Read The Transcript Below:

Steven:

Hello everyone and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services podcast Financial Professionals edition. I am your host Steven Jarvis, CPA, and with me is someone who in fact is related to me, not only related. He is my brother, the oldest of my brothers. Yes, I have multiple of them. Matthew Jarvis, welcome back to the show. 

Matt:

Steven, thank you for having me. Interesting. This will be kind of a fun episode to do together. It’s a good example of things that we know like that each of us as listeners know individually and we assume that everyone else knows. So for example, I have always known that you are my brother. Even on days when we were growing up that maybe we wish that was not necessarily the case and so just in my mind, I think, well, surely everyone else knows that we’re brothers. Again, that’s not always the case and the same holds true.

I know we’re going to talk about tax planning today, but financial planning, anything else, there’s all of these things that when we know them so well that we assume that they’re foundational knowledge for everyone and they’re not. 

Steven:

What immediately comes to mind that our good friend Micah, he has a great way of approaching this where he says, forgive me Steven, I’m sure you already know this, and then he proceeds to tell me something that I may or may not know, but he sets it up in a way that I don’t have to feel bad if I didn’t know it, and he’s not insulting my intelligence if I did already know it because even just in the last couple of weeks, there’s been several times where I’m talking to people who again, I would assume, of course they know that Matt and I are brothers, but they don’t.

It turns out it’s a really big industry. It’s an even bigger world and you can’t just make assumptions about what people do and don’t know. 

Matt:

Yeah, Micah’s line on that is great. I was actually training one of my junior advisors the other day and I always use the line, Hey, as you may know, so hey, as you may know, the limit for contributions is whatever it is or contributions are different than conversions or as you may know, the RMD rules have been pushed out and so yeah, you’re right Steven. It’s a way of helping lay the foundation without also insulting the person. So as you all may know or may not know, Steven and I are brothers. I am the older of the brothers. That’s actually, by the way, a terrible game. You and I sometimes play when we’re on calls with you for the first time and they figure out we’re brothers and I always say, Hey, which one of us is the older brother? And some people take that bait and other people do not wisely. 

Steven:

I do really enjoy that because obviously, this is an audio podcast if you haven’t seen us visually, Matthew is bald and I am not, and so I get the hair points and so you have this, but for people who know you better than they know me, Matt, or have been around you more people, you can see it on their face. They’re kind of torn because visually they’re going to give the edge to you. But public maturity-wise, online maturity-wise, they’re like, wait, Matt can’t possibly be the older one. Well, and so if you haven’t seen us in person here, this is just all about our family lore here. We will be together Stephen at the RTS Tax Summit again this year in the fall, right? September 25th through the 27th.

Steven:

Yeah, in Phoenix at the west and Tempe, very excited about that. You can go to retirementtaxservices.com and check out the event. It’s going to be great. We’re actually expanding the format a little bit this year, so we’ll have an even bigger lineup of great presenters who are going to help us all with how do we take action on tax planning. 

Matt:

This podcast is airing on April 15th. It is tax day. Also fun fact. Also my wife’s birthday of course, even as you know, and this is really one of the many ways the universe has blessed me that every April 15th, I think there are two things I was supposed to do today. Two things, taxes and oh yeah, that’s right, and it’s my wife’s birthday, so always been very fortunate to have an easy-to-remember birthday there. 

Steven:

Probably also motivation to always make sure you err a little bit on the side of refunds just so that you have that extra little cashflow to make sure your birthday can be okay.

Matt:

This is where the maturity difference between us. I always make sure I owe a little bit, so I’m like, sweetie, I was going to get you something really nice for your birthday, but I have to pay taxes. I’m really sorry next year. 

Steven:

Well, Matt, I want to dive into a couple of things about we learned the most during these times where we’re doing a lot of the same things over and over again, but before we get to some of my tax season takeaways because we are recording this in the middle of the tax filing season, you’re also in surge currently. And so one of the things I wanted to ask you about, and I’ll share my perspective as well, is how do you make sure that you have time for things like this when you’re in the middle of your busiest times of year? 

