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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

Hello everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services Podcast, financial Professionals Edition. I am your host, Stephen Jarvis, CPA and with me today, not a cpa, but definitely a huge tax nerd. Micah Shilanski, welcome to the show.

 

Micah

Steven, thank you so much. Yes, I will identify as a self nerd a tax nerd. I think that is absolutely fantastic. I always enjoy diving into attacks with you. Thanks for having me on the pod. Dude.

 

Steven

Yeah, of course. We’ve actually had a chance to have several conversations about taxes recently Secure 2.0, obviously as high on everyone’s mind, but really we love focusing on how people can take action and how people can deliver value. So maybe some elements of that get weaved in today, but we’d love to, to kind of move past some of those headlines and talk about something else today.

 

Micah

You know, Steven, I did have a question though about it that just hasn’t been addressed for me with the secure act. So I, I’m just gonna put you on the spot. So, so I know this was passed in in December in their omnibus package or whatever, consolidation package, whatever that it was, but it has this name, which is Confusing me, secure Act 2.0. What exactly does it secure, Steven?

 

Steven

Micah, I’ve heard so many jokes about what secure stands for, that  I’ll probably get it wrong on this spot because Secure is an acronym, and it’s something about setting every retiree up for retirement. Something I don’t  always forget what it is, but <laugh>, but I always have to move past whatever the logic and reason behind taxes are, because there is none. And so I move right past, what does it mean? What were they trying to accomplish? And I go right to, okay, what does it mean for my clients? What actions do we need to take? So, maybe not the answer you were hoping for, but that’s what I got for you

 

Micah

All right, fair enough. Well, a quick little antidote. Whenever we’re doing in-person classes, and my dad co-teaches with me still, which is fantastic. I just love it. His bit is always, he gets up and talks about social security, so don’t always do the intro for him. So I said, Hey, great news, Floyd and I are gonna tag team our, so the social security presentation for you today way this is gonna work is I’m gonna tell you how it’s a social program. He’s gonna tell you how it’s secure. Go ahead, pops. How is it Secure . And then everybody laughs. He’s like, thanks Micah .

 

Steven

Oh, those jokes never get old.

 

I think it’s hilarious. All right. But moving on to actually practical thing about tax planning processes in offices.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is gonna come out in February. I know that your spring is coming up really soon. I’ve gotten some chances to see firsthand how you incorporate taxes, cuz we work together through retirement tax services, serving some clients together. But I would love for you to share for our audience how you, from, from a process standpoint, how’s this really work in practice? How do you incorporate taxes as you’re meeting with all of your clients in the, the spring? And then if we have time, we’ll move on to then after taxes are filed, how are you working with your team on reviewing tax returns?

Micah

Yeah, that’s such a great thing now the big thing that we have in place and, and every advisor says they have it, and then I start pressing ’em and I find out most of ’em don’t have it. We actually have a written process. We have a blueprint on, on what we’re going to do. Now in this, even when you saw this, I mean, you were correct me if I’m wrong, but it was a little like, wtf, how many frigging steps do you need to review a tax return? It’s a bit elaborate of a blueprint. Now, it didn’t start that way. It started with very simple of saying, Hey, I need to make sure I’m doing some repeatable steps on every single client to make sure that I’m delivering value. Then slowly as the team grew, as we started accompanying more things, we started adding more things to the blueprint.

 

So the reason I bring that up is your process does not have to be as elaborate as what we are going to get into, but you still have to have a process. You gotta have a documented process of how are you gonna handle these things when it comes into your office. So that’s gonna be the big takeaway that I’m gonna say on this one. Now, Steven, to your point, will we first start off with is in every conversation we have when a prospect’s coming on board, we talk about the importance of tax planning. When we talk with clients, whenever they talk distributions, I’m always bringing up taxes. Hey, client wants a hundred thousand dollars out to buy an rv. Actually, it’s 323,000 was the message I got the other day to buy an rv. Great. What tax effect is that going to have all their moneys in a retirement account, right?

 

So how much money do we need to pull out from a retirement account in order to make that work? So I’m always incorporating taxes in my conversation with clients to make sure they know it’s there. I’m not requiring the burden to be on my clients of figuring out what it is great news. That’s my responsibility, but I want to make sure that they know about that it’s there before they just make a blind decision. So I would say the first step is it always starts to bring up taxes frequently, and a value in your client meetings.

