Practical Tax with Steve Moskowitz

On this episode of Practical Tax, Congressman Jared Huffman joins us to discuss green tax initiatives and Chris Westfall joins us to discuss side husltles for businesses. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Hello and welcome again to another edition of Practical Tax with tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz. Steve, hope all is well. Steve Moskowitz: All is well and there is so much going on in the tax world. It just keeps us happy because we're getting back so much money for our clients. For example, this ERC program, employee retention credits where the federal government is giving away their grants, they're not loans, up to $26,000 for every employee that you have that qualified is tremendous and is helping out so many small businesses. Chip Franklin: We have been talking about this for four years, right? That's been going on for a while. Steve Moskowitz: It hasn't been that long. It may seem that long, but it hasn't. And the bottom line is that... The important part is you have to know, and there are some real differences of opinion, who qualifies and who doesn't. There are two tests. One test is a certain drop in gross revenue. That's easy. It's math, either above or below a certain number. But there's a second test called full or partial closure. And that's really a facts and circumstances test. For example, even an essential business like Safeway could only use 25% of the inside of their business, as was mandated by the state of California for all businesses from the beginning of the pandemic until 6/15/21. That may qualify them supply chain disruptions and so on. But it takes some work to figure that out and a lot of firms are ignoring that. If you don't meet the math, they say no ERC for you, that's wrong because the test is either/or. On the other hand, the IRS is warning that there are a bunch of fraudulent firms just making stuff up and like anything else in your tax, obviously, you want to take everything to which you're legally entitled, no more and no less. You'd never want to put anything on any tax return or anything you give to the government is fraudulent, yet some companies are doing that. And there are these popup companies, they just came into existence to file ERC and then they're going to be gone when the IRS is asking questions whereas we're a law firm and we've been around for over 30 years. Chip Franklin: Well, all of these trails lead to Washington DC eventually, right? I mean- Steve Moskowitz: Yes, they do. Chip Franklin: ... [inaudible 00:02:28]. And we're nice enough to be joined today by US representative from California, Second Congressional district since back in 2013, Congressman Jared Huffman. Congressman, good to have you here. Jared Huffman: Good to be with you. Chip Franklin: I understand- Steve Moskowitz: Congressman, thanks so much for joining us. Jared Huffman: Thank you, Steve. Chip Franklin: And you're in the neighborhood just a little north of us and enjoying again, California. Whenever I hear about people saying, "Oh, we're moving to Texas." I'm like, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." I love it here, right? Jared Huffman: Yeah. Yeah. California is still going strong despite the detractors out there who don't wish us well. Steve Moskowitz: You know there are always detractors for everything.

Dr Gregg Larivee gives their insight on the cost of poor health, while Les Winston discusses the business philanthropy. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: All right, welcome to Practical Tax with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. I'm Chip Franklin and Steve, boy, I tell you, I'm excited about today's show because we cover a wide variety of areas, all which have at some heart of it, like most things, to do with the taxes we pay and what that means about our quality of life. And I mean, obviously with the extensions and the tax, even this has been a really busy time for you, this time of year. When you see people that are filing these extensions, I mean, I'm one of them. Well, what happens to people that they would file this late in the year? Steve Moskowitz: Oh, that's very common. And for example, we oftentimes tell clients, we advise them to file extensions because you know how I've talked about retirement accounts and how that's such a benefit? Cash flow. So what happens is you have with a lot of the accounts, you have up to the time of filing the return plus extension to set them up and fund them. So I suppose you have this situation: you're a business person, and this is a tiny little bit technical because it gets into the accounting and the tax. You've made a big profit on your taxes, but you don't have any cash because you spent your money on inventory, which is an asset on the balance sheet. So they say, "Well, wait a minute, I've made all this money on my tax return but I don't have any cash because I reinvest it in the business," and that's sitting there in inventory. So you say, "Well all right, that gives me an extra half a year to earn," and then the money that I earn, I can put into the pension plan on or before the due date, including extension. Again, that date varies depending on the form of entity and the plan you have. But that's a good reason to do it. Chip Franklin: Yeah. Steve Moskowitz: And then you legally greatly lower your taxes with money you've earned three quarters of the way into year two, that you're deducting from year one where most things you have to write the check in year one. This is an exception, that's one of many. Chip Franklin: Yeah. I think I've filed an extension for 20 straight years now. And it's not for any of the reasons you said, it's most- Steve Moskowitz: A lot of times you're waiting for documents from others. Chip Franklin: Right, and that happens too. All right. One of the biggest issues facing not just Americans but almost everybody in North America and in Europe, is healthcare and how it affects not only obviously businesses and individuals, but our society as a whole. Our first guest today is Dr. Gregg Larivee, I almost messed his name up, Dr. Gregg Larivee, and he's created the Integrated Medical Center in Florida and he's been treating NFL, MLB, PGA, and NBA athletes, plus people from all sorts of life for more than 20 years. And he is nice enough to take the time to join us here on Practical Tax. Doc, good to have you here. Thank you so much. Dr. Gregg Larivee: Thanks for having me. Chip Franklin: We had a great conversation before we came on about sports and I think sports is for many Americans, is an escape, but for many of these athletes, obviously it's something they can't escape as when they leave the sport later on and the injur...

Meghan Watkins of CEO Coaching International joins us this week to discuss the intricacies of managing your businesses growth and productivity. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to another edition of Practical Tax with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. I'm your co-host Chip Franklin. That would be the host to my left or right there. You get it. I love talking about productivity because I know that there's a lot of different ways to measure that, right, Steve? I mean- Steve Moskowitz: Absolutely. Chip Franklin: Yeah. And as a business grows, obviously they want their people to be more productive. One of the things though about coaching and training employees is, are you ready for success? I mean, a lot of people, they're worried about what's coming around the corner, of the bad thing, but sometimes successes then comes, and you find out that you're just not ready for it. Well, joining us to start this show is somebody that does this for a living. She's a CEO of Coaching International with more than two decades in building cohesive teams, and she's very passionate about this. Meghan Watkins, it's nice enough to join us. Hello, Meghan. Meghan Watkins: Hey, good afternoon- Steve Moskowitz: Hi, Meghan. Meghan Watkins: ... [inaudible 00:01:14] Steve, nice to see you. Steve Moskowitz: Pleasure. Chip Franklin: Good. Thank you for being with us. Let's just jump right into that. I mean, because you both have a lot of experience in this. Steve has had many employees over the years. Your job has been to try to get employees to be top producers. But there's another caveat that too, you want to be happy. How is that, how do you achieve that balance, Meghan? Meghan Watkins: Yeah, I mean think it's really, I think that a lot over the last couple of years has really encouraged leaders to understand that really knowing their team, and taking the time to really understand what motivates their team, is really vital to the overall happiness. And for some that are looking for maybe the opportunity to work from home, that could be really something that's really important to them. And others really actually want to have the ability to work together in an office. And so what we found is typically that hybrid model is usually the most optimal, and sort of allows the ability to have a level of accountability with their team, but also give them that level of flexibility that a lot of people are really demanding at this point. Steve Moskowitz: That's what we have in our office. Prior to the pandemic, as a traditional law firm, everybody was under one roof. With the pandemic, we all had to go home initially for three weeks, we were told. And then when the pandemic dragged on, a lot of people got used to working from home. And a lot of clients said, "Wow, you mean I can just talk to you on the phone or your computer?" Just like we're doing now. Physically, where are you? Meghan Watkins: Physically, I am in Dallas, Texas right now, and I'm in my home office, but I also do have a shared workspace that I go to as well. And that really speaks, I think to, at the root of it, what we're all craving. We're all ability to have flexibility in our day to day. But we're also still humans that crave the ability to connect directly with others, and be able to interact with others face to face on occasion as well.

George Nagle is a former Global Executive Director of Marketing with responsibility for a portfolio of over $352 million. He's joined by Personal Injury Attorney Gregg Goldfarb who discusses where injury and taxes intersect. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Well, welcome to another edition of Practical Tax with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. Steve, it seems that every week we have a couple guests on, and we're always trying to find a way to help viewers and listeners understand taxes. And as you've said so many times, and so well, taxes are a part of our life. As Ben Franklin once said, that and death are unavoidable. But it is unique the way that we find that they do come into our lives. Steve Moskowitz: It really affects every aspect of our lives, because money is so important. It affects, literally, the food you eat, the place you live, how you- Chip Franklin: Stress? Yeah, try not having any of it. Steve Moskowitz: That's when it's a real problem. Chip Franklin: Yeah. Steve Moskowitz: And taxes wants to take a big chunk of that away from you. So the amount you pay is directly going to affect not only your life, but how your family lives as well. Chip Franklin: Well, let's just jump into our first guest. Again, that's Steve Moskowitz. I'm Chip Franklin. This is George Nagle. He's a former global executive director of marketing. His portfolio had a responsibility of over 352 million, and he used a lot of creative innovative ways in a business to drive profit and loss. And we're always interested in profit loss, right? Steve Moskowitz: Absolutely. Chip Franklin: Yeah. Joining us right now is Mr. Nagle. Hi, George. Where are you right now? What part of the world? George Nagle: Hi. So I'm out of Lansing, Michigan, so the state capital here in the wonderful state of Michigan. Chip Franklin: Great state, yeah. Let's talk about this right out of the get-go, and talk a little bit about the idea of profit and loss, and how- Steve Moskowitz: I prefer profit. Chip Franklin: Right, right. Although it's nice to have losses on paper at the end of the year as well. Steve Moskowitz: The sweetest thing in life is a positive cash flow with a tax loss. Now you're talking my language, Chip. Chip Franklin: Let's talk a little bit about ... this goes back decades ... but the idea of positive thinking, and the other one too, thinking outside of the box. When you hear that phrase, I'm kind of curious from both of you ... Let me start with you, George. What does that make you think of when you think of thinking outside the box? What does that mean to you? George Nagle: So to me, that really means that people recognize that they may be a little stagnant and they feel a need for change. And Chip, the funny part about that is when you say that to people, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, we need to change." And then as soon as I say to them, "Great, who's going to change first?" Dead silence. And a lot of that comes down to ... When organizations are usually saying that, what they are lacking isn't necessarily a need for change; it's a need for better execution within the field that they already play in, and then they can bring in some different thinking, some breakthrough thinking, not necessarily thinking outside of their box. Because, Chip and Steve,

