” So it’s all over the place, but the main point is that if we’re working together with good data, we can make a lot of headway in your business in terms of making it run better and meet the goals you had when you started it.

Steven Jarvis: Yeah, there are some really good points in there. On a recent webinar we did for our audience we talked about different mistakes that advisors make on tax planning, and one of them was the idea of getting hung up on the tax ideas that are sexy or make good headlines and forgetting about the simple things that actually make a difference. And I liked how you described that on a spectrum of, yeah, sometimes there are more complicated situations, but those tend to come up less often, and where we can have an impact on more of our clients is when we’re consistently getting the data, and then looking for things even if they seem simple.

Steven Jarvis: And for people listening to the show, if you’re thinking, well, of course Marcus can do that, he’s doing the payroll, he’s doing the bookkeeping, he’s doing all of this. Sure, he has more data, but even just if you’re getting the tax return and looking at a Schedule C, or you’re looking at the 1120-S for an S-corp, you can start seeing some of these trends of, do you have the expenses that we would expect, did they go up or down by a lot? There are simple things that anyone financially oriented, even if you’re not a CPA, can absolutely be doing.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, like you said, we’re looking at it more from a monthly or quarterly perspective, working with clients, but if you are working annually, you’re probably more a high level trend analysis. And so to your point, getting the tax returns and doing a little simple trend analysis, a two year comparison, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about advisory, advisory just telling your clients, and them knowing, he’s looking out for me, he or she are looking out for me, they’re thinking, they’re not just filling, like you said earlier, they’re not just filling in the blanks, checking off the boxes, they’re thinking of things, they’re trying to help me. And the reason we did what we did is just because we want to help them more, so it made way more sense to have the data and work closely.

Steven Jarvis: Yeah, absolutely. People listening might not know this yet, but actually I recently was a guest on your podcast as well, and one of the things we talked about was the 1099 letter that we work with advisors on. And this is completely a selfish plug, but as you brought that up and we were talking about that, your eyes just lit up, and my impression from that was that you would be over the moon if someone would send that to you for your clients every year.

Marcus Mire: Absolutely. Yeah, the more information I have the better I can serve you and know your situation, so absolutely. Yeah, it was on my list of topics to talk to you about, was those little pieces of communication that you guys put out, which are great.

Steven Jarvis: Yeah, and I bring that up because Marcus, as you were talking about this, it could be easy for an advisor to think, oh, well, that’s not the CPA want to work with because they’re already doing my job, and that’s not what Marcus is saying at all. There’s this whole other realm for advisors when it comes to investment management and other things that are going on that I love hearing about things like what you’re doing as far as being proactive, going beyond just checking the box on compliance.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, I mean, I will tell you, we work hand in hand with lots of financial advisors, and because the data is good, both ways it works better. They come to me and say, “Hey, what’s their salary?” Well, we know it, or, “Hey, are you planning on taking a bonus?” And we already have that mapped out, or we’re working with them closely at year end to do a bonus, maybe they want to max out a step, or this year they want to put in place a 401k, because we’ve got that data, and then we have those relationships, it makes both of us look better, quite honestly, the advisor, because they’ve got somebody with the data, and us.

Steven Jarvis: Marcus, a lot of advisors run into struggles or challenges building quality relationships with CPAs, it can feel like we’re in two different lanes and never the twain shall meet, kind of a thing, but it sounds like have some real positive relationships with advisors. How did those get developed? How did you get to a point where you feel great about those communications back and forth?

Marcus Mire: Well, I have one in particular that I work with pretty closely, we have a bunch of shared mutual clients, and I think what did it for me with this particular financial advisor is just they’re knowledgeable, obviously, and I think that goes without saying, most of the guys that do these are pretty sharp. But just staying on top of it, and they’re very much we both know our lanes. He knows that I know enough to be dangerous in his field, and so I bring up things, but he bounces the tax questions off of me. And so I feel like for us, we’re mutual resources for each other. He’s pretty dang knowledgeable on taxes, but always will get that clarification from me, will ask me those very pointed questions, and I do the same. And so for us, the goal is just to help our clients, and so I know I don’t know everything about what he does, and vice versa, and so we work well together because we communicate, is the point, and we run things by each other, just to make sure we’re not off on a tangent, or think we know something we don’t.