Steven

Yeah. Setting expectations, right? That, that right out of the gate, your clients know that taxes are an important conversation. I love the buckets that you draw out for clients that you can always be referring back to. So this is a theme that’s woven throughout everything you do. And while you, you’re a little bit unique among advisors and that you have actually done tax preparation in the past, it’s not something you currently do. And really it’s something that is such a big expense in a client’s working years and retired years that it honestly, to, to me it seems negligent irresponsible for advisors to leave it out. But to your point, this is gonna be most consistent and most qu and the highest quality if there is a documented process. So before Surge is ever even a thought on your mind, you’ve set this expectation. So what does that look like going into March?

Micah

All right. So going into March, I’m gonna back it up just a little bit and starting with January, if that’s okay, because this isn’t something that we’re gonna walk into on the first day of our surge meetings where we’re doing seven to eight meetings a day per advisor, right? And say, Hey, great news. This is what we’re gonna do today, team, right? My, my team would mute me on me. That would not go over very well. So we’re gonna set things up in advance for success. We’re gonna start out with the 10 99 letter, and we sent out our 10 99 letter, January. I like it to go the week the, the, the, the third week of the month before the last week in January is generally when I like that letter to go out. I generally find it’s easier for my team to process it within that timeline.  And it’s also getting out there about the time 10 nines are getting issued or before. That’s really what I’m shooting for. So we send out our 10, 9 90 letter that says, Hey, clients be on the lookout for these documents and these are what you need for taxes. And keep this as, as your blueprint for preparing tax preparation. So that’s the first thing we’re gonna do. Then we’re gonna follow that one up, Steven, was when we’re setting our surge meeting appointments, I’ve already set the stage with them previously that says, great news, I wanna review your taxes before they get filed. Now, why do I say it this way? Because this encouraged clients to come in before April 15th, right? I want to wrap my surge up by April 15th because I wanna review all of your client’s taxes. Now, if you’re on the opposite side of that, let’s say your surge schedule is after April, et cetera then you can say, great news, I wanna review your taxes right after they’re filed.

Right? Either way, this is about reviewing the client’s tax turn. I like doing it beforehand. So we let clients know we interview their taxes beforehand. When our relationship managers are setting the appointments, we’re always sending them an email that says, great news. Micah has an exciting agenda he wants to talk to you about. But the, the most important thing is, what’s the big questions? What are the big questions that you have for the meeting? And then we’ll give ’em a space to answer that. They’ll say, and also please make sure you’re bringing in a current copy of your taxes, whether it’s already been filed or it’s draft. Micah loves to review the taxes before they are filed. So we’re setting the stage for clients to bring that in. Does that make sense so far, Steven

Steven

Yeah. Micah, I love how you’re reinforcing and building those expectations as you go. Now, one of the thoughts that comes to mind, I know we’ve talked about this before, but I would love to hear your thoughts on how you navigate this with your clients tax preparers. Obviously the clients that are working with rts, this is, this is simple. We do it right through the portal, but this can feel, I I get advisors who push back on me anytime I bring up tax returns or draft tax returns, them weighing in on tax things of, well wait, but my client already has a CPA who takes care of their taxes. What’s their CPA gonna think? Why is their CPA gonna share a draft return with me? So how, how do you navigate this without just putting your client in a position where they’re un having to be kind of uncomfortable in the, the middle man

Micah

Well, Steven, you’ve already said it, right? Setting expectations with the client is really, really, it’s gonna be important. So if it’s a new relationship, I want to find out what that CPA is gonna be doing. If it’s a CPA I don’t work with as a taxpayer, I don’t work with already, if I already work with them, then I already know, right? But let’s say it’s a new relationship that I have. I want to feel out what the, the preparer is doing for tax preparation and for tax planning. And I really separate out the difference to the clients. This is a preparers do a fantastic job preparing a return, but they get so busy cuz they have such a tight deadline and a limited time to get a lot of stuff done, which I think is a very true statement, right? To get things done. They’re so focused on looking out their rear view mirror about what happened last year and making sure you can accurately document that, which is fantastic.

My job is to help look through the windshield. Some tax preparers will do that as well. But my job is to look through that windshield about saying, Hey, every now and again, I gotta glance in that rear view mirror to say what’s behind me. But most of my attention should be looking at the road, what’s coming ahead, looking at our destination and saying, how do I get there with the least amount of speed bumps, potholes turns, tax losses that you’re going to have. And so we need to work in combination with that. So I need to get the client on board first.