Rocky Lalvani joins us to discuss the ironic twist that businesses need to focus more on profits and Stephen Patterson tells us how to guide your business through a recession. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Well, welcome to another edition of Practical Tax with Tax Attorney Steve Moskowitz. I'm Chip Franklin, and this is where we talk about issues surrounding taxes, and obviously that's a wide area, and it covers everything from individuals to multinational corporations and everything in between. And also, of course, you'll find this on our Ask a Tax Attorney segments, there are spaces in between that we try to fill in the cracks on the show, and Steve does a great job, and we love having great guests. Our next guest today is someone who can talk a little bit about what we love to talk about, which is profitability. And he's taught this to business owners for years. He teaches them how to ensure how they get paid and make a profit a priority. As a certified profit first professional, he implements these profit first systems and we'll talk about that coming up in just a second. Rocky Lalvani joins us here on Practical Tax. I'm laughing because I hope I got your name right. I didn't ask you in advance. Did I get it? Rocky Lalvani: You did wonderful, Chip. Thank you. Chip Franklin: Well, that's good because I took me a while for Moskowitz, but I don't mess that up anymore. Steve Moskowitz: You did perfect, Chip. Chip Franklin: All right, so let's talk about, you said the profit answer, man. Let's kind of jump in with a question, and obviously profit comes first in business. You can't stay in business long without a profit, but there's also growing pains, hard times and salaries. How do you balance that? How do you balance the need for profit with the people and everything else that goes alongside that? Rocky Lalvani: We have a simple saying, profit is a habit, it's not an event. And I think too often for business owners in the back of their mind, it's always I'll be profitable when, right? I'll be profitable when I hit maybe a certain dollar amount in revenue or I'll be profitable in three years. But if they don't have a plan to get there, then I think that's a major, major problem. Yes, we have to pay our bills, we have to pay our employees, but we also have to pay ourselves. And I think this is much more of an emotional issue than it is sometimes a numbers issue because the business owner wants to pay everyone else first and they kind of leave themselves to last. And that's one of the things we're trying to say, "Hey, you as the business owner also need to get paid and you need to get paid well for your efforts. You took the risk to start the business. You put probably in more time than anyone else into your business. And yet, why are you leaving yourself to last?" Chip Franklin: Huh. Steve, when you get small businesses approaching you for help and consultation and tax, obviously advice, are they usually starting out or are they switching from another firm? Or did they just decide to you bring in money and grow? Steve Moskowitz: All over the map. People that are just in every phase that you've mentioned and then some. Chip Franklin: And obviously that's a great point you made because some people just love the business so much. And I think of restaurants,

Financial expert Derrick Kinney discusses 529's and how to prepare for a child's education and Sharon Ramage joins us to discuss how you maneuver the taxable side of divorce. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. ------------------------- Episode Content --------------------------- Chip Franklin: Well, welcome to the Practical Tax Broadcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. I'm Chip Franklin. We've talked about this in the past. If you had a kid that was five or six years old, would you jump in and start saving for college right then? Is that the best- Steve Moskowitz: No. I would save on the day he was born. When he or she were born, I would be making the first deposit. Chip Franklin: Yeah. Let's get into that too. In fact, let's start with our first guest. Derrick Kinny is a financial expert, author of Good Money. You've seen him on Fox News, Fox Business, Bloomberg, CNBC. Right down the line, everything. He's one of the top financial experts around the country. Nice enough to join us here with Steve Moskowitz, tax attorney Steve Moskowitz, on Practical Tax. Derrick, hello. Steve Moskowitz: Hi. Derrick Kinney: Hi, Chip. Hi, Steve. Great to see you both. Steve Moskowitz: Great to see you too. Thanks. Chip Franklin: So, you probably heard what Steve said. Would you agree that as soon as you start to think about having kids, you should start that savings? Derrick Kinney: I agree with him completely. Steve Moskowitz: Yeah. Actually, Chip, I agree with that. When you start thinking about it is when you start making the deposits. Don't even wait til the birth. Chip Franklin: Okay. Well, let's back up a little bit, and talk about the different ways to do it and the tax implications. The 529. If I understand that correctly, a lot of states, if not every state, has an option where you can ... Well, Steve, why don't you explain it to me so I don't mess it up? Steve Moskowitz: You were doing just fine, Chip. You never messed anything up. Basically, this is an incentive. The government gives all kinds of incentives for people to do things, because if you don't, eventually people look to the government and say, "You pay for it." So what you have here is an opportunity for people to put money away, and you can save some taxes. Not on the deductibility, but on the income tax you would've paid on the earnings. And then what they do is, in a recent change in tax law, they got more generous. Because it's not just for college anymore. It's kindergarten on up. So this is a way that parents, grandparents, interested people can set up an account for the child, and then you take advantage of the education. And education is so important to so many people, and this is something to help pay for it. Derrick, what do you think about that? Derrick Kinney: Yeah. I agree. It's interesting, because you want to think strategically. You mentioned the 529 now being able to use K through 12, and you can pull out to $10,000 per year. Whether it be private school, a charter school, it gives parents more options. But what I like about it is, is people work with someone like Steve, or they work with an estate attorney, et cetera. And they recognize that, "Look, I'm going to have an estate problem. These are ways people can use to help solve that problem and be the good person in their family." In the 529, they could give $16,

On this episode, we speak with expert on salaries and discuss how small businesses can compete for employees by offering more than just money. Also, an experienced CEO and coach to Fortune 500 companies joins us and discusses guiding individuals and teams to success. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: All right, welcome to another edition of Practical Tax with Tax Attorney Steve Moskowitz. Steve, this is funny. I have a good friend of mine I do a podcast for. He's a former major leaguer and he hates the idea of everybody knowing the salaries that major leaguers make. In fact, there's one story about this kid, Lindor, who now plays for the Mets from Cleveland. And he wanted to make 340 million guaranteed, because it was a million more than another major leaguer he didn't like. And we were just talking about- Steve Moskowitz: Who could live on 339? Chip Franklin: I know. But in an office place, having salaries and talking about salaries around other people, it doesn't make for a very good, I mean, I'm sure you wouldn't want people going around and comparing salaries in the office. Steve Moskowitz: It's something that's very personal. And there's all different motivations and people do different things and do different work. And sometimes somebody may have a difference of opinion as to what their work is worth as opposed to a coworker, as opposed to the company. And again, we were talking about the divorce area. This is a volatile area. Chip Franklin: It's very volatile. Well, that brings us to our next guest. And Andi Monet, she's an expert in this area. And she's been talking about salaries and she joins us here on Practical Tax. Andi, hi. Thanks for being here. Andi Monet: Thank you. Happy whatever day of the week it is today, gentlemen. Steve Moskowitz: It's Friday. Andi Monet: Friday. Chip Franklin: It's always Friday if you have the right attitude. That's my thought. I wanted to talk to you and Steve and I wanted to can kind of go down the road of salaries as it applies to small businesses trying to recruit top employees and top administrators to come and work for them. It's kind of like I talked about with the sports. In baseball, you have the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers. And since there's no real cap, they can get the best players. So the other teams have to battle and show a different reason. What are some of the alternative things that small businesses can do to attract people when they can't match these humongous salaries? Steve Moskowitz: Well, first thing I would think of is, what state are you located in? Because if you're in a non-tax state, that can save you a lot of money. California, you're giving away 13.3% of your income, where if you're in Texas, or Florida, or State of Washington, or Nevada, or a number of other places, then the answer is your state income tax is in that state, zero. Andi Monet: And that's a really good point, because I lived in California. I was born in California, but I also lived there. But I live in Texas now. And the reason we moved, not me, but actually my ex-husband, who's my best friend, speaking of divorce, we do everything together still. Chip Franklin: That's definitely not the norm. Andi Monet: It's very unusual, but there's a whole reason for that and I value him.

How do startups navigate the integration of technology with old world business models, and how do you know when it's a good time to invest in real estate. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to another edition of Practical Tax with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. Steve, as you always say, there's so many ways you can look at a subject and somehow taxes creep in there. And this is one of those cases today, I think that when we look at it, our first guest is a leader in training and business development, but it gets even more interesting. Listen to this. He was a Yale grad and a grad from Columbia Business School. He also was a closer drafted in 2008 by the Detroit Tigers, a major league baseball coach. Anyway, interesting stuff. After baseball, he was an intelligence officer for the Department of Defense. He co-founded a thing called Block Party, which changed the way tailgating partnerships are developed in division one colleges and got a direct commission into the US Navy as a reserve intelligence officer, where he currently serves as a lieutenant. But we're talking to him today because he moved back to New York City after the pandemic and started OneRange, which is an early stage workforce development tech company. That's a big intro. And his name is Steve Gilman. He's here with us on Practical Tax. Steve, thanks for being here. Steve Gilman: Hey, thanks for having me. Happy Friday. Chip Franklin: First of all, thank you for your service. Steve Gilman: Indeed. Chip Franklin: Yeah, really indeed. It's interesting too that I wonder if any of the acumen that you've picked up in the intelligence areas of your service have paid off in business? Steve Gilman: Yeah, I'd hope so. But I'm finding new ways every day to translate some of the skills. Intelligence is specifically interesting within the military and civilian world, because you meet a diverse group of individuals with diverse thoughts. So a lot of what we're doing has to do with cross-functional teams, getting different ideas into different stages and then doing a lot of analysis, which plays into every day, every little piece of what I do in the business world. Chip Franklin: Sounds a little bit like what you do as well, Steve. I mean, obviously analysis is a big part of it. Steve Moskowitz: Thank you. Chip Franklin: Yeah. Well, let me ask you both this question, before we get into the details here. What is the future of work as we see it today? Let me start with you, Steve. Steve Moskowitz: Work has a lot of aspects to it. There's obviously the business aspect, the personal aspect. This is the personal society. That's what a lot of people don't realize and they think of work just as the business part. They don't realize how much socializing goes on. They don't realize how much it's all part of your life. And a lot of times when people retire, they find out they're so empty because all their social contacts are gone. And a lot of people, if they identify themselves through their work, they just feel empty. And a lot of times healthy people, when they retire, they start becoming ill because there's just no purpose for them anymore. So there's an awful lot to work. Plus, besides making money, there's a lot of good you can do in the world. Chip Franklin: Mr. Gilman, since you're both Steve,

