Transcript

Steven Jarvis:

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Retirement Tax Services Podcasts Financial Professionals Edition, I’m your host Steven Jarvis, CPA, and in this show I teach financial advisors how to deliver massive value to their clients through retirement tax planning. On today’s episode we’re going to talk about estate tax planning and with me on the show today is Micah Shilanski who is a CFP and owner in an RIA in Alaska and also a co-founder of the Perfect RIA. Micah, Welcome!

Micah Shilanski:

Steven, thank you so much for having me, I’m super excited I’m one of those geeks that actually really enjoy talking about taxes, so super excited to be here this morning!

A Brief Background to Micah’s Estate Tax Planning Predicament [1:10]

SJ:

Yeah I really appreciate you joining me today. Now the reason we’re having you on the episode today is because you and I were talking recently about estate tax planning and a really interesting situation came up — a lot of advisors might kind of pass-over really focusing on estate tax planning because the exemptions can be really high and not many states actually have anything in addition to the federal rules but you were recently telling me about a situation with a client where they were going to be stuck with a 1.6 million dollar tax bill after working with other financial professionals on this, this wasn’t something they did on their own, they had tried to find an expert, they had a plan in place and they were stuck with a 1.6 million dollars, until you came along and asked the right questions, so help my listeners understand, kind of, what the situation was.

MS:

Yeah so they were about to have a huge tax bill that was going to come in and this is an estate tax bill. Now you might be saying oh my god I don’t deal with those high end estates, I don’t deal with those things, well neither do I, but this happened to be a client and their parents had a lot of money and lived in a state that had a lot of estate taxes, that even though they were doing planning even though they’d work with an attorney even though they’ve had another financial planner who’s a wire-house so I’ll use the term financial planner really loosely there, but they had a wire house guy that was running the money and no one had brought up an issue of potentially how much taxes they were going to have to pay when they both passed away. And so that was a really big question that had come up because they were underneath the federal exemption amount, you know, the federal exemption amount, Steven, as you know is a little over I’m going to get this wrong right you’re the CPA here but 11 million in change per person and for married, that means we get to use them together so a little over 23 million dollars, which is excellent, so everybody kinda chalked them off to saying hey, we don’t have to worry about estate taxes but they didn’t look at the state they were in, in New York they were going to have to pay some substantial estate taxes, if we didn’t get on and do proper planning right away.

SJ:

Yeah Mike, I think it’s really important to point out here that you’re in Alaska, now you have clients all over the country but there’s a good chunk of your clients that are in Alaska and Alaska does not have estate tax, right? So a lot of your clients are only worried about that federal exemption you’re not an Oregon financial planner where the exemption is like a million dollars so you got to talk about it all the time, so if you don’t think about this every day I mean how did this even come up for you?”

MS:

That’s a great question, so as you may know, some of our audience may know, my specialty is working with federal employees throughout the nation, so I have clients as you said spread through all over the United States which is great; and when I was working with one of my clients and he was telling me about his parents and issues that they were starting to have as they get older right, my clients in their sixties and that the parents are in their eighties and now he’s starting to become the active trustee and power of attorney and so once I hear this, it kind of brings up some red flags in my mind, these yellow flags in my mind right, this is — you know what, we need to have a whole conversation about how to be a trustee with someone else’s assets, how to be a power of attorney, because Steven, probably as you know money’s emotional, and so often when mom and dad pass away, we equate how much were we loved to how much did we get, and while mom and dad are alive, we’re always thinking the same thing — that says hey it’s your money you spend it however you like to do it, that’s just fine, all the siblings say the same thing — once mom and dad die, siblings are going to start adding things up and be like — WTF where’s my money and no no no Micah that doesn’t happen in my family — sure it doesn’t until it does. So we have a long conversation with our clients about how to be a good trustee or power of attorney to solve for family unity right how do you make sure you involve the family that doesn’t even want to be involved with these other beneficiaries that are going to be problematic in the future if we don’t get it together in advance of this. So that’s where the conversation started as once I heard — what was new with them what was happening, he was telling me about his parents and all this other stuff that he was doing, and I was like great, now we need to start having this conversation and probing into his parents information, to find out how do we help you him.”

To Help Your Clients, “Ask The Right Questions In Advance” [4:58]

SJ:

Now, you might want to just reiterate one thing especially for listeners who aren’t familiar with your podcast the Perfect RIA, I’ve listened to it quite a bit — I know they that you and Matt are both all about delivering value to your clients, and so I totally see where you’re coming from but I started this by asking you a question about the estate tax planning and none of your answers had anything to do with the taxes. So Micah it might help me out here, why are you telling us about family unity when I’m asking you about taxes?”