Steven

Well, and, and I love how the, the 10 99 ladder fits into that. You’re, you’re providing a resource to the client, but I I, I know you encourage your clients to send that to the cpa. It’s, it’s set up so they can just hand it to the cpa. You’re, you’re showing the tax preparer that you are, you’re doing something different. You’re delivering value to your clients and to them. And for our audience listening, I mean, this is being released in February. You might be thinking, ah, missed my chance for this year to do a 10 99 letter. Maybe I’ll do that next year. It’s, it’s not, it’s not too late. Even if you don’t feel like you have the bandwidth to go to the level that that Micah does, he’s built his over years and it progresses every year. Even if you just start as simple as great for any client who you know, who their CPA is, honestly, even if you don’t know who their CPA is, you can send this message just to the client, ask them to pass it along.

A simple message of, Hey, I, I know this is your really focused time of year to be helping clients with tax preparation. We work very proactively with our clients, and I know that has tax ramifications and that clients don’t always pass along all of the information that you need. If there is anything I can do to make this process easier for Bob and Sue, or whichever client it is, please don’t hesitate to let me know an important thing in that script. You’ll notice I didn’t ask for a referral. I didn’t ask them to go out to lunch with me. I didn’t ask them to play golf. This, this is you building a relationship by demonstrating value, not asking for things in return. That’s an email that everybody listening to this podcast can send in the next week.

Micah

You know, Steven in timeliness is, is when are you sitting? That is really, really important, right? What you’re asking for clients, the closer I’m getting into February, March, and April, I don’t wanna be asking CPAs for much of anything if, if I can avoid that. They got a lot of stuff going on. So if I was onboarding a new client in August, different conversation, I’m gonna call the CPA up and say, Hey, great news, we have a mutual client. I would love to be able to pick your brain and some tax planning strategies. I know you’re the expert in this. I’d love to pay for an hour of your time to review some of the things that we’re thinking about and get your opinion on it, right? So that’s a different strategy I’m gonna deploy in August when they’re not slammed with taxes. I would not deploy that same strategy in March because in March they’re gonna be like, I don’t got time to meet with you.

I got a million other things to do. You’re just screwing up my tax process. So, and you wanna find out, especially in that crunch time period. Now Steven, you’re the CPA doing tax preparation, so you push back on me. But you wanna find a way to, to remove some of the pain from them. And so what I’ve found that’s worked out really well is reaching out to the CPAs with, again, new client relationships or existing client relationships and says, Hey, sometimes when I’m working with a client, they don’t always give me all of the information that I need. I don’t know if you’ve run into that before too. And they’re like, oh yeah. And I was like, you know what? And one of the things that you know always happens is we, there’s amended 10 99 s There’s other distributions sometimes that will give you all the account information. If you ever wanted me to look at the tax return if you wanna send me the tax return so I can look at the investment accounts to make sure you have all the information, I am happy to do that. I did not say to review it to make sure you did it accurately. I did not say to make sure you’re thinking about tax planning to make sure you have all of the information before it’s filed. I’m happy to do that. And a lot of times CPAs take this pretty positively.

Steven

Yeah. That, for, for me, that’s nothing but a positive response cuz you, you focused in on, on the investment piece of it. Of course, when you get that tax return, you’re gonna look at all of it, but you’re highlighting to the cpa, here’s why I’m reaching out and why as a professional, you’re almost communicating as a way like, hey, I feel obligated to make sure my clients are actually getting taken care of the things I worked on them with. So Micah, you mentioned that when you get into surge, you, you have seven or eight meetings a day, you’re getting tax returns, you’re trying to review draft returns. Talk about, I mean, how does this logistically fit into the day? If, if every one of your clients brings in a tax return, how are you actually reviewing those in a way that makes a difference?

 

Micah

Well, one thing that we have is we have a process for it and we have the 37 point checklist. So, but this used to be things that I had to review every single tax turn. Man, there’s a long frigging nights. I just had to stay up late and I had to get those things done cuz I didn’t have an effective process to make it work. Now what I have in place is we use that 37 point checklist and I empower the team when we get a tax return for the team to review it. As long as it stays within this bandwidth, fantastic. The team can review it and we can move on. If it’s outside of this, then they need to escalate it to an advisor, right? And this could be a junior advisor or it could just be if you’re, it’s if it’s you and two other people, well then they escalate it to you and for you to review.