Patent Attorney John Rizvi discusses intellectual property and how the tax code applies to the sale of ideas, plus experienced Construction analyst Shelly Armato discusses the state of construction and the ups and downs of investing in the construction industry. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Hello. Welcome again to another edition of Practical Tax with Tax Attorney, Steve Moskowitz. Steve, when you think about intellectual property ... It's funny. We were talking with an intelligence officer on one of the last shows we did, and I think about when people talk about intellectual property, it is interesting. If you were to purchase something that was intellectual property, if I wanted to purchase a copyright for somebody, does that have all of the same entanglements of a regular sale when it comes to tax and the federal and state governments? Steve Moskowitz: When you talk about tax and you talk about entanglements, the answer is almost always yes. Chip Franklin: Okay, fair enough. We'll dive into that a little bit deeper. Our next guest is known as the Patent Professor. He's an adjunct professor of patent law at Nova Southeastern Law School in Florida. He's written two books on patents and John Rizvi is nice enough to join us here for Practical Tax with Steve Moskowitz. Hello, John. Steve Moskowitz: Hi, John. John Rizvi: Yes, how are you? Pleasure to be here. Chip Franklin: Great! I love that you have the Patent Professor and it has a little R on there on it. I tried to find that on my computer one day. On a Mac, you got to hold six buttons down at the same time. But let me ask you, do you have to ... and I've heard this before with, I don't know, copyrights or trademarks or patents ... but when you get it done, you have to let people know that you have a patent on it, right? Or the rights to it can start to slip away. Is that accurate? John Rizvi: Yeah, so you have to put people on notice. So patents and trademarks are both different. Briefly, a patent protects an idea, like an invention, and trademarks protect brands. Whereas the patents, you would mark the product with US patent number and you'd have a patent number. With trademarks, and I don't know if this is going to show up well on screen, I have a cup of coffee with me- Chip Franklin: Starbucks. We see it. John Rizvi: Yep. Everyone is seeing the R with the circle around it on the logo. And I don't know- Chip Franklin: Gotcha. John Rizvi: [inaudible 00:02:28] knows what I'm talking about. For a trademark, that indicates that it's a registered trademark. Now sometimes, you'll see a TM and a TM is putting people on notice that you're seeking rights to that name, but it's not necessarily been granted yet by the trademark office. It's very important to label and put others on notice. Otherwise ... and there's a lot of advantages ... it eliminates the defense of, "I didn't know that was a trade name." For patent cases, there's a defense of innocent infringement. It doesn't get you off the hook as an infringer, but it at least makes it more difficult for a judge to award punitive damages because it makes it look like it's an accident. But if you have your registered trademark every time you have your brand ... You have it on your sign, your website, your business cards, letterhead ...

Darol Tuttle discusses the difference between estate planning and asset protection, while Fluent Financial's Mitch Kramer ponders the FED's Jerome Powell's next move. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to another edition of Practical Tax with tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz. How often do you have clients that are looking 10, 15, 20 years down the road? Steve Moskowitz: If they're not, part of our job is to do that because life and business isn't just about today. If you want to be successful today, you have to say, "Well, what am I going to do in 5, 10, 20 years or more? What's beyond that? What's the plan?" And that's so vitally important, and we do that in a variety of ways. For example, with a pension plan... And I use the term pension and retirement accounts interchangeably, although there's some small technical differences. But for example, when somebody walks in the door I say, "Well, look, what about your retirement?" "Well, I just started the business today." "Okay," I have a tough question to ask, "Would you prefer to, A, pay more taxes or, B, pay less taxes?" and they say, "Well, I'm going to go with B." I say, "Good move." And then I say, "Well, okay, let's plan for your retirement. You can literally pay less to the IRS by taking care of yourself with a pension plan down the road." And why would the government be so generous? Because they're concerned about social security and paying for people, and they want people to be able to be self sufficient. Because let's face it, in our country, if people can't take care of themselves, what do they do? They go to the government and they say, "Take care of me," and the government does. Chip Franklin: Sometimes. Steve Moskowitz: Who pays for that? It comes from the people that are working and paying taxes. Chip Franklin: Well, let's jump in with our first guest then. Darol Tuttle is an asset protection attorney, been doing this for more than a quarter of a century. Darol, thanks for being with us today. Let me just ask you straight up, what is the biggest difference between estate planning and asset protection for you? Darol Tuttle: Yeah, estate planning is only about estate transfer. It really has no value proposition for the living client. They come in, they hire me, and they pay me a bunch of money. And I set up a living trust or will and then I say, "Okay, go off and die," because really, all we're doing is we're saying, we want to make it easy to retitle the assets after you're dead. Now, so the value proposition is really just peace of mind. Whereas asset protection, the way I define it, there are three threats to wealth in America today. Number one, unreimbursed medical expenses. Number two, unnecessary taxation. Number three, family and financial mismanagement. Now, some asset protection attorneys throw in protection against lawsuits and judgments, offshore trust. I don't practice in that area of law. And so to me, asset protection has a higher value proposition because we are transferring assets, creating trusts, proving legal strategies that are authorized sometimes by the federal statutes to make those assets unavailable to creditors to include the Medicaid agency and sometimes the tax agency after the first death. Like a credit shelter trust would be an example in the state tax arena of asset protection,

Energy CEO Grant Norwood discusses investments in Oil and Gas, while Yoseph West talks with Steve about challenges facing small businesses. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to another edition of Practical Tax with tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz. Steve, you and I were just talking about energy and about electric cars and about the state of California then as we speak with the power grid being stretched to the max. So I thought it'd be an excellent time to bring in our first guest, Grant Norwood. Grant is CEO of Norwood Energy Corporation, which he'll tell us a little bit about that because that's down in Texas and he's nice enough to join us here. He also handles the day-to-day operations and evaluates oil and gas prospects and minerals. It's a lot. Steve Moskowitz: Good old Texas, with no state income taxes. Grant Norwood: We love it. Steve Moskowitz: I know. It's a bit different here in California with such high income taxes. And so many people in California are moving to your state. Grant Norwood: That's true. If you moved over here you'd probably have an easier job. Steve Moskowitz: Probably would, but people everywhere need me. Grant Norwood: That's true. That's true. Chip Franklin: That's true. That's a racket that Congress set up with taxes. What was the 16th Amendment with taxes? What year was that, Steve? Steve Moskowitz: Taxes became effect in 1913 and I was not in law practice in 1913. I just want that to be clear. And when the income taxes came in, it came in as a tax on the wealthy. The top tax rate was 6%. And do you know how much income you had to be making in 1913 dollars to hit that top 6% bracket? Half a million bucks. Chip Franklin: Wow. Steve Moskowitz: In 1913. Do you know how much money half a million dollars was in our dollars in 1913? That's how our income taxes started out. And that's what happens when the government starts off with just a little tax that'll only affect a few people. And look what it is today. Chip Franklin: There was a panic of 1913, too. Wasn't that a run on banks? There was a difficult time, right? Steve Moskowitz: There have been all kinds of challenges. But again, I'm focusing on the tax. And there there's so many taxes that governments start off with, "Oh, let's vote it in. It's not going to affect you." For example, politicians saying, "Oh, we're going to put this tax on corporations but it won't affect you." Well, of course it will, because corporations say, "Okay, my costs are up, therefore I'll just charge more and consumers pay it." So that's why when people think about a tax, they should think, "Well, wait a minute, this could really affect you. What's the government doing with the money?" And that's one of the many reasons I became a tax attorney. Chip Franklin: Speaking of which, taxes in the state of California on gas, this is your belly whip, Grant, make it so much more expensive here to purchase fuel than it does in other states. Well, let's talk about where the price of crude and gas is right now for Americans. It seems to be going down since the last time we talked to you appreciably, especially in the last six weeks. Where are we headed, and how long will it take to get wherever that is? Grant Norwood: Well, we have seen the prices fall back just a little bit.

How much does it cost to raise a child and should anyone with a stock portfolio regularly review for stock loss harvesting potentials. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Hello and welcome to the Practical Tax Broadcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. I'm Chip Franklin. Excited about this week, Steve. There's a lot to talk about. Obviously there's a lot happening in the economy and part of that, I think, is about planning for that. And that brings us to our first guest today. Again, this is a guest that I always like to talk to. Michael Davidson is a financial strategist. And we're going to talk quickly about this new Brookings study that shows it's going to cost over $300,000 a year to raise a kid. That's a lot. And Michael Davidson and from the Wisdom Index is with us here. Good to have you here, Michael. Thank you. Mike Davidson: Thank you for having me, Chip. Chip Franklin: Steve, obviously, when you hear something like that, does that number shock you? That it costs $300,000 to raise a kid? Steve Moskowitz: No, in those numbers it depends on the parents and the kid. Some parents are going to spend way more, some are going to spend way less. We're not even getting into, well, what's the value of having a child emotionally and all the other benefits, or detriments. And we're just talking about the finances and pretty much it depends on somebody's lifestyle. To me that $300,000 number is just about useless. It depends on the individual family. Chip Franklin: What's your experience, Michael, with when people come to you and either they just had a kid or they're thinking about having children and they're trying to figure out the road ahead? Mike Davidson: Well, Steve, I agree with you a hundred percent. I think that number is a pretty fascinating number. I spent some time looking at the USDA methodology for how they developed the math on what families are spending on their children specifically. And in America right now, families don't do a great job of tracking their expenses in general. And so, specifically what they spend on their kids is a whole nother level of difficulty. But the $300,000 number, well, whether it's 30,000 or a hundred thousand or 3 million or 30 million, having kids requires more than having the dollars. It requires all of your heart and your soul and your time and energy. And I have three children and they are invaluable, but it's tough- Steve Moskowitz: And it's such a highly personal decision. Chip Franklin: It is. And I want to get into some of the other aspects of this, but upfront, do you think it's a fair question, as a planner, to ask somebody, can you afford to start a family? Mike Davidson: I think that every spending plan requires putting things in the right order. And Steve was correct. If you look at the research that the USDA did, the level of income that households had was the single greatest driver on what they spent on their children. And so, you don't have to spend $300,000 to raise a kid. But what's interesting is the order in which Americans spend money. And what I have found is that conventional wisdom is to use a credit card for that spending because we have to get our points. And then what's left over, well, we want to have some money to pay our taxes and our debts. And then there's nothing really left to give or to save.