MS:

That’s a great question because when it comes to advisors right how do we get to know the right questions to ask, how do we get to give the clients the right answers and it’s really about asking the right questions in advance. So had I said, well is there an estate tax issue as I’d said or you know what the parents even hire me why am I even asking this question that the child hired me again, the children are in their sixties right, they hired me for the financial planning, why am I even having these conversations, well that’s not really adding massive value. Our job is to add massive value to clients in all areas of their life that revolved around a dollar and when they have big dollar amounts they need to worry about, in this case, was a little over he was 12 to 15 million dollars in assets — this is a conversation that we needed to help them manage and talk about, so that’s where it came in and then when I had that conversation Steven, the next thing was, I told my client is that, Kate if you want a family meeting and myself to be able to come in and help guide a family discussion between you and the other sibling on what needs to happen, I’m happy to do that. They took me up on that, so that was step 1, step 2 was that they took me up on that meeting. In advance of that meeting Steven, we reached out and said hey, what questions do you guys have in advance, what concerns do you have, again we’re going to kind of probe them find out what questions, and then as I started getting this information and that’s when I started getting some red flags going up that says, hey the parents are in New York which has some pretty aggressive estate taxes, that’s when I started seeing the balance sheets on how many assets that they had and when I looked at my client, he’s in a state that has no estate taxes, so I jumped to a very quick assumption that says, you know what, I bet they’re not even thinking about estate taxes, the advisor that they had hired was not in New York either, so more than likely he doesn’t even know about New York estate taxes, so again I’m starting to put these dots together that says, you know what, this may be a value conversation we need to have.”

SJ:

Okay so one thing to draw out there Micah, you said you asked questions ahead of time — now did you just ask your client you already had a relationship with, or did you also ask the parents who are now, in a way, a prospect for you?”

MS:

That’s a great question. So the parents are in a nursing home right now so the parents weren’t part of this conversation — this was just the children — the trustees and the powers of attorneys now, that were part of this conversation and we reach out to all of them in advance. This is part of what we call our pre-appointment process that we have, where we reach out 2 weeks in advance to anyone we’re going to meet with or our relationship managers do and they ask if there’s any questions, any concerns that our clients or prospects have before they come into the meeting and guys I got to say this approach — this is something that we started about 2 years ago and it has been a phenomenal since we’ve implemented this, we get all the clients’ questions in advance and then guess what Steven, when I get those questions in advance, I now get a look at the answers in advance and I get to come to the meeting prepared to answer their questions versus me with my agenda then I get broadsided by some other question I didn’t even anticipate and I don’t know the answer to and I’m scrambling.

Bring In An Expert From The Concerned State [8:10]

SJ:

“Micah, it sounds like a great process to have that time to prepare but I’m going to push back just a little bit, I mean 2 weeks doesn’t really sound like enough time for you to become an expert on estate tax planning — how do you go from in 2 weeks not having done anything in New York and maybe I made a wrong assumption there, but I think you made a comment that you’re not a New York advisor…”

MS:

“Nope”

SJ:

“…so you went from hey I don’t know much about New York other than they have aggressive rules to now I’m going to advise my clients on New York, how does that happen in 2 weeks?”

MS:

“So there’s a handful of states that are out there that are kind of my yellow flag states that if I have a client in those states I know, you can hit the pause button — 2 quick examples California and New York right, they just have weird rules and so they’re just states that if you don’t have a lot of experience with — for me I got to hit the pause button so when I started to get their questions in advance that were coming in, their questions were like, “Hey they have this trust in place, what is this trust mean, what is this terminology, how do we pay for care, how do we minimize taxes”, you know, they started listing, you know, our generic questions that we’d see coming in. I started looking at those, I saw the parents who are in New York again and so I started doing some quick research on New York tax laws and I started picking up estate tax laws cause by default my assumption would be — hey everyone just going to copy at least the federal standard with an 11 million dollar exemption in change, but I know there’s some exemptions to that, exceptions to that I should say. So I jumped in and did a little bit of internet research, read some great articles that were out there on New York estate taxes and it was not enough for me, Steven, to give them advice and this is where I’m going to push back on a lot of it advisors out there when they say well I can’t give tax advice — well in this case I’m not giving you New York estate tax advice, what I’m saying is — hey guys we have a question here based on what I’m seeing I have a concern about how much estate taxes you’re going to have to pay, we need to bring in a New York CPA, we need to bring in a new York estate planning attorney in order to come in and help mitigate this potential issue or maybe I’m wrong, so I’m not giving them advice, I’m saying — hey we have this concern, we need to bring in an expert now in order to satisfy this question to make sure you don’t overpay the IRS by about 1.6 million dollars in New York estate taxes.