Matt:

Yeah, I guess that’s a whole discussion on surge. So again, things that maybe not everyone knows, A surge is a concept that actually Micah Shilanski, a good friend coined the phrase was actually originally invented by God himself. If you’re to believe the Bible, right? Created the earth in six days. And so that’s kind of the theory of surge. It’s time-blocking, right? It’s sort of the earliest time management, but the idea is, and I’ll be very brief here, let’s say that you have 100 clients and you want to meet with them twice a year, spring and fall. That’s 200 meetings. Most advisors will do four or five meetings a week every week out of the year for the entire year in a surge meeting concept. You say, great. Instead of doing four or five meetings a week, I’m going to do four or five or in my case, six meetings a day for a couple of weeks, get all of my meetings done at once in the spring and then again in the fall leaving me a lot of time to do other things, including this podcast 

Steven:

The surge concepts has always really resonated with me. It’s kind of forced on accountants because we have deadlines that just stack up our work, but there’s definitely an intentional way to do things in an unintentional way. And so even though I’m in my busiest time of the year, I block out time for things like this. Cause they’re a lot of fun. They create content that people can use. We get to take the time to step back and say, okay, how do people take action? And one of the things I love about it is that this time of year I am doing the same thing over and over and over again, but with every client it’s slightly different. And so I get to have these moments where I can say, oh, there’s something that I need to reinforce, something that I need to learn new, and then I get to come on a podcast like this and share it with other people.

Matt:

So the surge concept can work for meetings. Obviously, Steven, as you point out, can work for doing tax returns. As advisors listen to this, this can also work for getting copies of tax returns for clients. So today is the tax filing deadline, which means hopefully all of your clients are either on extension or have filed their return and didn’t just outright forget, but it’s a great time while taxes are top of mind to spend the next week or two weeks reaching out to every client saying, Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client just wanted to make sure your taxes filed on time or get on extension. And then we explained why it is we want a copy, their tax return and the best way to get it to our office the best way, by the way of being the easiest way for the client to get it to our office.

Steven:

You want to give ’em multiple options so they securely get it to you and make it as easy for them as possible. Because if you’re creating homework for them that’s just laborious and stressful, then you’re not really delivering value. The other thing I love about this time of year and this surge concept is that when we do things over and over again in kind of quick repetition, we get better at them. We’re able to more efficiently do them, more effectively do them. Just a real easy example, literally as we’re recording this just last week, pull up a tax return and anytime I meet with a new client, I always get their last three years of tax returns and I do a quick review of them. Now for me, they’re quick because I’ve done so many of these, but it’s also quick because I work with the same types of clients over and over again.

So there’s things I’m on the lookout for. So I’m looking at this 2022 tax return box 4B for a married filing jointly couple is right about $12,000. And so that immediately kind of flags for me. Wait, I have married filing jointly couple who is working has lots of W2 income and has 12,000 ish dollars of taxable IRA distributions. That’s a red flag. I need to dig deeper. And within about 60 seconds I would bet my house on, they inadvertently did a backdoor Roth contribution incorrectly and they got an extra tax bill for about three grand that we’re going to go back and help them get refunded to ’em all because I these things together and I get really laser-focused on doing these reviews, these proactive tax planning with clients to make sure that they win in the end. 

Matt:

And a quick interjection here. I remember when I first got taught how to read tax returns, I had read tax returns at that point for years, but I didn’t really understand ’em how to read them in a way that delivered value to clients. And it wasn’t until I was coached by Tom Gaum, he rest in peace, he sat down with me, we pulled out a prospects tax return and he went through it with me line by line from the angle of how do I find and communicate value on this? And so the reason I mentioned this, Steven, is if you as a listener just heard that and said, wait a second, box 4B backdoor Roth 8606, the Roth conversion was done incorrectly. I don’t know what any of that means. This is a great point. Go track down the 37-point checklist, Steven. It’s phenomenal. We have our team use that with every tax return that comes in.