Profit aside, what business goals should drive successful businesses and should you ever consider advising a high school student to attend a trade school over college? Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome again to another edition of Practical Tax with Tax Attorney, Steve Moskowitz. Steve, it's interesting that you talk probably to as many individuals as you do businesses, which is the bigger part of the Moskowitz LLP practice? Steve Moskowitz: Both, because we're mostly dealing with business people. But besides dealing with the business, we deal with their taxes personally, and there's such an interrelation. And then usually there's a relation with the spouse, possibly the kids. So, it's not just, "Oh, we'll do the business and they'll do something else," the individual. We look at the whole package, what's best for the business, what's best for the individual. Chip Franklin: That's great. I mean, and that brings us to our next guest, is Dr. Jane Gardner. She is a business specialist and a strategist who has been doing this for more than 30 years and nice enough to join us here on Practical Tax. Good to have you here, Dr. Jane. Jane Gardner: [inaudible 00:01:17]. Steve Moskowitz: Hi Jane. Chip Franklin: What are some of the guiding principles for business objectives other than profit? I know profit is the one, but what are some of the other ones? And both of you just jump in. Jane Gardner: Oh, I'd love to talk about that because it's about people too. We have to put in the people place and I really believe that a lot of CEOs that I'm working with are beginning to do that. And not only to do that, but beginning to see that it increases their profits when they become more caring, more understanding, more valuing of their employees, they work harder, performance goes up. Chip Franklin: Steve, you've had hundreds of employees over the years. Do you find that that's part of it with the people that you hire, as well? Steve Moskowitz: Absolutely. And one of the things I pride myself on is I have a number of colleagues and we've worked together for over 20 and 25 years and in today's marketplace that says something. I very much believe in the people and, as far as a business goes, of course, profit is super important. But when you care about things like being green, when you care about doing good social things, the irony is not only do you feel better and you're doing a good thing on this earth, the irony is you actually do wind up making more profit. And I see that. And sometimes there have been some individuals that I've dealt with that were in their business for a long time and let's just say that they were a little gruff and they knew how to do something. And I said, "Well, the way you're treating people, do you know why you have nine different assistants during one year? There's a reason for that. They're not lazy or stupid. It's not them. It's you buddy." And- Jane Gardner: Oh, Steve. That's a hard one. That's a hard one to come up with, isn't it? It's about you. Oh, whoa. Steve Moskowitz: I've been in California for over 30 years, but I moved here from New York City and in New York we were direct. And although people out here have made me nicer and I want to give them credit, and there's colleagues of mine that have taken some of the New York out of me and made me nicer,

The art of financial planning and what is the state of business air travel with aviation expert Mike Hatten. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. ------------------------- Episode Content --------------------------- Chip Franklin: Welcome to Practical Tax, I'm Chip Franklin. This is tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz. Steve, it's interesting when we talk about taxes and finance, is Siri in the United States, is it the same in every state? Are there geographical differences? Steve Moskowitz: Oh sure, because a majority of states have their own tax system and different states treat the tax a little differently. So when you're giving tax advice, it's not just Federal IRS, you have to consider the state or the states that you're involved with. Chip Franklin: I mean, I know Texas and Florida, they don't have income tax and that's a big decision in a lot of people's moment deciding where to move. And we have a lot of people from California going to Texas, right? Steve Moskowitz: Oh, there's a tremendous drain of people out of California now, Chip. And there's a number of states that don't have a state income tax. Of course, the one that we joke about a little bit is Alaska. Alaska has a negative state income tax. They actually pay you to live there. But the joke is, do you want to live in a place where they pay you to live there? Chip Franklin: All right. Our next guest is a certified public accountant, a certified fraud examiner, business advisory and virtual CFO solutions. Then I hope I get her last name right, Lydia Desnoyres. Did I get that right, Lydia? Lydia Desnoyres: Phenomenal. Spot on, Chip. Chip Franklin: Thank you so much for being here. Lydia Desnoyres: Thank you. Chip Franklin: That's Steve Moskowitz, right above your head. Steve Moskowitz: Hi, Lydia. Lydia Desnoyres: Hi, Steve. Steve Moskowitz: Boy, we probably have a lot to talk about. Before I was a tax attorney, I was a CPA. Lydia Desnoyres: Did you go to the dark side or you think you left the dark side? Steve Moskowitz: Well, I didn't want have to work as hard as you do, so I became an attorney instead. Chip Franklin: All right, so both of you deal with tax strategy. So let's start with this question for both of you. When meeting with a client for the first time, what's your first question? And let me start with you, Lydia. Lydia Desnoyres: It depends on when they're calling. If they're calling on April 14th my first question is, have you lost your mind? Just kidding. The first question is, what's your story? What has happened in the past? Do you typically owe? Just to get a feel for how things have been in the past. Once I get to doing the work and then I direct my questions on more planning and strategy for the future. But usually it's a, what's your scenario? What's going on?/p> Chip Franklin: Steve? Steve Moskowitz: Well, we're very into planning. So what I like to do if somebody calls me on April 14th, I will explain to them an extension is extension of time to file, not an extension of time to pay. And then what I try to explain to the clients is that your tax return should merely be a summarization of a year's worth of tax planning. Because I look at the Fortune 500. And that's why I became a tax attorney because when I went to law school, I already had a bachelor's and master's degree.

What's the latest in the hotel economy with the owner of 90 yr old Handley in Union Square and the importance of professional coaching in the business world. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome everybody to Practical Tax with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. Steve, I want to ask you something before our first guess because it kind of ties in with our guest. As you traveled around the country, did you constantly go back to the same hotel when you were in a city? Was it like one you favored and you just stuck with it? Steve Moskowitz: Absolutely. Chip Franklin: What were the things that that drew you to that? Because I know that some hotels, they fight for business travel because that's a great thing to have. Others can't really compete in that area and some do both. Steve Moskowitz: Well, I hate to admit this, but my number one consideration was a good wifi. It's really important. Chip Franklin: I get, yeah. That's funny. Steve Moskowitz: I mean, for example, right now we're doing a Zoom and all the business is being done through the internet now. The number one thing is I need a good wifi connection. Chip Franklin: You know what mine was, good pillows because I mean I've always had... I've played sports so many years and I'm feeling the pain now. I always wanted a hotel that had good firm pillows as opposed to the ones where they look like a sheep snuck in your room and it was on your bed. There was a lot of things and it's funny, so I traveled forever and I would always pick the same hotels and price didn't matter because I mean that was eight hours that I could just disappear before I had to do any kind of work and everything. Steve Moskowitz: Of course, you're only paying for part of the room. The IRS is paying for the other part. Chip Franklin: Our first guest is the owner and this is a family-owned business here in San Francisco that has been in this family since 1928 and some incredible stories. Jon Handlery joins us here from the Handlery Hotel in San Francisco. Jon, welcome to Practical Tax with Steve Moskowitz. Hope you're well. Jon Handlery: I'm doing well. I hear you Steve on the radio quite often giving tips. Thank you. Steve Moskowitz: Thanks very much. Hopefully you heard me doing my broadcasts with Chip. Jon Handlery: Yes. Chip Franklin: Both of you guys are great on the radio and both of you guys I think are smart to represent your brand, and that's one thing that I've seen all these years in radio is that people want authenticity. They don't need the guy that talks like this. What they want is they want to hear from the people who actually will be delivering the service or product that they have. Both of you guys represent yourselves real well. There's some kissing up, but it's true. Steve Moskowitz: Thanks Chip. Jon Handlery: Thank you very much. Chip Franklin: So Jon, let's talk about, I mean obviously in and since 1928 coming up on a hundred years, not too far down the road- Steve Moskowitz: Jon wasn't the one that opened the doors. Chip Franklin: No. Jon Handlery: No. My grandfather, then my dad, now me, and two of my kids now have followed me into the industry, so fourth generation. Chip Franklin: Let me ask you this, Jon, over the years obviously this pandemic had to be a difficult period to get through especially as ...

The tax advantages and the future of solar and other green technology. Plus, a Security and Fraud specialist offers insights on IRS scammers. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome again to Practical Tax with tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz. Steve, you're looking good, my friend. Steve Moskowitz: Thanks so much, Chip. Chip Franklin: Lot to talk about today. And there's a lot going on in the world. One of those really involves us here in California. We have so many days of sunshine, maybe not in the sunset district of San Francisco. Steve Moskowitz: It's wonderful here. Chip Franklin: The ironically named sunset district, but one of the things that it always blew me away is that we don't have more solar panels on every... Well, I don't know, on every building from San Francisco down to the border with Mexico, and I find it fascinating. And that's one thing we don't have that we should, but maybe there's reasons that I don't know. So we invited our first guest today. He's a green energy expert, and he's here with us. Ali Samana joins us here on the Practical Tax podcast. Ali, thank you so much for being here. Good to have you. And it's really great to be able to talk to somebody that can maybe clear some of this up for us. Happy sunny Friday. Ali Samana: Hey, happy Friday to you too. And howdy from Texas. How are you, Chip? Chip Franklin: I'm well. I'm glad I'm not in Texas though. It's hot down there. Steve Moskowitz: Well, I don't know. Half of California is moving to Texas too. Chip Franklin: Yeah. Yeah, if you believe the ads, it seems like it. Steve Moskowitz: Every day clients are telling me. Even today, clients are well, we're moving to Texas. Chip Franklin: Have you been to Texas, Steve? Steve Moskowitz: Many times. Chip Franklin: All right. No knocking you Ali. I love California, but I guess everybody has their own. Steve Moskowitz: So do I, doesn't mean I can't like Texas too. Chip Franklin: Fair enough. Okay. So Ali, let's start with just across the country, and then we can focus in on California. What are the challenges facing the expansion of solar energy in California and across the country? Ali Samana: So there are several challenges that are facing the green energy market. So if you imagine where the cell phone technology was about 30 years ago, that's kind of where we are. We have this infrastructure, this very heavy grid infrastructure, and now we're going down to what's called distributor generation. So there's a lot of pushback, number one, from these grid operators, because if everybody just goes off, well, these poles and wires and everything that they've spent billions and billions of dollars on, nobody will really need anymore. California has a unique problem that the country is... California leads a lot, by the way, for the rest of the nation to follow. They're number one in installs year after year. So the problems that they face today, the rest of the country will face in two, five, or 10 years. One of the problems that California faces for example is called the duck curve, and what the duck curve means is you've got all of these solar installs that are producing energy throughout the day. Normally, your grid operators would see a parabolic curve. They'd see a parabola going back to geometry in high school for usage,