Not Having The Right Answer At Your Fingertips Is Not A Deal Breaker [10:15]

SJ:

Wow Micah, I love that approach I really like how you talked about that it’s really not your — you don’t see it as your job to become the expert on every single one these topics but it does seem like you feel like it’s your responsibility to at least bring it up to the client and know enough to know what questions to ask and you tell me if it’s different in your experience but in my experience working with clients no one’s ever mad at me for not knowing the final answer as long as I’m proactively addressing the issue and offering to help them get to the right answer. No one cares that we say “hey you know what I’m not an expert in New York estate planning but here’s something I found that makes this seem like an important topic, can we go find an attorney and a CPA who specialize in this and I’ll help make sure that you get the right answer.”

MS:

That is such a great question right there right, a great comment I should say — is that nobody cares that you don’t have the right answer everybody cares when you BS them, right. because everybody’s been BS’d to, everyone’s been given the wrong information before and if you’re going to hit the pause button and just so you know what, I want to make sure I get you the right information, who’s going to argue with that and guess what if they do, they’re not an ideal client, move on!”

SJ:

Yeah I love that because no matter whether your CFP or CPA or other financial professional, there should be no part in your process where you’re using the words “well just trust me” right, because one, you’re probably not an expert in nearly as much as you think you are and why would you do that they’re not coming to you because they want to have the answer to everything, they’re coming to you because they value the information you do have and they trust that you’re going to help them get to where they need to be.

MS:

And Steven, let’s look at this from the COI right, the center of influence perspective as well and so you know you’re the CPA here, so correct me if I’m wrong, but if I reach out now to New York CPA and say — hey we’re working with the client where I’m reviewing their situation and they got you know 11 to… I’m sorry, 12 to 15 million dollars in assets, I have some concerns about estate taxes, I’m not an expert here is this something you can help the client with — are they going to look bad on me as a financial advisor for bringing this up?

SJ:

No they’re going to be so excited because well, two things, one — that almost never happens, CPA’s usually are cleaning up the mess after the fact they’re usually…

MS:

I always think I’m cleaning up CPA’s mess but anyway, sorry that’s just perspective, please continue…

SJ:

Well, you must be the one advisor who never makes mistakes…”

MJ:

“No”

SJ:

So usually it’s – hey, an advisor worked with a client during the year and come tax time the CPA’s left saying — oh actually here’s the bill you owe, because even though… so if you haven’t identified the situation at some point there’s going to be a CPA or tax preparer somewhere telling this client they’ve got to write a 1.6 million dollar cheque and now everyone’s mad and so, that’s where CPA’s usually find themselves. So I’ve had this conversation with lots of CPA’s, unfortunately not because it happens to them but saying — hey what if someone came to you up front and this is such a great situation for them, because now they get to skip past all the discovery and just be the expert.”

MS:

That’s a great point

SJ:

“Right, because everyone loves it when they come to you with that one thing you’re really good at, so not that you’re only got one thing Mike, but your specialty is federal benefits right or federal employees.”

MS:

“Right, federal retirement benefits, yeah”

SJ:

So, when someone comes to you and says — “Hey Micah I’ve got this person who’s a federal employee they’re looking at retirement, here’s some information about them, I know you can help them”, I’m sure you’re grinning from ear to ear and you’re like — “of course I can”, like your confidence is way up like you’re excited to do it

MS:

Right, that’s my wheelhouse

SJ:

Yeah and that’s how we all feel when someone comes to us and just out of the gate to say — “hey I know you can do this, can we work together?”