Also, go watch that 8606 masterclass. There are things like you said, you looked at so many tax returns, you want to be able to see these immediately. If you have to look at every single line and say, Hey, what does this line mean? You just won’t ever get through them. But if you’re doing the same thing again and again, you’ll start recognizing patterns or like you said, red flags. 

Steven:

Yeah, that’s a good reminder Matt, because we’re all guilty of this at times where we start going quick and we kicked off the episode with this. We just assume things and so this is why we take the time to dive deeper. The podcast is a lot of fun, but we can only go so far. So you mentioned the 8606 masterclass that I did and you and Micah did some great bonus videos for that. We also, as this is airing, we’ll also have just released our next masterclass, which is all about reviewing tax returns.

Such an important concept, such an important skill to have because what I like to remind advisors is that tax planning’s not done until it gets reported to the IRS correctly because in this client’s case, a very well-intentioned advisor, their previous advisor, maybe this why they switched to a new advisor, but very well-intentioned advisor had helped them do a backdoor Roth contribution because they were over the limit to contribute directly, but they didn’t see it through to the end. And so now instead of a positive value add experience, they actually paid extra tax and the whole thing got blown up because they didn’t follow it through all A to the end and the advisor that they had been working with previously didn’t take the time to verify that, Hey, this in fact got reported correctly. 

Matt:

And it’s back to assumptions. If you’re listening to this podcast, taxes are obviously a focus for you advisor as a tax repair ride. Let me just give you some quick insight. I’ve now seen inside of thousands of advisors’ practices, no one is doing tax planning, nobody just from a statistical standpoint. Now there are a handful. You listening, see myself, you Micah, there’s people that are doing it, but statistically speaking in the industry it is nobody. And so when you sit down with a prospective client and you say, Hey, when we get your tax return, we go through a 37 point checklist to look for opportunities to make sure that you are not overpaying the IRS that puts you one in a million. They’ve never heard that before and this is one of the reasons I’m so passionate about tax planning. We’re going to talk about Steven, why you started Retirement Tax Services years ago is that it’s such a way for advisors to deliver quantifiable value to clients, which then opens the door for the things that people don’t want to do, like risk management and cashflow management and investment.

That stuff’s hard for people to understand. If you can sit down with a client and say, Hey, I noticed an error on your tax return, a $12,000 distribution that shouldn’t have been there, we’re going to get that fixed. Holy smokes, I’ve now done something that no one has ever done for them in their life, which has helped them pay less money in taxes. It’s a game changer, just an absolute game changer for advisors.

Steven:

And Matt, just like how you and I can easily just assume that people know we’re brothers. If you are spending your time around that handful of advisors who do tax planning, if you spend your time listening to this podcast and consuming content around tax planning, it can be easy to assume, well, the whole industry is doing tax planning now. It’s no longer an edge and that’s just not the case.

More and more people are listening to this on their website. Sure, you can find plenty of advisors who say tax planning, but they use it as a marketing employee. They’re not really doing tax planning. They’re using their custodial platform to automatedly do tax loss harvesting. Maybe they are not getting tax returns, they’re not consistently doing backdoor Roth contributions, they’re not doing proactive planning. This is still a huge edge, which is why when I have advisors, and this happens fairly regularly, it happened just within the last month, I’ll have advisors come to me and say, Hey Steven, they say this with complete seriousness. They say, Hey Steven, will you stop telling other advisors about this? This sets me apart and I don’t want everyone else to be doing it. And I say, well, no, because I set out to transform the way advisors do tax planning, but I promise you it is still an edge and as long as you stay committed to it, you’re light years ahead of that.

Even if I convince the entire industry tomorrow to start doing tax planning, they still have to play catch up. 

Matt:

All you have in life is a head start, right? We always want to stay ahead of the curve, but it’s moving slowly, right? As big of impact as you’re having the industry turns very, very slowly, and to be honest, it’s hard to do a decent job with tax planning. Now, again, we’re not talking about setting up offshore intentionally defective trust in the Cayman Island stuff like you were talking about a backdoor Roth contribution done incorrectly. We’re talking about, I was in surge this last week talking to clients about qualified charitable distributions, right? Using their IRA to fund their charitable goals, talking about donor-advised funds, talking about highly appreciated securities, talking about gifting to their kids. This isn’t like 501 level stuff at the same time, it’s not getting done right. There are so many opportunities to help clients stop overpaying the IRS.