Michael Cupps discusses remote working, the four-day workweek and the future of office space. Tenant and Landlord Attorney Todd RothBard talks about Pandemic relief for landlords and tenants and where it's headed. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to Practical Tax. I'm Chip Franklin. That is Steve Moskowitz, tax attorney. Steve, this is fascinating where we are right now in the post pandemic world and the remote working and people kind of trickling back in. I know you are making a move for your employees to be better for them and safer and a new location. What's your experience with some of your clients and everybody else? Is remote working going to hang in there or is it starting to go away? Steve Moskowitz: Oh, no. Remote working is alive and well and will be with us for the rest of our lives. A lot of people prefer as a matter of fact, I've seen surveys where a lot of employees said, if I can't work remotely for you, I'll work remotely for somebody else. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because how much time do you spend commuting? First of all, you could use that time to work more or to play more, not to mention the cost of commuting, not to mention you go into the office, you're wearing your fancy duds. If you're at home, you're probably in jammies or sweats, not to mention, how about all those people that have kids and are either home to take care of the kids or close to school. If something happens, you can run right to school as opposed to being in the corporate world. And even if you left, as soon as you got the phone call, it would take you a while to get to the school. So it's an awful lot of advantages. And another thing is that for example, here in San Francisco, a lot of people have left San Francisco and said, well, why should they pay a lot of money for a small, not so hot apartment when they can move to another state, buy a house for what they were paying for rent and also maybe move to a state, doesn't even have an income tax. Not to mention people that say, "Well, I can go to a resort area and work from there." Not to mention all the countries that are saying, "Hey, we'll give you a special visa, come and work in our country. We just like you to stay here and spend some money in our hotels and our restaurants." Chip Franklin: I think I read somewhere, Steve, like 75,000 American professionals moved to Barcelona last year and they're working from Barcelona. And many of them from California. Steve Moskowitz: Well, talk about moving. If you move to Puerto Rico, you can legally avoid most of your federal taxes. Chip Franklin: Well, let's talk a little bit about that with an expert. Michael Cupps is from ActiveOps and these guys, they know this cold and he's nice enough to join us here. Michael, obviously you heard this conversation. It seemed like we were moving towards the possibility of a four-day work week, but then it kind of got flipped with the pandemic where people are working remote. First of all, do you concur with Steve that this is here to stay? Michael Cupps: Oh, absolutely. We see it in our customers and they're the biggest banks and insurance companies on the globe. And they're as much as they try, they're not those employees aren't coming back. Chip Franklin: That should be good for the business, right? I mean guys, right,

Who handles your trust and what happens if the person you appointed leaves or dies? And Has Amazon thrust our country into a depression? Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to another addition of Practical Tax with tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz. Let's start with a guest that's in your backyard. That would be Michael Davidson, not only a really smart investor, but he has a lot of ideas, and he's nice enough to join us here. Can we talk about wills and trusts for just a second here, because this confuses a lot of people. Steve, how many people do you think, watching this right now, don't have a will or a trust? Steve Moskowitz: A lot of them don't have anything. And another thing is, there's a lot of people that have something that's woefully out of date, and if they don't change it, they're leaving everything they have to someone that they now hate, and they will turn over in their graves if they understand that, so this is something... should always be constantly reviewed. What I tell income tax clients is, "Look, we think about your income taxes all year long, we plan all year long, we file a return once a year, and your estate planning, which involves everything you've worked for in a lifetime, everything that you have, whether you got it yourself or if somebody left it for you, why don't you give that the time and respect it deserves?" Chip Franklin: Michael, what's your experience? I mean, have you found that, when you try to sell somebody on getting a trust or a will together, it depends on their age, or are they stubborn, or do they usually go right along with your suggestion? Michael Davidson: I think one of the questions that isn't expressed out loud or asked out loud is, is the next steward prepared? And I think for a lot of us and for a lot of our clients, there's some uncertainty around that, and that's even a conversation that couples haven't really processed together. And so, as a result, there is this inaction that takes place as it relates to getting a will done, getting a trust done. All of us have stuff in our families, and kids, and grandkids, and daughter-in-laws, and son-in-laws, and just that whole dynamic adds this element of uncertainty for the future, and I just think that it's tough for couples to come together and be decisive with that. And so, I really think that the good question to ask is, is the next steward prepared? If they're not, then what needs to happen to get there? And I think walking through that series of questioning, I think can help get an estate plan done. Chip Franklin: Obviously, there are going to be different stages of life. I know both of you guys can address this. I mean, people start thinking about some of these things when they get to be 50, and it's too late, in some cases, for financial planning. But a trust and a will, those have to be constantly reviewed, but why? And Steve, let me ask you real quick, what is it about a will that would change, or a trust that would change from when the kid is 25 to when the kid is 35, if it's still just my money that I'm passing along? Steve Moskowitz: Laws change, taxes change, wants change, relationships change. For example, what if you have a situation where your son marries or divorces, has a child, has six kids, one of them has special needs, somebody's developing differently than somebody else,

What are both the practical and strategic advantages of financial planning for young children, and how are women CEOs faring in the world of CBD start-ups? Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to yet another edition of Practical Tax, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. Steve, you're looking well my friend. Steve Moskowitz: As you Chip, thanks so much. Chip Franklin: There's a lot to talk about with taxes. I know you see tax implications in almost every human behavior, which makes sense. Steve Moskowitz: Of course. Chip Franklin: It is, right? Joining us right now, again, this is an interesting guy. Brandon Neely is not only a financial planner, but he's got an interesting niche, and he joins us here on the Practical Tax Show. Brandon, welcome. Say hi to Steve. Brandon Neely: Hey Steve, thanks for having me. Steve Moskowitz: Hey Brandon, how are you doing? Brandon Neely: Good... go ahead. Chip Franklin: Let's start right away, if we can, with the whole concept of financial planning, and this goes out to both of you guys. I know that they say, "Start young." Are there any other advantages to starting a financial plan for small children? Maybe Steve, you can also explain why the IRS now wants us to have social security numbers out of the womb. Start with you, Brad. Steve Moskowitz: The government likes keeping track of us. Chip Franklin: Yeah. Steve Moskowitz: As far as doing that, for example, if mom and dad have a business, and they employ their child under the age of 18, they don't have to pay social security taxes on that. That's just a little wrinkle in the law for employing your kids under age 18. Chip Franklin: Trump's dad did that, didn't he? If I recall correctly. Steve Moskowitz: They take advantage of every law, which we all should. Chip Franklin: Right. Steve Moskowitz: The other thing is, the banks always have these posters up. If you take a kid, and the day that kid is born, you have an account set up for him, and you make little deposits in there, but regular deposits, by the time that kid has graduated from college, that account can be enormous. Instead of coming out of school saying, "Oh, how am I going to pay all these? That's for my basket weaving classes and these other things," the kid says, "Hey, look at me. I have a big, fat bank account. I can do what I want. I'm not forced to take a job to pay my student loan, and my rent, if mom and dad kick me out." The bottom line is, and I'd love to say, "I just figured this out, get your pencils out," but the financial people over and over and over again have said that if you have a small amount... but regular, that's the trick. It's like exercise. It's got to be regular. There'd be a tremendous amount here, then we can get into, how do we invest the funds, and how much is conservative, and how much is aggressive? I won't even get into that part. Not to mention Chip, I'm always preaching about the benefits of companies having pension plans. How much more if the kid comes to work for mom and dad, and they say, "As part of being an employee here, now you're entitled to the pension plan." It's just tremendous savings. To me, that's a no brainer. Chip Franklin: Brandon, you've obviously been dealing with this a lot, too. What's your take? Brandon Neely: I agree with him.

Anchor Funding CEO Kevin Lyons joins Steve to discuss the interest rate hikes and explore both investment and tax opportunities during this technical recession. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. ------------------------- Episode Content --------------------------- Chip Franklin: Welcome to another edition of Practical Tax with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. Steve, there's been a lot in the news recently about interest rates and refis and how that's affecting the country, the industry, and everything that goes along that. I remember in the past, people say, well, interest rates are high people tend to, instead of sell, they do repairs and additions and upkeep and stuff. But I don't know where we are right now with that number. If it's a number that we're going to see smooth out soon, will Powell do that? Or will we continue down this road? Joining us right now is Kevin Lyons. Kevin is the CEO of Anchor Funding and old friend of mine. I've known Kevin for a long time, and he's nice enough to join us here with Steve Moskowitz on Practical Tax. Kevin, hello. Steve Moskowitz: He doesn't look very old, Chip. Chip Franklin: Your right. Kevin Lyons: Thanks Steve. Chip Franklin: Hi you Kevin. How are you? Kevin Lyons: Good guys. How are you? Steve Moskowitz: Great. Chip Franklin: Good. Let's just jump right into this. We've known each other a long time and we've spoken over the last 15 years and we've seen interest rates go up and down. Let's talk about where we are right now. And how do you feel people responding to the higher interest rates? Again, those of us who live in the '70s like Steve and I, they don't seem that high. But how are people responding to you right now when you're talking about everything from new mortgages to refis? Kevin Lyons: Well, we've had a really good run the last few years. So everyone's taken advantage of incredibly low interest rates. But if you look at interest rates over the course of time and you guys obviously remember, and so do I, and any viewers watching. Rates in the '80s and '90s and early 2000s were a lot higher. So when you go from rates in the- Steve Moskowitz: I remember in the 20% bracket. Kevin Lyons: Yeah, exactly. When you got 15% and 10%, that was a good rate. So the sticker shock that's come into play is rates in the twos and threes suddenly becoming fives and almost as high as 6%. So anytime you get that, you're going to get a change of scenery and the scenery's changed. However, it looks pretty good for the long term. Chip Franklin: Yeah. We're both all in California, all three of us. And here's something that always occurred to me. So people might put off buying because the rate went up a little bit, but the housing market doesn't seem to be slowing down at all and it's continuing to move. Does it make sense to still buy at a little bit higher rate to offset the increase in the value in cost of homes as they go forward? Kevin Lyons: That's a very interesting question, and we have that conversation pretty much daily. My personal opinion is yes. And the reason I say that is, and this is obviously my two cents, the Fed has done a really good job of raising rates really quickly, in fact, there's a three quarter point high coming up shortly and another half a percent in November, they've taken such extreme measures in such a short period of time...