MS:

Yeah I think that’s great and collaborating, bringing them in and Steven, to your point now, the CPA is not put in a really crappy position that says “how come you never did all the stuff, now I got to do your state taxes and I got to be the bearer of bad news that you get a 1.6 million dollars”; and let’s say that this wasn’t resolved, what would they have gone back on, they would’ve gone back on their wire-house guy and the wire-house guy would’ve been like – oh I don’t give tax advice, Next… So who who’s been hosed in this situation and in my opinion it’s just 100 percent the client, and the excuses quote — “I don’t give tax advice”, this isn’t tax advice! This is saying “hey you have a concern, for example, do you ever recommend someone to a Roth conversion”, okay is that tax advice? Do you recommend how much they withhold on an IRA distribution, is that tax advice? You know if you’re going to withhold taxes, well now you’re giving tax advice, I mean where do you draw that line and if you can’t give quote-unquote “advice”, you can be super proactive in raising those red flags and say — hey we need to bring in the CPA, hey we need to bring this attorney and get them to get an answer but make sure the client’s taken care of and it is a lazy the advisor that uses the excuses, I don’t give tax advice, to not deliver massive value.”

SJ:

Yeah Micah I completely agree and whether we’re talking about again CFP’s or CPA’s — please use disclaimers, please tell people “hey this isn’t what I spend all of my time on, so here’s some things that I’ve identified but we need to work with someone who does this all the time”, but you yeah in my opinion you can’t consider yourself a professional if you just say — “I won’t talk about it.”

MS:

Yeah

SJ:

That “I won’t talk about it” is different than “hey we need someone else to get to a final answer” but I just I don’t know how an advisor can do any financial advising that doesn’t have some tax implication.

MS:

It isn’t everything, I mean death and taxes, the two certain things in life right?

How Did Micah Handle This Estate Tax Situation? [15:33]

SJ:

Yeah yeah, exactly, okay so Mike let’s come back to the situation with the client so you ask the questions, you got some information and then you had this meeting with them, I mean how did it go?

MS:

“It went really well and basically how do we resolve the tax issue, it’s just an AB trust credit shelter, trust is all we’re chatting about with the client and again I’m not attorney, so I can’t give legal advice either, the Bar Association will probably have a problem with that for some reason. So we were talking a little bit about tools that they can implement in order to help reduce those taxes but again these are just conceptual ideas and now we’re saying — great now we have a thought, now we need to bring in the CPA, now we need to bring in the state tax attorney and be able to bring them together in order to put everything in place. Now Steven, we see our role is helping bring those people together to collaborate because so often clients don’t have the resources, clients’ don’t know how to reach out or have those conversations or CPA’s, CFA’s, tax attorneys, we all get into our own lingo, we like to talk in professional speak because it makes a sound really cool important and really just leaves the client behind, they have no idea what you’re talking about. So in those situations even though I’m not the expert in New York estate taxes or New York estate law or anything of that regard — I’m going to join the client in those meetings virtually, and when we go through things, I’m going to be the one that translates everything from CPA and attorney talk to the client speak, so clients can know what we’re talking about and I’m going to have the CPA and attorney correct me if I’ve made any mistakes – that’s a huge value add you can use as an advisor. Not only am I going to be learning this entire time because I’m not an expert about those things — it’s a great opportunity for me to learn and ask great questions, it’s a great opportunity for me to connect with the client and make sure everyone is on the same page.”

SJ:

Yeah Micah I love all of that. Let’s try to remove some excuses for advisors who are listening to this and thinking well that sounds great but I can’t for this reason or I can’t or I can’t do this because the attorney’s going to say — well I’ll talk to the client I won’t talk to you Mr. Advisor; or the CPA is going to say “great my rates 300 dollars an hour, who’s going to pay that”– or what are some excuses maybe that you initially ran into with this approach, maybe you never had excuses, but how do we get past those, so that nobody walks away from this thinking — “wow that’s nice that Micah does that.”

MS:

Sure we’ll talk about setting expectations with the clients right because one of the issues the client had when I was talking with them was — great well who we go to next right, who implements this, because I can’t even if I wanted to, I can’t write a trust for them in order to create this, so who are we going to go to? So this is great, we’re going to help you find these people. Now my role in working with COI’s, centers of influences or any third parties and we told us directly to our clients Steven, they have to be a team player — good news is the vast majority of great advisors out there, CPA’s, attorneys, etc., are all team players, they want to come together and they want to work together — but we’ve all had experience with that one person which unfortunately is just a pain in the butt, doesn’t want to be a team player, doesn’t want to communicate, and unfortunately we feel this is going to put the client, you, in a bad situation, so we can’t work with those types of people but as long as you’re a good advisor that really wants to be a team player, we are happy to work with them and engage with them, to make sure you’re taken care of, is that going to be okay?