Steven Jarvis: Yeah, that proactive communication is so critical, and that gets developed over time. I definitely remind advisors quite often that building those positive professional relationships definitely takes patience. If you start calling CPAs in March and saying, “Hey, I just want to make sure that you got all these things on their return this year,” that’s not a winning formula for this.

Marcus Mire: Right.

Steven Jarvis: You got to have those communications proactively throughout the year so that everyone’s ready come tax time, that everyone’s got those channels open to have those conversations throughout the year.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, absolutely.

Steven Jarvis: So Marcus, one of the things that we really encourage advisors to do is find and get real comfortable with just two or three tax strategies that apply to most of their clients so that, again, we’re not getting lost in the things that grab headlines, but we’ve got these things that we can make sure our clients take an action on that really deliver value. So you’ve mentioned a couple of things, we talked about that spectrum of complexity, but what are the most common areas that you are seeing clients really benefit from a proactive planning standpoint, as you work with business owners.

Marcus Mire: You’re talking about from a financial services perspective?

Steven Jarvis: Yeah.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, so obviously for lots of clients, if they’re working with a CPA normally, their income is, I would say maybe not substantial, but up there, and so you’ve got the back door Roth, which I think is a great tool. Again, we mentioned this on the episode, we had if you’re working together you know the details about what other deferred money they have out there that could really throw a wrench in those plans. But really just the maximizing 401k contributions, looking at how the plan is written in terms of, I guess another party we haven’t mentioned is a TPA involved, how is the plan written? Can we do some creative things around how the plan’s written to maybe get a few more dollars to the owner, and maybe the owner’s spouse, and very simply working together on, “Hey, is the spouse on the payroll? Did you want to put in a few more dollars? Okay, well is it worth it to pay the additional payroll tax to get maybe your spouse on the payroll and put more money in,” having those kind of discussions.

Marcus Mire: So those really are the big ones for me is just making sure we’ve got the low hanging fruit, so to speak. And like you said, it may not be the sexiest thing, or your brother-in-law’s CPA, who tells you at the cocktail party all the creative things he’s doing, but I think you can do a lot with the low hanging fruit and just being organized and detailed and making sure, like you said, if you’ve got a set figure that have available in cash to put away, that you’re making the most of that from a tax perspective, so Roth IRA, backdoor Roth IRAs, all the way to looking at how the plans are written and making sure that our 401ks allow us to save as much as we would like given cash considerations.

Steven Jarvis: Yeah, I mean, low-hanging fruit’s got to get picked too.

Marcus Mire: Right.

Steven Jarvis: We skip right over it looking for those more exciting things, but it can have such an impact on a client if we take the time to make sure those things are really being addressed. You mentioned earlier getting kids on payroll, and I love this topic, in part because it’s just fun for me to have things that people immediately will push back on a little bit to say, “Well great, that’s a nice idea and all, but my kids aren’t 16 yet.” And I said, “Well, why is that relevant? So talk a little bit more about how you approach identifying the opportunities for kids to be on payroll, and then maybe go a little bit more into why we would even take the time to do that, because we’re paying more payroll taxes.

Marcus Mire: Right. Well, I would say, first thing I look at with kids on payroll, to your point about payroll taxes, I’ll address that first, would be what does their entity structure look like? And so if you are an S-corp, yes, you can put your kids on the payroll, but you will incur roughly a 15% payroll tax to do so. So at that point if you’re an S-corp, the decision to put the kids on the payroll is really just an income tax driven thing, like maybe I’m in the 37% bracket, paying them saves me 37%, but I got to pay 15 on their salary, so it’s only a 22% savings, and that savings gets somewhat squeezed as I’m not in as high of a bracket.