Greg Mohr discusses the ups and downs of investing in a franchise while Bill Dendy talks about people being forced out of retirement and back into the workplace. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to another edition of Practical Tax with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. Steve, you're looking well, my friend. Steve Moskowitz: As you. Thank you, Chip. Chip Franklin: Joining us right now is our first guest today, Greg Mohr. He is known as the Franchise Maven. Anybody that's ever tried to start their own business, on their own or with a franchise, knows the challenges. And he's nice enough to join us here. Greg, hi. Chip Franklin and tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. You had in your past, you did the corporate ladder thing, right? Like a lot of people do, and a lot of our viewers today. Greg Mohr: Correct. Chip Franklin: And at some point along the way, you said... And I think Taco Bell was one of your first, right? You got into the world of franchise growth. First of all, tell us how that came to be. And what was the real attraction of going with a franchise instead of starting out on your own? Greg Mohr: Well, the first time I got into franchising itself was actually right out of high school, when I got one of my first jobs, was working for Taco Bell. I didn't actually realize that at the time, but I learned later that it was actually a master franchise that ran a whole bunch of Taco Bells all over the Sacramento, California area. So I started managing their restaurants for them. And I said, "This is just great, easy thing to do." No matter which one I stepped into, policies and procedures were the same for each one. Nice and smooth. I loved doing that. It was just great, for that one. After I'd been working for a while in various industries, both in the restaurant industry and in the microelectronic circuit field for Motorola Semiconductor, then I started reading some books like Robert Kiyosaki's books, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, realizing that there's something different out there. There's something better than just doing the corporate thing for myself. So I didn't have the latest, greatest idea on how to start a business or get a business going. But I remember back from my days working with Taco Bell, that I really enjoyed how the simplicity of walking into any franchise model, any unit was. And that really made me happy. It was just a really good feeling. So I thought I've got to get back somehow into that franchising space and do that, so I went out there and I started looking at different franchises, got some help from a couple different franchise consultants. And lo and behold, just got into my first franchise and they just took off from there. Chip Franklin: Steve, have you had clients that wanted to start their own businesses and looked at a franchise model? Steve Moskowitz: Oh, absolutely. And everybody's, so many people, their dream is to have their own business. I remember when I was climbing the corporate ladder and I always wanted to have my own firm. And lots and lots of people want to do that, and there's all kinds of different avenues. Like you were saying, starting on your own, going to your franchisees. I've had a number of clients that went the franchise route. Chip Franklin: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that always, I remember in the early on days,

When young athletes come into money, here's why they need expert tax advice and the inflationary world of child care has Americans struggling to balance work and family. And as always taxes. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: All right. Well, welcome to another edition of Practical Tax, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz and Chip Franklin. Steve, this has always intrigued me and that is the athlete that comes into a lot of money when he has never had any money in his life. Steve Moskowitz: Oh yeah. Chip Franklin: I know, because you've done a lot of sports shows. You and I have talked about this in the past and you've talked about luxury taxes and all, but this is something that really touches me. I had a long talk once with MC Hammer about what he went through and all the money he lost. I knew Dexter Manley, you might remember that name from back in the old Washington football team days, and he lost it all, and others. It's always broken my heart because it's difficult for these kids. They bring along everybody they grew up with and everything and they try to give to everyone and then it's gone. I think that's just so sad. Joining us right now is Ali Siam. He is a sports agent who has a lot of experience in this. He's negotiated more than a dozen or so NFL contracts and he's nice enough to join us on Practical Tax. Ali, welcome the show. Say hi to Steve. Steve Moskowitz: Hi. How are you? Ali Siam: Hi, how you guys doing today? Thank you for having me. Chip Franklin: There's a lot in the news, obviously, every year as the different drafts happen. There was a kid on my street who signed a deal with Tampa Bay. He was the 28th pick in the draft in baseball. Here, in Southern California, that happens a lot. He got three-and-a-half million signing bonus, but he's 18, so now he's going to be playing against the best people he's never seen. When he was in high school, he was the best player in the county. Now, he's just another guy. Fortunately, he has a father that will help look out after it. Let me ask you both, and let me start with you, Steve, when we look at this kind of income coming in, how many people are really prepared for that? Steve Moskowitz: Almost nobody. Here's problem number one, when the guys get it, they're really young and they don't realize that the life of a professional athlete is nowhere near the life of most other jobs, and that is a job. You get beaucoup money up front and you spend it, but the problem is most other professions, you wouldn't blink an eye when say how long you would be working. With an athlete, a lot of athletes are finished in their 20s, maybe into their 30s. What other position do you know of that you say, "Oh, 40, are you kidding? 50?" How many football players can only play a couple of seasons because they get injured so much? So, the bottom line is, basically, if I was talking to somebody like this, I'd say, "Look, let's take a look at this contract and figure this is the money you're going to get for a lifetime. So, you're 21 years old, let's say you have another 60 years to go or so, let's divide this and see how much we're getting here." And then what I do is I make it practical, I say, "Look, we're not going to save every penny. Here's a portion of percentage, just blow it. Have a good time, have fun," but it's a percentage.

Chris Piazza and Steve Moskowitz discuss the many aspects to having a cannabis business when the product is illegal, interstate business, and will working remotely survive? Will there be an office space “crash” or will people want to come back to work? Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to Practical Tax with Steve Moskowitz, our tax attorney extraordinaire. I'm Chip Franklin. Steve, good to have you here as always. Steve Moskowitz: Always a pleasure. Chip Franklin: It's interesting to talk about the many different things that surround tax. In fact, it's almost impossible to find subject matter that's not affected by the government and the internal revenue service, right? Steve Moskowitz: It's funny, but anybody that goes out to dinner with me knows that no matter what you say, somehow that reminds me something about tax. Chip Franklin: Right. Well, this is a topic that we talk about a lot and you've actually done videos before on this, but it's constantly changing. And that is a business of cannabis in the United States, a business that has a built-in irony. The fact that cannabis is still a schedule I controlled substance. Or THC anyway. And so joining us right now is Chris Piazza from Cannabis Devices. And here, Chris, good to have you here with tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz, with Practical Tax. Chris Piazza: Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Yeah, Chris with CannaDevices. Chip Franklin: So in just a couple years, your company's done incredibly well. You supply 10 publicly traded cannabis companies, along with a lot of other operators in that business. And throughout all this growth, you guys have supported small businesses, and Steve and I love to talk about the success of small businesses in this country. It is the backbone of this country. You're also a founding member of a nonprofit startup syndicate as well. So let me just pose this question to both you. And I'll start out with, how would you describe the state of America's cannabis success right now? We'll start with you, obviously, Chris. Chris Piazza: It's a growing industry. It's going to keep growing, and ever changing from here. What I think we're starting to see is a little bit more consolidation. We're starting to see some more bigger players taking a little bit more foothold. Now we're starting to see brands where the cannabis dispensaries were before. We're starting to see a lot more brands build, and companies a little bit like mine and the accessories, the non plant touching. It seems to me that the plant itself, the gold rush is over and now the licenses have value. But we're starting to see a lot more consolidation. The east coast is spreading west, and that's my view of the state of it currently. Chip Franklin: Steve, how does that work, if a cannabis business in Illinois wants to work with a cannabis business in California? Does the fact that it's a schedule I controlled substance affect that relationship? Steve Moskowitz: So I got to use the technical term, as a lawyer. So I'll use the proper technical term. There's total craziness here. And what happens is that you have a business that is illegal on the federal side, it's legal in some states, and there's all kinds of problems. And of course, me and taxes, the first thing I look at is, well, what's the taxability? Okay, so number one,

Congressional candidate and Bay Area County Supervisor, David Canepa, discusses taxing the top 5% and Financial specialist Demrie Henry makes a both pragmatic and philosophical case for tax avoidance. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to Practical Tax with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. Steve, how are you? Steve Moskowitz: Well, I'm looking forward to talking to our next guest. Chip Franklin: Our next guest is a veteran of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, and he is also running for Congress. David Canepa. David say hi to Steve. David Canepa: Hey Steve, how are you? Steve Moskowitz: Great, Dave, how are you? David Canepa: Great. Chip Franklin: So let's just, let's jump right into this. David, during COVID you wrote a letter to governor Newsom asking for a pandemic tech tax as groups like Facebook and Amazon were recording record profits. How did that work out? David Canepa: Look, I think, you know, that the governor had mentioned in 2018, clearly that there was interest on looking at a dividend for data and I think the impetus of that was obviously a lot of these tech companies, this before the pandemic, that they were receiving record profits and one of the things that I've seen and I've been a small business owner before I was in politics and I thought it was kind of interesting when I was looking for a job, I created my own job with my own business so that is something that I understand. I think the one thing that I've seen and about fourth generation San Mateo County resident is really, we live in the most prosperous times, but we also have a huge need and a huge need meaning there are people that really don't have that tech skill set and so I'll give you an example. The average home in San Mateo County is $2.8 million okay? The home where my... I grew up in now is $1.9 million. My sister lives there, she's a teacher. My parents bought the home for $90,000 and my dad was a chauffer, for my mom was a bank teller but they were able to afford this American dream. That's out of touch for a lot of folks and so what the pandemic tax was to do, and hopefully the governor will consider it, there's been no movement on it, but is to really make sure that these companies that have record tax, record profits that they're taxed appropriately. As you know, in 20, I think it was 2017, Steve may correct me 2018, the Trump administration moved forward with some pretty aggressive tax cuts, especially around the biotech space and I know the tax rate and I don't know what the exact amount was, but it was really just sort of cut in half. And so I think we can all share in the fruits of our labor. I do believe that big tech has a responsibility. They have tremendous profits. Yes, they've been job creators, but at the same time, we're not talking about a company that's just in the United States, we're talking about companies that are global and I do think there is a responsibility, whether that's through a data dividend or through a tax that it's appropriate and should be reinvested in communities that need it the most. Chip Franklin: Steve, there's a lot here to unpack. Does the government know the tipping point where taxes on corporations begin to hurt the growth of these corporations and thus the jobs and ultimately causing the company to fail or even move locations,