SJ:

I am sure they agree every time

MS:

Why wouldn’t they, right, and how have I phrased this and I’ve phrased this very intentionally. Every good advisor, every good CPA and attorney is a team player i.e. what’s the opposite of that — if they’re not a team player then they’re crappy attorney, they’re a crappy CPA right, those are things that we’re going to say in there because I also believe it because for not being a team player you’re not looking at the entire picture so we don’t get any issue anymore before we set these expectations, we were running an issue, so that’s number one, we’re going to set those expectations with the client. Number two we’re going to reach out and help find these attorneys or CPA’s if the client doesn’t have one and we’re going to introduce ourselves and say ”Hey Steven, CPA, my name is Micah, we have a mutual client Bob and Sue, I’ve copied them on this email, we were working together, I have some concerns about their taxes that I know you can help reduce in the future, is it okay if we chat? And for your convenience I’ve copied Bob and Sue on this email so that they can give their permission” — and I’ll tell my clients in advance I’m doing this they respond to give permission and then I’m off to the races with the CPA and Steven from your perspective, do you have any issues with that?

SJ:

No not at all. Once you include the client on the communication, yeah, let’s have a conversation and getting to my point earlier I would be excited that you’ve already done most of the work for me and I get to come in just on the piece that only I can do, because ultimately really good professionals are doing everything they can to focus their time on the pieces that only they can do right.”

MS:

Yeah

SJ:

“So you you’ve just done that for me, now I don’t even have to think about it, here’s this client that I know right out of the gate, I get to do just what I’m really good at, so super, thanks Micah for skipping over the whole prospecting process for me.”

MS:

Yeah and that’s just really important, to the other thing, I know they we’re getting little bit on a tangent, we should probably jump back on the, tax issue, if you want, but the only other thing I would say is leave your ego at the door when you’re working with other professionals — if you bring your ego and plus all of their egos man that’s a crowded room and the client does not get taken care of. So I, most the time when I engage, I’ll engage professionally, professionally I do not have the client on the line — why because there’s less ego and less face savings that needs to be had especially if mistakes were made along the way and we’re helping clean them up and fix them and we can get things done faster and then I don’t care who presents the idea to the client. So if the attorney or CPA says they — why don’t I call the client show them that they said 1.6 million dollars, great don’t care, you know what I’m not going in this for an ego stroke I’m going this to help the client and in the end, in the end, everybody knows everything so these are things that — whoever wants to do a presentation whoever wants to credit for it — I don’t care — let’s make sure that clients taken care.

SJ:

Yeah I like that you brought that back to really what your commitment is, is delivering value to the client…

MS:

Yeah

SJ:

…and you’re right, we probably should circle back to taxes at least a little bit, tax is in the name of what we’re doing here. So let’s talk real quick about, we mentioned a little bit at the beginning, but why advisors should be paying attention to this stuff regardless of what state they’re in and regardless of how big their average client is because a couple of things that jump out for me — your story is great and has a real big dollar amount associated with it — but for value to the client, the dollar amounts not as important — they want to know they’re taken care of and so this can be value even if the client doesn’t have a tax bill — we should be watching for things like well I mean one, the current exemption is only set to be in place through 2025 — so we can’t just pretend this is going to be this way forever and ever and tax laws change all the time and I can tell you that extended or not but we know tax laws change – so we should be aware of these things. Clients move sometimes maybe right now they’re in a state that doesn’t have a lower exemption, what if your clients moving to New York, what if you’re a Texas based advisor and you’re clients moving to New York and you don’t pay attention to this stuff and that completely changes the dynamic, what are some other thing, you know, things that you watch out — you mentioned yellow flags earlier – but okay I should ask more questions.”

MS:

You know, one of the other thing is, how this came up, is parents right, always asking how parents are doing if they’re alive because then you’re looking at potential inheritance issues you’re looking at are they going to step up and start taking and helping parents with things and I want that door to be open in communications because one of the things we can easily see is – “oh I’ll just put Johnny on my checking account or just add him as a co-signer right”, and all these create other issues that we may wish to avoid – so I’m always asking about parents to see how they’re doing to see if that’s one, moving, marriage divorce, of course right, that’s going to be a pretty easy one — and also just different stages of our lives, if we start to get into any mobility issues or to have any health concerns, then that’s one reason we should just re-look at, our estate planning documents and our long term care plan, what do we want to have, who do we want to have step up and be able to help in those things, so these all kind of triggering events that we should be looking at and re-looking at, all the plans we’ve created.”

