RTS #070 Is an ROI of 270X enough?

We love success stories. Most of the ones I share are Advisor success stories but my mind was blown two weeks ago when a taxpayer used one of our Advisor resources to save themselves $10,000 in taxes. This eager taxpayer went ahead and purchased our 37-point checklist for reviewing tax returns and after sending questions to his tax preparer he got a revised tax return back that went from owing $4,000 to receiving a $6,000 refund…pretty great results for a $37 pdf.

I love to see these stories, but I’m not surprised anymore. This checklist has been used by hundreds (potentially over a thousand at this point) of advisors, and the stories just pour in. A taxpayer using the checklist on their own in spite of working with a CPA shows the need for these types of reviews and the value of having a guide to follow. Even better, a story like this should give you the confidence to delegate most of the work to a team member (which so many of our RTS Members do).

Our 37-point checklist is hardly exhaustive (the tax code is 80,000+ pages, after all), but it gives a great framework for helping the majority of your clients save on taxes or at least feel more confident their return is being filed correctly. Even better, you can use the checklist as a starting point and fine-tune it for the specific clients you serve. The more you can narrow your tax focus to the areas that impact your niche, the more effective you are going to be in helping your clients NOT get killed on taxes.

Tax planning doesn’t count until it’s reported to the IRS correctly. There are plenty of great tax planning opportunities that, by default, are unlikely to make on the 1040 where they should:

• QCDs
• Backdoor Roth Contributions
• Anything that involves after-tax money
• In-plan Roth conversions
• Even traditional 401(k) rollovers get misreported with shocking frequency.

And that’s not even getting into investment sales with zero or incorrect basis being reported, equity compensation that constantly gets misreported and certainly under-withheld, and areas like passive activity losses that few taxpayers truly understand.

Whether you use the RTS 37 Point Checklist, another great resource, or create something on your own, the important part is that you are proactively doing something to make sure that the great work you do throughout the year with a client makes it onto their tax return correctly.

Happy Tax Planning!