Steven:

Yeah, almost needs to be a constant reminder really for most people, include people with ultra high net worth if you get to net worth of 20, 30, 40, 50 million and above, yeah, there’s all sorts of creative things and complex things you can do beyond that, that’s not who I work with. I work with people who have done a great job saving or are in the process of doing a great job saving their high earners or they’re getting into retirement and they really benefit from these consistent what seem like simple tax planning strategies, but making sure they actually get executed every year over time. 

Matt:

If by the way you’re listening and that is your client group, right? 10 40, 50, a hundred million, 200 million, we do have somebody we can introduce you to that does that their thing. So you can send us a message on that, but you’re right, Steven, otherwise it’s doing these same things again and again. And here’s the great news. Let’s say the 37-point checklist masterclass. You call every client in the next couple of weeks. You say, Hey, listen, send us a copy of your tax return. We’re going to do this 37-point review and you find nothing. You find nothing and on all of your client tax returns, you still won the game because no one has ever called your client and said, Hey, listen, we’ll double check your tax return to make it sure it’s accurate. Now you will have a handful of clients that are going to say, Hey, I got a tax preparer. He already takes care of that. Oh, that’s great news. We would actually love to be introduced to him, but you know what? No one’s perfect. We just want to put a second set of eyes on that for you, so if it’s okay, go ahead and upload that to us or mail it or whatever we’re going to do so we can do our 37-point checklist.

Commercial:

Hey there, advisors, this is Jamie Schlanski. You might recognize my voice from my World’s to Conquer episode over at the Perfect RIAs podcast. I get a lot of questions from my financial advisors about what type of continuing education should they attend, how should they dedicate themselves to professional development this year and what conferences are really worth going to. Well, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The one conference I will not miss is the Retirement Tax Services Summit this September. It is going to be held in Phoenix, Arizona, and this is the most sensational conference I go to and not because of all the fanfare involved in being in Phoenix, but instead about collaborating with like-minded individuals and these are people who have legal expert tax planning advice. These are people who do qualified accounts, big retirements. They are creating five and 10 year tax plans. They have guest speakers that talk about hyper-efficiency and the things that you need to know to keep you on the cutting edge of being a financial advisor. It is certainly where I will be. You don’t want to miss this conference, so make sure that you jump over to retirementtaxservices.com and register to attend this summit. I know it’s where I’ll be this September!

Steven:

Matt, you and I are actually doing a webinar in a couple of weeks together. Again, you can go to retirementtaxservices.com to get registered for that. It’s free. You just need to invest an hour of your time and commit to doing something with it. But one of the things we’re going to be talking about is how you build effective relationships with CPAs, and so again, if you have that head trash of I don’t want to step on another professional’s toes, then great. What you’re going to tell your client is, Hey, a lot of the stuff we do together, actually pretty much all of the stuff we do together has a tax impact, and so I just want to make sure the things I’m doing with you are getting reported correctly. I’m just double-checking my own work here. Now, this isn’t you against the other CPA, and this isn’t just a gimmick.

It really isn’t you against the other CPA. You’re trying to make sure that the things that you’re doing with your client are getting reported correctly so they actually count for something. 

Matt:

Yeah, yeah. It helps to share examples. Now, again, most clients got some head trash around this. We all do are just going to say, yep, that’s great. I’ll be glad to upload ’em. I’m excited that you do that. The ones that would push back. It’s great to have just a few examples. So Steven, you mentioned the example of the backdoor Roth done incorrectly and especially for younger advisors or advisors who are new to tax planning, it’s okay to share other people’s stories now, do not plagiarize them. It’s okay to say, Hey, A CPA, who mentored me explain that X, Y, Z. Here’s what Steve and I had years ago. Client retires, rolls over their retirement plan.