Why Micah is Always Up to Date With His Clients’ Tax Returns [23:09]

SJ:

That’s great, I really like that. So Micah, I’m a CPA, not an advisor but I work with advisors on this to make sure that any of these topics we talk about are very actionable, I want people to leave knowing exactly what do you do…”

MS:

Great!

SJ:

…because this information we talked about and one of the actions that I always come back to is you need to get tax returns for every single client and prospect and I know this is something you do, it’s a non negotiable for you; but help advisors who aren’t there yet with let’s relate it to estate tax planning or the story told us today — why is that such an essential step?”

MS:

“Well an easy one on this one and again this is a big dollar case so it’s real easy to see all the value dollar wise that we can do — so in this particular case, when I got that parents tax return and I was looking at it they’re giving charitably, there still filing an itemized deduction they’re giving 40 to 60 thousand dollars away to charity, they have gifting strategies involved, all of that — but they also huge tax bill between pensions and social security as their incomes over hundred and fifty thousand bucks a year plus they have almost 3 million dollars in IRA accounts – well at 80, what’s that like, a hundred and sixty thousand dollars a year as an R&D somewhere in that nature — so now all of a sudden they’re paying over three hundred or four hundred thousand dollars close as income that they have to pay taxes on — so one of things that I told them is real great is that — their charitable minded — what are some easy things we could do and my clients had never heard of the QCD’s qualified charitable donations and so that’s one of things we implemented right away with them is all of a sudden now their whole R&D was going from an IRA account to a bank account — how many times have we done that or seen that with a client right they don’t need the money so they’re just moving it directly into a bank account but they’re having to pay taxes on it so we started implement QCD’s with them and so we’re able to put the whole R&D between husband and wife all directly to charity they’re super happy the money’s going to go out to charity to help that out and we just lower their taxable income by hundred and sixty thousand dollars — I mean that’s a solid win — now this is a big dollar case we use this in smaller ones as well — 10 to 15 thousand dollars a year in charity, again it’s great ways to give money without having to pay taxes on that money.”

SJ:

Yeah and that’s all information that you’re getting too quickly and accurately because you have their tax return — you’re not putting the client on the spot and saying — hey tell me how much you gave charitably over the last 3 years or forcing them to try to swag these things in front of you, you’re getting the real tangible information — so that that’s awesome, I love that and the you made a comment in there that I’m going to throw an extra action item that wasn’t on my list — if you’re interested in learning more about QCD’s and how you can deliver value to your clients through them we’re actually working on a newsletter all around this topic — just send an email to advisors@rts.tax — so you can get our lists for the newsletter – so its advisors@rts.tax and yes .tax is the domain — we’re really excited about that”

MS:

Wonder how many people put .com after .tax?

SJ:

I’m sure a lot that’s why I try to reinforce it — but we’ll get everyone there — .tax — that’s how important taxes are — it has its own domain — so Micah can you give my listeners another action item they can take related to this topic we’ve been discussing

MS:

Yeah I would say going back to our pre appointment process is that set up a process to get questions in advance for your clients and prospects — not only does it help us — we’ve got a huge success and clients are commenting saying man I love you sending me questions in advance to let me think about it I talked to my spouse about it we can send it off to you — so tons of phenomenal response so make sure you’re implementing that in your office.”

SJ:

That’s awesome, the last action item all throw out is that for these things to be effective you really need to institutionalize them and so the last action item would be make a checklist for evaluating you know your clients or prospects estate tax planning situation from a high level — so this should be things like what states are impacted, what their net worth is, their federal exemption levels, and we actually have a checklist we’d happy to share that’s been vetted by advisors who, you know, use this with their clients. So again advisors@rts.tax if you’re interested in just seeing a checklist that you can go ahead and implement in your practice. Micah that’s all I have, any other closing comments for our listeners here today?”

MS:

Steven, thanks so much for having me on this was a ton of fun talking about kind of a unique case that came up with clients and I’m just going to leave it with, you know what, we add tremendous amount of value as advisors to our clients and you do it by the little things the DMV’s, the delivering massive value at all sorts of areas, so continue to get out there and get the education, listen to these podcasts but not only that, implement those things Steven talked about because if you just get education with no action it was completely worthless.

SJ:

Totally agree! Thanks so much Micah! If you want to learn more about what Micah is doing visit the PerfectRIA.com. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast today, I would really love if you go to whatever platform you use to listen to your podcast and give us a 5 star review so that our community can keep growing and we know that you’re enjoying what we’re putting out there so until next time good luck out there and remember to tip your server not the IRS.