Cole Shephard joins us from Columbia to speak to international investments and DonnaMarie Baldwin discusses the ever changing opportunities in real estate investmenting Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Hi, welcome to Practical Tax with tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz. I'm Chip Franklin. Today, our first guest is Cole Shephard from the Legacy Group. Cole, thanks for being here. You represent a group of investors, international investors, essentially. Right? Cole Shepard: That's right. Typically, we invest in early stage companies, or we found early stage companies here in Columbia. We focus on impact-focused investments, impact-focused companies. Our biggest company that anyone would've heard of is called the Green Coffee Company, which is a company that we founded about five years ago. Which, in the past two weeks, has become the largest coffee producer in the country. Chip Franklin: Wow. Steve Moskowitz: Very nice. And as Cole, I'm sure knows, there's all kinds of special benefits, economic, financial, and tax, by investing outside of the country. That makes this extra interesting. Chip Franklin: Is that right? Do most people know what you just told me? Steve Moskowitz: No, they don't. What's a sad and a shame, I had been a professor for 10 years and I'm always trying to help people, and I've dedicated my life to this. So I want to say, "Hey, let me tell you some things." Most people are walking through an orchard full of wonderful tax fruit, but they never look up into the tree. They're too busy looking at the ground for something that may have dropped on there. And there's so much available. Chip, no, most people don't know. When I tell them about it, usually their first question, "Is that new?" And I say, "No, it's been around for years." "Well, how come my last guy didn't tell me?" I say, "Well, that's why you're here." Chip Franklin: Let's talk about agricultural investing. Cole, what does that encompass? Cole Shepard: Sure. So biggest project, like I said, was Green Coffee Company. What you're seeing is a lot of especially high net worth individuals in the US worried about inflation, worried about what's happening with US government just printing capital in Washington, and they're looking to get their money diversified out of the US dollar into other countries. So what we've seen is a huge uptick in high net worth individuals going after farmland. Right? Certain high net worth guys will go out and buy five, 10 million of farmland, and then they'll hire an operator to run it. And it'll be similar to what you'd see in a multi-family deal or something in commercial real estate. What we do a bit differently is we structure in a corporate structure. So we're actually buying ... when you invest with us, you're investing in a whole enterprise, or a company, an international conglomerate. And then we structured basically to do one of two things for investors upon an exit. One is a private company sellout, which a logical acquire for someone like us will be someone like JAB Holdings, Nestle, Starbucks. Or we put it on a dual track to be able to IPO on a US market. Steve Moskowitz: And, Chip, something else. Especially now in the time of inflation, you have a situation where the dollar today may not be worth what it is tomorrow. But a company, physically, the physical asset,

The shortage in the workforce; does it mean that people working remotely have an advantage? And does all of the bad news about San Francisco portend trouble ahead for business? Tax credits for employers. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to practical tax with tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz. I'm Chip Franklin. Steve, how are you today? Steve Moskowitz: Doing great. I'm always happy when I get to talk about taxes and when I say that people laugh, but you know I mean it, because we did radio together for so many years. Chip Franklin: One of the things obviously we're going to talk about today is unemployment. So I got a question for you to start things off. Do corporations like 10 99 employees or full time employees, what do they prefer? Steve Moskowitz: They're different. So what happens is, from the employer's point of view with a 1099, you only pay the amount, that's it. There's no benefits, there's no healthcare, vacations, et cetera, et cetera. With an employee then of course, usually there's the payroll taxes, the worker's comp and everything else that goes along with it and vacation, health benefits, pensions and so on and so forth. Some companies choose to have part-time workers because if somebody works for you less than a certain number of hours a week, you can not give them any benefits. So some companies do that. So it's a variety of factors and where a lot of businesses get in trouble because they don't want the hassle of all those payments and the expenses. So they misclassify employees as independent contractors. If you're doing that, if the IRS comes down, you're going to come down really hard. Because there's the unpaid taxes and social security and penalties and all that. But the IRS has this great voluntary program and what it is, if you otherwise qualify, basically you pay a tiny and I mean really tiny little pittance. All is forgiven. And then you switch people to employees, but you can't do that when you get caught. You have to do that before you get caught. Chip Franklin: Joining us right now is Casey Hastem she's director of recruiting at, weareVIP.com. Casey, great to have you here. Thanks. Casey Hastem: Hello. How are y'all today? Chip Franklin: Great. Casey, let's start with this question. Unemployment numbers are steady, but we just can't seem to get good people to fill positions in the workplace. Is that right? Casey Hastem: Yeah. And that's kind of what I do for a living is I help businesses find good people to join their team interestingly and I didn't realize we were officially in a recession because I'm not an economist. And so I pulled the jobs report that I think it just came out today, as a matter of fact, I don't know if you guys have seen this and I believe we exceeded expectations. We added almost 375,000 more jobs. Steve Moskowitz: Hmm. Good job. Casey Hastem: Yeah. And so even before, for every person out there looking for a job there were two jobs. Now there's like two and a quarter. So I think this is why you're seeing that unemployment go down. But I do want to say one of the trends that we've seen recently, because we work with companies from your small mom and pops to Fortune 500s. Those are our clients across all industries. This last week, we've started to see a little turn. You hear Tesla's starting to lay off. He said,

Douglas C. Borthwick, Chief Business Officer INX.co discusses the confidence in currency, crypto or cash and Finance specialist Mitch Kramer compares the cycles of inflation and the tax and investment opportunities they represent. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to Practical Tax I'm Chip Franklin. That's Steve Moskowitz. Steve, how are you my friend? Steve Moskowitz: Doing great Chip. How you doing? Chip Franklin: I'm doing well. Steve Moskowitz: We're talking about taxes and all kinds of things. So of course it's a happy time. Chip Franklin: Yeah. You know what it is interesting, is that it's really amazing to me how few people understand taxes. I think I read that there's like three times the number of pages in the tax code that are in the Bible. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And I mean, you guys must spend a lot of time just keeping up to date? Steve Moskowitz: It changes. Congress changes the law, but then the courts interpret what the Congress said. So when Congress says, "You can deduct X?" Well, what's included in X? And then the next court goes ahead and makes a decision that adds on to that. Then the next court makes a decision, that's an opposition to that. And what a lot of people don't realize a lot of times, let's say you come to me, you come into my office, say, "Steve, I want to deduct X." And I say, "Well, Chip, there's a hundred cases on X of equal rank, equal power. And 70 of them say, you can deduct it. And 30 of them say that you can't." What do you do? Because, on a tax return, you deduct it or you don't deduct it. So if we choose to deduct it and the IRS chooses to audit it, the initial lawyer say, "Hey, IRS, doesn't recognize that, disallowed." But when you take the case up higher, usually what'll happen is the appeals officer will offer you something called hazards of litigation. So let's assume what you did, that you deducted 100,000 and 70 cases say that's a good deduction and 30 cases say, can't deduct it. Normally the settlement officer say, "Okay, I'll offer you the 70% and you can see it on the 30%." And then your choice is, do you want to go for all of it in tax court? Or do you want to say, "Hey, 70 is pretty good and let's end it here." [inaudible 00:02:26] hazards of litigation. See that's why with an audit, an auditor is more like a light switch. Yes or no. The switch is either on or it's off. Once you go above the audit level, it's more of, there's a dimmer switch and it's well, are we maximum brightness or are we off? But usually we're somewhere in between. Chip Franklin: Life is a dimmer switch, that's for sure. One of the things, about three or four years ago, you and I were talking about cryptocurrency. And it's funny, because I have friends that dismiss it out of hand, they go, "Ah, I don't have any confidence in that." And well you trust money. Actually my great grandmother, before she passed, had some Confederate currency and I have to laugh, because it's just paper. And you ask yourself about cryptocurrency and where that's headed and this blockchain technology, all this. What it means, is that I think most people just don't know what it is. And obviously you have to know what it, is because it's subject to all the same tax regulations that money is. So joining us right now is Douglas Borthwick.

Financial specialist Simon Brady asks a simple question; are your finances ready should you get divorced or your spouse were to die? Divorce and taxes; And what about your parents in their final days; will they, or YOU, outlive your money? Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Well, welcome to Practical Tax. I'm Chip Franklin. I am with co-host. Of course the host is our tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz. Steve, I hope you're well. Steve Moskowitz: Doing fine Chip. Chip Franklin: It's a holiday weekend and we have a lot to talk about on the show today. Coming up a little bit later, we're going to talk about many people that are watching this, either are seniors, or they have parents that are either in nursing homes and or living with them. And a lot of that's changing. And we want to talk a little bit about later on the show about some of the tax advantages that you can take advantage of. Obviously some of the tax, just possibilities here that you can avoid. Also, if you're an entrepreneur or if you have side hustles, is a time to go long form. We'll talk about some of the tips for being self-employed in our Ask Steve segment. But first let's talk about, well, the painful part of divorce. Joining us right now is Simon Brody. He is from www.angliaadvisors.com. He's from London originally. He worked at the UN in Manhattan for quite a while as a Financial Advisor and a ETF specialist before going on to found Anglia Advisors. It's a fee for service advisor firm. We'll get to that in a few minutes as well, but they offer personal advice and consulting services to young people, couples and family, for nationals, and also suddenly single. Those are people that are coming out of divorce and in some cases, widower or widowhood, without the inevitable conflicts of interest that many times the commission compensated sales people deal with. And he's joining us right here on Practical Tax on again, our streaming network. Simon Brody, say hello to Steve Moskowitz. Simon Brady: Hi Steve, how are you? Steve Moskowitz: Hi Simon, how you doing? It's very impressive, the UN. Simon Brady: It's certainly an interesting place. I wouldn't say it moves along at the speed of sound. You're probably not astonished to hear that there's an intensely high level of bureaucracy there, but it was definitely interesting. Yeah, really. Chip Franklin: That'll give us all a little room to breathe here. Okay. Simon Brady: There we go. Chip Franklin: So let's just jump into this and talk about the suddenly single thing, because I know this is something that you both share. Steve deals with this all the time and as well as you. Can we start with you Simon? How do people and especially women begin and sustain a financial plan at that point in their lives? Simon Brady: Yeah, it is an extremely triggering event on all levels. A divorce or a widowhood, but sticking with divorce for the time being. Most relationships tend to have an imbalance when it comes to being the financial decision maker within the household, you very, very often have one person who is taking control of a very, very high amount of it. And therefore by definition, the other person is shut out. And that may be an arrangement they came to perfectly amicably. But what happens when the relationship ends for one reason or another is you very often have one person who ...