Marcus Mire: But what I would say is if you are a sole proprietor, or a partnership, potentially where the only other partner is your spouse, and specifically in a, I don’t want to get too much in the weeds here, but a community property state, you can have your kids on the payroll and incur no payroll tax in either of those situations, a sole proprietorship or a partnership where you and your spouse are the only partners. And so that even makes the deal sweeter, where you can pay your kids and not incur that payroll tax. And so that’s the first thing we look for, is what’s the entity look like? And then also what’s the deduction worth to the parent, parent S-corp, parent partnership, because, again, if we’re in a 24% bracket and we have the 15% payroll tax, it starts to get to where, is the juice worth the squeeze? Kind of thing.

Marcus Mire: So those are the two things we look for, and then to your point we’re looking at what could we reasonably do? I mean, I wouldn’t say this is an area to get ultra aggressive with and pay your three year old 45,000 a year, I think this is reasonable pay for reasonable work. Maybe you push it a little bit, but I think you brought up the modeling angle, the marketing public relations side, I mean, people pay for models all the time for kids in videos. So looking, again, at what can you do, reasonable pay for reasonable work, that makes, I mean, I always tell my client, “Say it out loud.” It’s one of those things, don’t pay your… I always say this, pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered, if it sounds ridiculous, it probably is, but maybe you could push it a little bit and you feel like you’re making a few bucks on the deal. So that’s how we look at it.

Steven Jarvis: I like that recommendation, to say it out loud and see how it sounds. You definitely can get carried away in this. One of the things that I always think about is, okay, how am I going to feel if the IRS came and asked questions? It’s unlikely, the IRS does so few audits that it’s probably unlikely that any of your clients actually gets picked, but if they did, how am I going to feel having to explain to an IRS agent why the three year old was on the payroll for $45,000?

Marcus Mire: Right.

Steven Jarvis: That conversation might get a little uncomfortable. But yeah, we used our kid in a marketing brochure, in a marketing video, my 11 year old that does some work around the office, takes out the trash, shreds extra documents, whatever it might be, there are things that kids can legitimately do that have a great business purpose to it. In my mind it’s really similar to running what might otherwise be charitable contributions through a business as marketing or advertising expense, that absolutely there needs to be a business purpose to it, but if the charity you’re contributing to is putting your name in their pamphlets, or highlighting you on their website, great, that’s getting your name out there, that’s marketing, and now we don’t have to deal with charitable contribution limitations.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, absolutely.

Steven Jarvis: Marcus, you’ve mentioned backdoor Roth a couple of times and Roth contributions. I definitely run into CPAs who will have this mentality of why would I ever have my clients pay taxes before they absolutely have to? And definitely run into advisors who will have planning strategies blown up by tax preparers who don’t want a client to intentionally pay taxes early. So as a CPA, have you always had this mentality of great, let’s do Roth? Was there some point where you changed your philosophy on that? Or how does that conversation go with clients?

Marcus Mire: Yeah, I think the Roth and traditional conversations are, I would say, more art than science, because you’re dealing with unknowns. How long are you going to live in retirement to enjoy tax free money? What will your tax rate be in retirement that you’re forgoing the tax savings now for tax, it’s all these things. And so for me, what I always say is I’m not adverse to having clients pay tax earlier if it makes a lot of sense later. It’s just one of those things where a tax free stream of income in retirement, that’s one of those things when you say it out loud, that really does sound nice. Now math says maybe it’s not the best thing, but it depends. It’s like a lot of things we do in our field as CPAs, it depends.

Marcus Mire: So I guess my overarching theme is that if I know you’re in a situation where cash flow is not an issue, the tax rate is maybe not to onerous now, and you think you’re going to do better later, yeah, I think it’s okay to leave a few dollars on the table in terms of tax savings now for that Roth later. And so those are the kind of conversations we’re having with clients, but ultimately it just comes back down to what they’re comfortable with.