We go through that. The 10 99 letter, Steven is really important part of that because when the team is reviewing a tax return, they’re grabbing the 10 99 letter because we had sent the decline. Hey, make sure these accounts are listed on your taxes. These are the effects. We should be using the same letter we’ve already generated to re help review their tax return to make sure that information is there. And then I’m not, you know, signing off on the return as, as a preparer in any way. I’m just saying, Hey, from my financial planning standpoint, do I see things in here? What are the things that I see missing? We did a transfer on a client account. A client did a rollover, they put the money back in, but it’s still taxable. They did a qcd and it’s there. They missed a non-deductible IRA contribution.

I see that a a lot, especially in freaking TurboTax. Cause what does TurboTax do when you put in a non-deductible contribution? You put in the dollar amount, then it pops up with a big warning and it says, Hey, this is not a tax deductible amount, which is a hundred percent accurate. And client’s like, oh no. And they back it out and like, I can’t make a contribution. Like, no, that’s not what it says. It says there’s not a deduction for that. That’s why it’s a non-deductible contribution that we’re making. But the language makes it a little confusing. So I like to review those types of things on the return, but again, that all goes through the 37 point checklist. When it’s outside the team’s bounds, it gets kicked up to me. So now maybe 10 to 15 of my clients is the ones that I need to do an in-depth review. Most of my clients, I’m doing a cursory review as I’m getting ready to meet them. So I got seven meetings coming up. I’m gonna grab them in the tax, in our client prep process. I’m gonna grab the return and I’m gonna flip through it real quick. And the more returns you look at, the quicker you can flip through it, especially if your team’s already done that 37 point checklist.

Steven

Yeah. So whether you’re doing two meetings a day or eight meetings a day, it’s all about what that process looks like. Cuz if you as the advisor for every single client, you’re getting a tax return and then you’re sitting down and saying, well, what should I look at on this one? And kind of thumbing through and well, that looks interesting. Or maybe, oh, maybe I’ll flip back to this page and look at the 86 0 6. It, if there, if there’s decisions you’re making every single time about what to look like or, or what to look at that this isn’t gonna work, you’re never going to get through this in an effective and value add way. It’s all about that process. So the 37 point checklist that you’re referencing, that’s a available for RTS members and, and in fact we’re gonna make it a little bit more widely available, you can go to retirement tax services.com for an opportunity for our listeners to, to get access to that as well. Just making sure that we’re empowering advisors to be able to get these things done in practice. Cuz Micah, as you’re going through this, hopefully listeners have the right takeaway, which is this does take work. Having a process, having checklist, having tools can help make it both more efficient and effective, but not gonna kid anyone here that there is a commitment that goes into this, but the value to the client is worth it a hundred times over.

Micah

It it is heavy lifting. One of the things that I, I have a pretty I don’t wanna say complex. I have a pretty in-depth process of what I’m gonna go through in reviewing a client to get ready for the appointment. It’s, I can do it pretty quickly, but it’s the same process every time. So I get more effective at it. But Steve, when I’m reviewing the tax churn, it’s the last thing I do in the client prep process. Why? Well, cuz what I’m doing the prep, I’m already prepping for all the other stuff, right? I’m looking at their distribution history, I’m looking at their cash flow. I’m looking at the investments. I’m already looking at all this other stuff, right? I’m looking at the last 12 months of what took place or sometimes the last. So in April, I’ll look at the last 18 months cause I wanna include all of last year. So look at the last 18 months by default. Well, if I’m looking at the last 18 months of distributions that I got, their distribution history and it’s top of my mind that says, oh yeah, we pulled out that 150 grand in March of last year in order to buy the rv. Now I can be looking at that for the tax return if I did the tax return first. Now I’m going back and forth. So order of operations here is really important.

Steven

Micah, you throw that in there so casually because you’ve spent years figuring this out. But that’s such an important point and this is why having a documented process is essential. Cause like you said, if you do that out of order, if we do the tax return first, even if you have a checklist, you go through your checklist, oh, yep, everything looks good. And then you start going through all that other detail and you’re, oh, wait a second. When I went through the checklist, I wasn’t thinking about that $150,000 distribution. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that they inherited that ira, whatever it might be. Because as much as the, the team at RTS tries to balance tax preparation and tax planning, the tax return is a scorecard for last year. It can teach us about opportunities that we can plan for going forward, but it, it is the scorecard.