The custodian reported incorrectly on the 1099. They reported the entire thing as taxable. The tax preparer said, huh, that’s strange. Well, you owe $80,000 in taxes. The client having never retired before thought that was how retirement worked, went out and took out a home equity loan, paid the taxes, and it wasn’t until we asked for a copy of the tax return. Now, again, I don’t why the client didn’t call us, but who knows? We got a copy of the tax return. I’m looking at it. I’m doing my 37-point checklist. Holy smokes, why does this have $400,000 in box 4B? Doesn’t make sense. I started backtracking, we find out what had happened and we got it fixed. The client got the money back, so not only did we save the client 80,000, the worst part, Steven, is I’m sure you’re doing the math in your head, they would’ve paid that tax a second time because it all got rolled into an IRA, the new custodian who was going to report each of those taxes distributions as taxable.

So it’s okay, advisors to share, Hey, an advisor I work with, an advisor I know shared this and I committed to myself that that would never happen to my clients. Therefore, we need your tax return. 

Steven:

Matt, another pushback we get sometimes from advisors is there’s head trash around. Well, I’ve never asked for them before. Aren’t my clients going to be like, Hey, why didn’t you ask for them last year? And one, I have yet to have an advisor tell me that that actually comes up. That’s just kind of something we imagine. If it does come up again, this is really easy. Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client, as you know, I’m always looking for ways to deliver more value to my clients, including you recently, I’ve really committed to tax planning. I’m learning from a great CPA, well, however you want to word that. I’ve been taking courses, but great, your clients are, again, it’s going to be nothing but a win for you.

They’re going to see that you’re committed to leveling up constantly. Now you’ve given ’em a reason why you didn’t ask for the last 5 or 10 years, and great, now we’re going to start delivering this new value to our clients. 

Matt:

Yeah, I’m with you Steven. I’ve seen a lot of advisors express that concern. I’ve expressed that concern. I’ve never seen it actually articulated and think about yourself. If you go into any service provider and they say, Hey, great news, we’re now doing this additional thing for you. I’m never angry. You son of a gun. How come you didn’t do that? That’s all awesome because by the way, I signed up for the deal without that benefit, and now you’re adding more benefits to the deal. This is a great thing!

Steven:

And Matt, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, but in my experience, what I’ve seen both personally with other advisors, clients don’t expect perfection. They expect ownership and accountability. They expect that you’re going to find the right answer in the end, and so I’ve even had situations, I will admit to not being perfect. I’ve had situations where return that we’ve done in the past as we learn new things, as we learn new ways to review things, new ways to apply things, we’ve gone back and said, Hey, that return that we did, there’s something we can improve on it. And so I’ve gone back to clients and told them, Hey, we’re always looking for ways to improve and that return we get together. Last year we’ve realized we could go back and do X, Y, and Z, so we’re going to amend that for you and make sure it gets done correctly, and this is why we work together and why we always are reviewing what we do together, and that’s never been a negative experience for the client.

Matt:

We’ll talk about this next month on the webinar, working with Centers of influence next month in a few weeks. That’s where when you see something that potentially looks like a mistake, there’s a delicate process to follow. It’s not calling the client saying, Hey, I think your tax repair really screwed this. There’s a process to follow. We’ll talk about that on the webinar to make sure that it is a relationship-building opportunity for all parties involved, not a bunch of finger-pointing or a blame game going on. 

Steven:

Yeah, absolutely. We can nerd out about so many of these things for hours. We’ve already talked about a couple of things coming up that people can get involved in. I’m really guilty of this again, because I just assume that people know who you are and that we’re related. I skip over what it is you actually do sometimes, and so I mean you’ve been an advisor for long, long time, long enough that you’ve lost all your hair, although I think that happened quite a long time ago, so I mean you’re going to express it way better than I ever would. Talk just real briefly about what you do for advisors. 

Matt:

Yeah, so I’ve been a financial advisor now for almost 21 years. I’m in my 21st year practice up in the Seattle, Washington area. We’re about 180 million in assets. And then separately from that 2017, I was on Michael Kitces podcast, episode number seven, podcast of the year, and I talked about how I run my practice, then surge meetings and how it’s hyper efficient, how I take all this time off. I wrote a book Delivering Massive Value on how financial advisors can duplicate and exceed my success. And so that’s what I do now with The Perfect RIA get to also, by the way, hang out with you here at Retirement Tax Services. That helps spread the good word on tax planning, which by the way, speaking of spreading the good word on tax planning, I just ever resist looking for opportunities to prospect through taxes.