Marcus Mire: I present them, I did this year with a client, I knew he had a down year and some pass-through entities, I said, “Hey, why don’t we peel off a little bit of your traditional IRA,” I think it was around 60 grand, I knew most of his income this year was going to be from long term capital gains, and so it was a really cool situation where he really paid next to no tax on the conversion. But even if he would have it would’ve been at a maximum of 15%. And we know his businesses, or we think, are going to recover, such that those tax dollars, or tax deductions, would be way better used in the future. So that was the kind of conversation we had with him. But to answer your question, it’s really just presenting the options, talking it through, and then letting your clients make an informed decision.

Steven Jarvis: I really love that example. So often I’ll have advisors asking me for a benchmark they can use for every client to say that here’s the situation for every single client that we’re going to recommend Roth conversions.

Marcus Mire: Yeah.

Steven Jarvis: And really what you’re describing goes back to you need to have the data so that you’re intimately familiar with the client so that you can make specific recommendations to them, because as you described that example, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you don’t have some magic number where here’s exactly how much we recommend for every single client. The more specific we can make this the more valuable it’s going to be to those individual clients.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, I’m like a lot of people, I’m trying to scale, and with scaling comes, I would say, more standardized thought process. I mean, it’s easier to say at this point we do this, and this point we do that, but sometimes it’s just not the case, and our clients, they may not, even if you said 22% was the threshold, having to write a check, or to send money, even though it sounds better to do it now than in the future, just doesn’t work with them emotionally, or whatever, and whatever math you present just may not add up to them. So yeah, I think it’s just, like you said, having that communication, and for me, I don’t have a cookie-cutter approach, I wish I could, it would make it a lot easier, but I think it’s better for the client just to present the opportunities, give them your professional opinion, and then see how they feel about that.

Steven Jarvis: You mentioned it there, and you had commented on it earlier, but part of this has to be what’s the client comfortable with. I had a conversation with a tax payer just this last tax season, one of the simpler things we look at that makes a big difference to clients is how I much of a refund are you getting, or payment are you making, come tax time? Because that’s something that we can help them adjust and make sure that they have a strategy for and that they’re happy with the outcome. And so especially when I’m seeing really large refunds I say, “Hey, would it be all right if we adjusted your withholding so you keep control of more of your money during the year?” And most clients say, “Of course, absolutely, I don’t want to give the IRS an interest free loan,” and so we’ll help them dial in their withholding so they’re not getting these massive refunds.

Steven Jarvis: But, to your point of what’s the client comfortable with, was talking to one client who had almost a $40,000 refund, which my immediate reaction to was, geez, this is egregious, we have to fix this right now, but still, guided discovery with the client, I don’t want to just dictate to them what they should do, so I started talking to them about it, and it turns out several years ago they got burned really bad one year. It was a unique circumstance, and they knew that, but they ended up paying a couple thousand dollars in penalties because they hadn’t made any estimated payments, and it was very, very painful to them. And so they said, “You know what, absolutely we can rein that in, we appreciate if you’d help with that, but we would still like to get several thousand dollars back every year because we never want to end up in that situation.” And I said, “Okay, great.: If that’s what they’re going to be comfortable with, that’s absolutely what we’re going to do. Normally I would try to dial it in a lot more than that, but if they want to end up with a $10,000 refund because that’s going to make them feel good each year, given their experience, I’m not going to fight them on that.

Marcus Mire: No, absolutely. A lot of what we do, honestly, is, again, I would think people who are drawn to financial advisory and CPAs are more analytical people, and for us it’s black and white, the numbers. And I’ll give you an example, my point is expectations. So if their expectation, and because of history, their expectation is we want a refund, and we expect that, and that feels better to us than the alternative. And I tell the people in our office all the time, I could call a client today and say, “Hey, you owed $10,000,” and if previously I told them they owed 14, they’re ecstatic. “Great, I was expecting 14.” Same client, I could tell them they owe six and call them back and tell them they owe 10. They still owe 10 grand, that hasn’t changed, but the expectation was that the owed six, now they’re like, “Well, what the heck?”