So it makes a lot of sense to go through all the other information first and then see if that report card is done correctly. There’s so many key things in here. So especially for our listeners who might be listening to this in the car or while they’re working out, or maybe there’s a few of you scrambling to take notes on Micah’s process. We’ll just more, more details to come. But we’re actually launching our first annual next level tax planning summit this fall. It’s gonna be September 27th to 29th. Micah is one of our already committed speakers who’s going to come not just share more de detail about what we’re talking about today, but he’s agreed to share some of the tools that he actually uses in, in practice so that you’re seeing the resources, you’re seeing the checklist, you’re seeing the spreadsheets so that you can go through and start to apply some of these things in your practice as well. So save the,

Micah

What’s, I thought I was just talking about all theory. No, I’m just kidding. Yes. That’s a hundred percent what we’re gonna do.

Steven

what somebody on your team committed to share those things with me, so I know I’ve got ’em

Micah

Yeah, I’m super excited about that because for one, the lineup of speakers, you have humbled to be part of that list. It’s gonna be fantastic. There’s a lot of great people out there and it’s, it’s learning these processes from other advisors, which is just one thing. And that’s the big thing is you’re going through these podcasts the continuing ed, all the disrupt you’re doing. It’s one simple doable thing that you’re gonna implement that is the most valuable thing for you.

Steven

Yeah. So save, save the date on your calendar. September 27th – 29th. It will be live in Las Vegas. And we’ll also have a virtual component. We’ve got a great production team coming to make sure that’s a really incredible online experience. Micah, before we move into action items for this episode and kind of wrap things up, I’d like you to spend just a couple of minutes. You, you mentioned a couple of times in there how your team helps with this process. Talk a little bit about kind of your evolution on how you think about designing processes, specifically about incorporating it for your teams.

 

Micah

So one of the ways, and boy, I wish I was more mature. I wish there’s a better way this is gonna come out, but it’s whenever I run into a pain point where I’m like, what the frigging frac did my team screw up, right? That, that is a, a warning sign for me to step back and say, aha, I have failed as a leader to effectively communicate what needs to be done. I fail to educate my team members or I fail to create a process for them for success. And so whenever I get that initial reaction, and again, I wish I was more mature where I didn’t get that, but I still do. So whenever that comes up, that’s my pause button and says, aha, I have failed in one of these two ways. Which way? Or the third way is I’ve, I’ve hired the wrong person and now it’s time to graduate them.

They can update their resume. Generally it’s not the third. We have a really good team. So it’s generally one of those two things. And so anytime I hit a pain point, I need to go refine the process. And it’s also, Steven, I’ve talked about before on the TPR podcast. That’s my team’s get outta jail free card. It says, look, if they’ve followed the process correctly and it came up with a bad outcome, that’s my fault. That’s not their fault, right? Because we create these processes as a team, I’m signing off on ’em. That’s not their fault. Now, if they, if they went rogue, they went off the reservation, so to speak, and they did their own thing, now we’re gonna have an uncomfortable conversation. But if they follow the process, and my team really loves that. And so one, anytime I hit a pain point, I would stop and say, all right, this is what I need to fix.

The second thing that was really took me a long time is to get over my ego in saying, I’m the only one that could review this. No, you’re not you, you’re just not you. Your team is more than capable of doing this. It’s about education and process. They don’t have to be a cpa. They don’t have to be an EA to be able to review a tax return and say, Hey, did all the 10 99 s show up on that tax return? They don’t, right? They don’t have to be an EA or a CPA to, to making sure they’re looking for an IRA contribution. That should be reflected somewhere on the tax return. It’s either on the 86 0 6 or it’s on the deductions, right? They don’t have to be an EEA or CPA for that. They need an education, they need a process. So I had to get over my own ego and I had to get a little bit more mature and saying, when I hit these roadblocks, I solved for one thing at a time.

I didn’t try to create the whole process. Well, I tried it and it blew up so that I went back and says, all right, I gotta simplify this one little step at a time. We would implement it, it would work. This is great. What’s the next roadblock? And we do it. And I really gotta make sure I’m working with my team on this, that this is a good process for them that says, Hey look, I know there’s a lot of things that I could do better as a leader. I’d really like to focus on one or two things that we could implement and improve. Then as we get successful on those, I would love to add other things to help make your job easier. Cuz that’s really what I’m going for. I’m not trying to take the crap work from me and shove it down my team’s throat and saying they have to do it. No, I’m really trying to make their job easier. I’m trying to make this the highest and best use of every team member’s time from mine to theirs.