So, one-third of my clients have always come from centers of influence, which is a tough nut to crack, but once you do, it’s really good. One-third comes from referrals from existing clients, which is its own thing. What one-third has always come from my personal network inside of my geographical community, 37-point checklist, a great lead in. So Steven, if I run into you, assuming you weren’t a tax, actually even as a taxpayer, I would still do this because I have guts on that, but I would say during tax season, during April, I would say people say, Hey, Matthew, how’s work going? I say, boy, it’s really going great. We’re doing our 37 point checklist for all of our clients right now on their tax return. Really? Yeah, so our team, run this 37-point checklist on every tax return, to make sure people aren’t overpaying.

Now, one of two things are going to happen, Steven, after you explain this. One, is they’re going to say, ah, that’s interesting. And they’re going to go back to whatever they’re doing, which is perfect, which is totally perfect. That’s the end of my permission there. Or they’re going to say, oh, I just did my tax return and I got killed. Or they’re going to say whatever they’re going to say, and I’m going to say, Hey, Steven, that’s not what I’m here for, but if you’d like, you could send a copy of your tax return order to my office and my team will do that 37 point checklist on your tax return, and they’ll send you back whatever they found and you can take that to your advisor or your tax preparer and get that fixed. 

Steven:

What a great way to have that entry point, and I like that you clarified there, Matt, that it gives the person you’re talking to an option to either push the conversation forward or just end it, especially when we’re outside of our office, when we’re in a more casual or social setting, we’ve got to pay attention to those kinds of things because all been in those situations where someone’s trying to force their job, whatever it is, whether it’s taxes or financial planning or who knows what else it is, whatever newest thing on Etsy, who knows?

We’ve got to be on the lookout for those that permission, like you said, to keep going or to just, oh, yep, I’m good. Let’s go back to whatever social event we’re in. 

Matt:

Yeah. I think the other reason why taxes are powerful in that social setting is that no one else is using that angle, at least not yet. I use the word angle cautiously. This isn’t some sales gimmick. I legitimately know that anytime I look at a tax return, I can deliver value and we can share some fun stories on that. I once spent a day with a really well-known financial blogger and podcaster that everyone on the show would recognize, and he was very proud that he didn’t hire a financial advisor because he’s a financial expert himself, and we took a look at his tax return and found him multiple six figures of tax savings thing he didn’t even know he didn’t know, and so one, that’s a fun story because whatever he thought he was saving by not hiring an advisor, he was losing in taxes, but it’s a reminder that almost everyone has an opportunity to save money in taxes or at least improve their strategy around it. And so by me saying, Hey, listen, I’d be glad to take a look at that. I am offering sincere value to my network, and again, it’s not a pitch they’ve heard, whereas if I say, Hey, Steven, do you want me to take a second look at your life insurance? Or, Hey, you’re thinking about selling a home or would you like some whatever multi-level marketing thing? We’re very risk-averse to that, but to have somebody offer to help me pay less in taxes, that’s not something I get all the time. 

Steven:

Matt, this might seem unrelated, but one of the other things that brought to mind for me about what I like about taxes, everyone also, we’re all impacted by taxes, we all know it exists and it’s out there.

Everyone’s pretty familiar with the fact that taxes are really large and complex, and so it’s really easy to say, Hey, tax code goes 80,000 plus pages long. I don’t know all of it. I’m always learning new things, and what’s fun about that for me is it makes it a little less high-pressure to learn from other people. I don’t take it personally. I’m not scared or offended if you know something about taxes that I don’t, which is one of the reasons I love getting lots of people together to talk about taxes, even though I’m one of the people on stage hosting the conference that we do in September. I love just the room full of people that I get to learn from because I do get to constantly learn from other advisors about how they’re approaching things, how they’re communicating things. I learn new strategies sometimes. I don’t know them all yet, so I love being able to have great guests like you, come on the podcast, get together and do these webinars, these conferences because, with taxes, there’s the ability to constantly be learning. 