Marcus Mire: So there’s certain things that math will just not explain, there’s emotions involved here, and there’s people, and people have an expectation of what makes them feel good in terms of their taxes, and that being organized, and what they pay. And like you said, to your point, what makes sense to you would be, “Hey, you’re going to get about a $1,500 refund, I’m going to have you have that 38,500 in your pocket throughout the year.” But that may not make sense to them or not feel as good to them give than what they’ve been through in the past.

Steven Jarvis: Absolutely, definitely a big part of the job is just providing that education and context, and then making sure that you know what decisions aren’t going to impact their ability to accomplish their goals.

Marcus Mire: Right.

Steven Jarvis: Because if I’ve got a client who’s just having a 50% withholding and getting $100,000 refund every year, we’re probably going to have a more serious conversation, I’m going to say, “Hey, we need to do something about this.”

Marcus Mire: Right.

Steven Jarvis: But there’s some point where if it’s not going to impact their ability to accomplish their goals, great, let’s stay with comfortable.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, and again, I think what we have to remember is that it’s their tax return, it’s their financial picture, it’s their money, and we’re just the advisors.

Steven Jarvis: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Marcus, we always want to make sure that people listening to this show can take action from what we’re talking about, because at the end of the day that’s really all that counts. The information can be nice, but the action is what provides value. So as you think about the conversation we’re having today, what’s an action item you could recommend for advisors listening to this who want to do more for their clients through tax planning?

Marcus Mire: Yeah, I’m a big proponent of data, and so whatever way you can be involved in having good data, whether you’re working with the client and understanding how good their accounting is ongoing so that you can project business income, and then all the things that relate to that in terms of 401ks and owners bonus planning, and all that. So I think just being involved with the data and keeping the lines of communication open with the CPA in terms of knowing what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, just quick check-ins. I know the one I work with, we talk all the time about mutual clients, and the conversations aren’t long. And so what I would say is be involved somehow in the data, in terms of getting access to it, whether that’s just a financial statement, a pay stub, whatever, and then having that open line of communication with the CPA in terms of if you’re an advisor.

Steven Jarvis: Yeah, I love that. Get the data, that’s something that we hammer on all the time, get the tax return, you need to be getting data at least annually, if not more often. This can’t be something you do when you onboard a client and then think about 10 years from now.

Marcus Mire: Right.

Steven Jarvis: And then that second point about keeping the lines of communication open, that’s such great advice. That’s how you’re going to build meaningful relationships that are going to allow you to deliver value to your clients. The other thing I’d add from our conversation is to make sure that you are really comfortable and clear with what those two or three strategies are that affect most of your clients. It’s going to look a little bit different for each advisor depending on who they serve, but you should have those things that you know how to look for where those opportunities are, or where those issues might come up, so that you are consistently providing value to your clients.

Steven Jarvis: Marcus, for people listening to the podcast who want to learn more about what you’re doing, or how you work with clients, how can they learn more about you?

Marcus Mire: Yeah, they can find me on most of the social channels, or LinkedIn especially, it’s Marcus Mire, M-I-R-E, I know most people wouldn’t pronounce it that way, or go to Mire.group, so that’s M-I-R-E dot G-R-O-U-P, that’s our website, and/or follow our, like you mentioned, I almost forgot, my podcast, which is Make It Count with Marcus Mire CPA, you can find that anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Steven Jarvis: Awesome. Well, Marcus, thanks for being on the show today, I really appreciate your time.

Marcus Mire: Yeah, this was great, man, appreciate it.

Steven Jarvis: For everyone listening, one final action item, go out and give us a five star review and leave a comment about how much you love the show, the show keeps growing and we love to see it, so put that selfish plug in there. Until next time, thanks for listening, and remember to tip your server, not the IRS.

We’re not overpaying. No, we’re not overpaying. We’re not overpaying anymore. The tax code’s complicated, boring, and overrated. You don’t want that, you want a pro. One thing that you should know: this is a radio show. It’s not tax advice, don’t take it that way.