Steven

And it, it might feel like for our listeners, we’ve taken this hard left turn into team management development and a little bit we have, because to do incredible things in your practice, you have to have a great team executing these processes. And Micah, in interacting with your team, I, I know they’re the same way, but one of the things I love that I’ve seen come out of my team by having this emphasis on processes, because we do the same at RTS, is that since we have a process to work from and the team knows that I’m going to help them problem solve when we get to issues and the team knows that this is their get outta jail free card and that this is benefiting our clients, it empowers them to bring issues to me and to bring ideas to me to say, Hey, what if we, what if we thought about it this way? Or what if we, we added this step here? It also empowers the team that if something does go wrong, they, while they’re trying to solve the problem that went wrong, they’re also already thinking about, okay, and where did the process go wrong? Where, where do we need to update things? And so the team starts solving a lot of those things along the way and they’re coming to me with solutions instead of just coming to me with problems.

 

Micah

And Steven, if I could add to that, that also comes up with the aspect is it removes the team’s defensiveness for who to blame. Because now it doesn’t come into a thing about, well, crap is my job on the line? What’s gonna happen? Et cetera. We we dispelled the myth, right? We said, we said, great, own your mistakes cuz we know they’re gonna happen and follow the process. And if you don’t follow the process, you may not like the conversation, right? But here’s the process that’s gonna be there. And when you empower your team with that and you give them more autonomy in that nature, they really thrive. They really do a great job. They love that. They don’t want to be micromanaged either. Nor do you wish to micromanage.

 

Steven

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Micah, like everything we do, we wanna make sure this is all about action. And since you are the guest, I’ll let you go first. Action items from our conversation today,

 

Micah

You know what? On, on, generally when I have other guests on, I don’t have them go first, but Steven was just on our podcast and I made him go first just to pick on him. So I guess he’s doing the same thing. Fair enough. I’m gonna say the biggest thing is today, this week, stop and write down a simple process for reviewing tax returns. Less than five steps, right? You’re gonna think, oh my gosh, you gotta put all these things in there. Stop less than five steps. Step one, ask for it. Right? Step five, communicate with the client your review. Look, I’ve already given you two of the steps, right? You just gotta put three other steps in there. But if you’re not asking for the return and you’re not commute at the end communicating with the client the value they receive by giving you the tax return, you are failing in this process.

So you gotta do those two, fill in. The other three. Make it super, super painless. And again, let’s, let’s get, I’m gonna appreciate on this, sorry Steven, but the, the value is not saving them a hundred thousand dollars in taxes. The value is great news. We reviewed over 37 items on your tax return. It all seemed to be in line. Think Steven did a fantastic job preparing the return. Here’s some things we might be thinking about this year, by the way, what are you thinking about this year preparing for RMDs? When do we turn on our social security Roth conversions, funding retirement accounts? We’re gonna be reviewing those in our meeting, right? So you can have a laundry list of things to pick from and pick two or three things and throw it on there, which are things you were gonna review anyways. But dishwasher rule, let’s get credit for the things that you’re, you’re doing.

Steven

Absolutely. And if you’re listening and you think, Hey, my process already has more than five steps, great. This week, make sure you go and review your tax process and update it for this year. This is something that you need to constantly revisit and, and update. I and Micah, I know that you do this as well, that this is something that you get in and you look at your processes and update them. So whether you need to start from scratch and do your first five steps that Micah is talking about, or go back and figure out what the new step for this year is.

 

Micah

And Steven, the other thing I’ll, I’ll throw out there, if you think you have a process, cuz by the way I’m raising my hand right now. I am so guilty of this. I think I have a process. I, the first thing I do is I don’t go look for it. I go ask my team for it. Because they’re like, we don’t, we don’t have a process for that. What do you mean we don’t have a process for that? I know we have a process for this. Here’s the process for this, right? In my mind there’s this magical process here. So if you think you have a process for this, go and ask your team to give you in writing what that process is. And if they cannot, you do not have a process for it.

Steven

Yeah. Next action item is to go out to retirement tax services com. Start looking at the information on our conference this fall. Save the dates. We’ve got registration information out there now so that you can start getting involved in, in this great event that’s going to be focused not just on tax planning, but how tax planning gets done. In realitya, we’re gonna turn this into an event like no other in the industry. Last action item, la last action item that, that fits in, fits in with what we’re already talking about. And I love to highlight this. I will stop highlighting it as soon as everyone does it. You have to get every tax return every single year. That is not, there are no exceptions that you need to get it done.

Micah

Amen. That’s what I was gonna say. Get them, get them, get them. So, so important to get clients ingrained with going to you before they make a decision on taxes. Steven, I love it. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast today, bud. I really appreciate it. Happy planning.

Steven

Yeah. Micah, thanks for being here. Always enjoy our conversations for everyone listening. Until next time, good luck out there. 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.