Matt:

Yeah, that’s a great reminder for, I mean, we’re coming into conference season, so of course hopefully everybody will come to see us at the Retirement Tax Services Tax Summit, but when I go to conferences, I always want to make sure I’m armed with a question or two that I’m going to ask every advisor I talk to. So instead of the boring like, Hey, where are you from and what is the next designation you’re going to get? Whatever. I want to ask a specific question to every single person, so it might be like, Hey, just really curious, what’s the biggest Roth conversion you’ve recommended this year and how did you communicate it to clients?

Which Steven, by the way, you set a new record in my book. I’ve never seen one this big, but I want to do that again and again, right? And this was a reason to start Retirement Tax Services. Anyone can read the tax code, right? Anyone can read and slot books, which are phenomenal on IRA tax planning. There are a lot of tax technical tax resources, but knowing how to communicate that into actionable advice for clients, is a whole skill set set on its own. 

Steven:

That is going to be one of my questions at conferences this year is like you mentioned, recently worked with an advisor on a $4 million Roth conversion, and we’d have to do a whole separate episode as to why that made sense, because at first I was a little bit hesitant by the end completely on board, so that’s going to be one of my questions at conferences is, Hey, can you think of a situation where you’d be on board with a $4 million Roth conversion?

I know there are going to be people absolutely not. No way would that ever make sense. I’m looking forward to those conversations, but we want to make sure that of course, we’re being respectful of people’s time and that we’re always making sure that we turn information into value, which of course is action, and so we’ve talked about quite a few different things. Short time together, action items you would recommend to advisors. 

Matt:

Action item number one. I would put this one out there a little bit selfishly, if you’re a podcast listener, obviously you typically, you listen to five or six different podcasts, so be sure to keep Retirement Tax Services as your top podcast, but also check out The Perfect RIA podcast, which is the podcast I do with my good friend Micah. So yeah, The Perfect RIA podcast. Check that one out for some great practice management tips.

Steven:

Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic podcast.  The next one, I’m just going to reiterate, you mentioned it, you need to be getting tax returns for every single client every single year. I probably mentioned it on at least 85% of the podcast episodes, but that’s how important it is, there’s so many things that tie back into that. Make sure you have a system, make sure you’re making it easy for clients, and then make sure you’re delivering value when you get them. 

Matt:

Yeah. I’ll do a plug for you, Steven. Action item number three, check out the 37-point checklist masterclass, so that 37-point checklist is in the hands of hundreds, thousands of advisors across the industry. There’s now an entire masterclass to go with that. Of course, if you’re a member like myself of Retirement Tax Services, you have access to that masterclass. If not, sure, you can go to retirementtaxservices.com and get access to that thing.

Steven:

Yeah, absolutely. It was a lot of fun putting together. I’m super excited about the feedback we’re getting already. It’s really a great way for you to either learn the basics or to level up what you’re doing. It’s not just here’s line one wages, here’s how you communicate this to clients. Here’s how you take action. Here’s how you get your team involved. Lots of great things there, Matt. We’ve talked about it a couple of times, but I’m just so excited about it. I’m going to mention every chance I get the RTS Tax Planning Summit, this is our second year doing it. It’s going to be in Phoenix, September 25th through 27th. There’s actually a tag on day TPR Live, the Perfect IRA, you and Micah focused on practice management as well. So it’s going to be a phenomenal event where it’s going to be even bigger than last year. We’ve more great partners coming this year, and great speakers. It’s going to be phenomenal, so go to retirementtaxservices.com. It’s almost a choose-your-own adventure of how you want to get involved in leveling up your tax planning game this year, but we’d love to see you at all of these events. 

Matt:

Awesome. Hey, Steven, thanks so much for having me. 

Steven:

Yeah, Matt, thanks for being here and for everyone listening. Until next time, good luck out there, and remember to tip your server, not the IRS!