How are the small farms in the Central Valleydealing with water, the economy, and inflation? Plus, Russian born Victor Gichun reveals what it means to have a side hustle in the US. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Well, welcome to practical tax with Chip Franklin. And of course, Steve Moskowitz, our tax attorney extraordinaire. Steve, you look good, good to have you here again. Steve Moskowitz: Thanks Chip. Chip Franklin: Let's talk a little bit, if we can, about the way that we look at food. California produces so much, let me pull a stat out here. Using fewer than 1% of the United States farmland, the Central Valley supplies 8% of US agricultural output and produces 25% of the nation's food including 40% of the nation's fruits, nuts and other cable food. What is the latest from America's bread basket? And I think that's a fair question. Steve Moskowitz: You know Chip, people forget we're so incredibly blessed in this country, where you expect good, fresh food in abundance at a reasonable price. And I know prices are going up with the inflation but still. You look around the world, shortages where you got a long line of people waiting in line for maybe a few products that aren't so hot. And let's face it, if you're physically hungry, what are you going to produce for the world? You have to eat where we go ahead and we say, well, these needs are taken care of, it's easy to go to the store and buy whatever I want. And then I can go ahead and achieve things. And we see it all now, for example, look what's happening with the grain prices because of the Ukraine. Look how that's affecting everybody and it's sort of the old thing where yes, it affects us here in the states, but it's crippling to other areas of the country... Chip Franklin: Right? Steve Moskowitz: Excuse me, other areas of the world. And that has to be taken into effect of what they're doing, not to mention... Wars can be fought over these things, if some country is starving and another country is doing well, that could be the possibility of invasion. Not to mention the fact of the economics, not to mention the facts, the potential investments. So there's an awful lot of things that you take for granted. It's what we were talking about with Spencer, and the weather and food, we take those for granted so we can go out and do greater things. But those basics have to be taken care of first and if they're not, it can be horrible repercussions. Chip Franklin: Well, in the Central Valley represents so many issues that reverberate across the United States and maybe the world. Everything from water to immigration, obviously to transportation, to labor issues. There's a lot there and I find it fascinating because haven't grown up on the East Coast. I had no idea just how significant it was in all of our lives. Joining us right now is Gabriel Dillard. He is editor of the Business Journal from the Central Valley. Hello Gabriel and it's good to have you here with us. Thank you so much for your time. Gabriel Dillard: Hi. Thanks for having me. Chip Franklin: Let's just jump real quick and ask you, how are the Central Valley economies doing right now with inflation and this possibility of a recession right down the road? Gabriel Dillard: Well, we kind of recovered strong since the pandemic.

Deidre Woollard, a real estate writer at Motley Fool, talks the about building modular homes in San Francisco, while legendary meteorologist Spenser Christian from Good Morning America and ABC7 talks about the short and long term effects of climate change on business and quality of life. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome everybody to practical tax I'm Chip Franklin and of course, Steve Moskowitz here. Steve, let's just dive right into this and talk a little bit about real estate. I know you know a lot about this. You've been in San Francisco forever and you've seen this incredible increase in property values. But it has been a tool to help people build wealth and because of the nature of investment in asset, it's transferability and tremendous effect on lowering income taxes. But the cost of ownership has begun to erode this opportunity, at least a lot of people think for many Americans. Is real estate still a go-to for financial wealth and for protecting your assets? Steve Moskowitz: Absolutely traditionally so much wealth has been built through real estate and also the Congress and their infinite wisdom so loves real estate investment. They've given all types of special deals to real estate. I could take our whole time just listing all these things. So the bottom line is there's so much here. And you talk about prices, but that's okay. You make money with OPM other people's money. So the bottom line is even if a property goes up in value, so what? You can borrow some money and you know what always happens. Like all businesses, the costs are passed along to the tenants or the other investors and there's so very much that you can do. Chip Franklin: Well, joining us right now is Deidre Woollard. She is a writer. You've seen her work on Motley Fool. She's also a researcher, an editor and she's obsessed with just about everything real estate from market investment trends, to the housing affordability issue and the latest techniques and something we're going to get to in modular construction. And she's so nice to join us right here on the show. Deidre hi, welcome to Practical Tax. Deidre Woollard: Thank you. Happy to be here. Steve Moskowitz: Thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it. And our firm's mostly in tax. We represent individuals, entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to build wealth and generational wealth. And we've seen one of the most effective ways to accomplish this is through investing in real estate. This June, we were part of a real estate investing conference and I'm happy to see the strategy mythology and technology that's evolved, but there's definitely an air of anticipation with the current economic client. I'd love to get your take on the topic as it applies to real estate investors. Deidre Woollard: Yeah, I think there is a little bit of concern. We just got the existing home sales numbers from the NAR, those were down by about 8.6% year over year. So there's that concern about there being a bubble. I don't think that's going to happen, but we are seeing a little bit of resetting and a little bit of concern over what might be coming next. And certainly with interest rates getting to the point where we're getting close to that 6% mark and I think that is having an impact on how people are feeling about real estate in general right now. Steve Moskowitz:

Mark Hanf, CEO of Pacific Private Money details the latest on transitional loans and Realtor Michelle Baylog answers the question; when did it get so expensive to live in the Bay Area and is there a bubble? Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome. This is Steve Moskowitz, and welcome to Practical Tax. I'd like to introduce you to my friend, colleague, and go host, Chip Franklin. Chip Franklin: Steve is recovering from COVID. It's good to see he's got some rose in his cheeks, which is nice to see as well, it's one of the byproducts of this. What's interesting Steve, I love talking with you, because of your passion for taxes. I was looking at when you were on some of these sports shows, and we'd bring up luxury taxes and stuff, and just how you get into it. At the end of the day, taxes are about people. We all have to deal with them. We all benefit from them. They can do wonderful things for our society. We all have criticisms and worries about that, too. Real quick, you came here with all your possessions in a box, to San Francisco. Steve Moskowitz: I moved to San Francisco many moons ago, with all my worldly possession in four cardboard boxes. I bought a one way ticket from New York city to San Francisco, and said, "Here I am. I'm going to get my fancy, advanced law degree, specialization in tax, and see what I'm going to do with it." I liked San Francisco, decided to stay, and that was many years ago. Chip Franklin: You've turned that this business from an accountant/attorney into an outreach for people that covers everything from cannabis, as we just heard last episode, to cryptocurrency. It fascinates me. There's other people here in San Francisco, that we've met, that have an interest, obviously, in people, and money, and helping them through periods like that. Joining us right now is a CEO for Pacific Private Money, and a good friend to both of ours, and we've been with before, and worked with before, and that would be Mark Hanf. He joins us here, on our Practical Tax podcast. Hello Mark, good to see you, my friend. Steve Moskowitz: Hi Mark. Mark Hanf: Gentlemen, how are you? Steve, sorry about your voice. Steve Moskowitz: I'm very much looking forward to getting it back, because why'd you say, who's that guest host you have on? What happened to Steve? Chip Franklin: I think the ladies think it's sexy. I think it's a male version of Brenda Vaccaro happening right there. Mark Hanf: A little bit of Rod Stewart going there. Steve Moskowitz: Thanks guys. Chip Franklin: Explain to us about your business. You guys have two parts of your business, and we'll talk about both of them, but tell us a little bit about what hard money is, and what you guys do. Mark Hanf: The term hard money is a little bit dated. Usually 20 years ago, the hard money guy was the guy that everyone knew in town, that if you were in a pinch, you can go to him for money. As long as he thought you had real estate worth enough capital, he'd lend you the money. I started Pacific Private Money 15 years ago, and even now, we prefer the term alternative real estate provider. Essentially, what we do is, we use private capital from investors, most of whom are right here in the bay area, and we make short-term bridge loans to people, to help them either buy their next home when they're trying to compete with ca...

On today's episode, Steve is joined by Grant Norwood, a leading voice in the oil and gas industry, to talk about energy inflation, while Colleen Gregerson of San Francisco's legendary club, The Battery, shows the upside of charity. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Steve Moskowitz: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Practical Tax. I'm tax attorney Steve Moskowitz, and I'd like to introduce you to my co-host, Chip Franklin. Chip, take it away. Chip Franklin: Thanks, Steve. Welcome to Practical Tax, everybody. Steve's recovering a little bit from COVID, so I'll do some of the heavy lifting here at first. Today on Practical Tax, we're going to talk about the business of oil, and more to the point, why we're paying these astronomically high prices at the pump. Joining us right now is a CEO from the Norwood Energy Corporation, Grant Norwood. He joins us here. Grant, you're down in Texas now, right? Grant Norwood: Yeah. Fort Worth, Texas, actually. Chip Franklin: The Lone Star State. Steve Moskowitz: See, I think of it as a state with no income taxes. Grant Norwood: That is one of the things we're known for. Chip Franklin: All right, Grant. Can you help us here? Why is the price of oil, or gasoline for the rest of us, so high right now? I understand about market forces and supply and demand, but come on, man, seven bucks a gallon. Grant Norwood: I mean, it's a lot of supply and demand. You had the supply greatly outweigh the demand for about a year and a half. So that brought the supply down, and now that the demand's back, the supply doesn't come back that easily. So you've got some technical hurdles as far as an actual well and its production. And when it gets disrupted in its life, it just might not come back. So, I'd say about seven to eight times out of 10, it didn't hurt a thing, and sometimes even comes on a little bit stronger, but those other two or three, they don't come back. So anyways, it doesn't take much of a imbalance for the prices to greatly sway in one direction or another. Chip Franklin: So Grant and Steve, can you tell everybody why California's paying more than $2 a gallon than the rest of the country? Steve Moskowitz: So that the state of California can maintain the over $100 billion surplus, and that's something that really needs to be addressed. One of the other things, there's so much political debate about energy and environment, but tell me, Grant, with the high cost of oil, what's the status of oil and gas exploration in the United States? Grant Norwood: Well, it's a perfect storm for a lot of us that did make it through the storm. We were still working throughout the downturn and now we're able to turn wells on and benefit much more than we would have had this price increase not happened. But you had so many shareholders of some of these big public companies that actually moved the needle, that want to see some returns. They've been sitting in these companies for years and it's been growth at any cost. And with the last administration, everyone was, "Hoo rah, let's go," and then you change the administration and it's like, "No, let's pull back." And a lot of these big companies have said, "Okay, well, we're going to listen to the administration a little bit." They're causing a few extra hurdles. And then we've also got our investors,

On today's episode; Steve sits down with Brett Swarts, Founder/President of Capital Gains Tax Solutions to discuss Deferred Sales Trusts, 1031 exchanges, and Delaware Statutory Trusts! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome, and thank you for joining us, and it's my honor to have Brett Swarts joining us. He's considered one of the most well-rounded capital gains deferral experts and informative speakers in the country. He's founder of Capital Gains Tax Solutions, and I'll ask you to give us your phone number a little bit later. And he is an exclusive Deferred Sales Trustee. He's host of "Capital Gains Tax Solutions Podcast", and a lot of other things. He has great strategic alliances and clients, and he's created and developed tremendous tax areas where we can go ahead and do all kinds of wealth planning. One of my favorites is DST, Delaware Statutory Trust. Recently, I was quoted in the Wall Street Journal about Delaware Statutory Trust, so you know how I feel about them. And he goes ahead and he's gonna create and preserve all kinds of wealth for you. He's passionate about what he's doing. His experience is tremendous with the DSTs and the 1031 exchanges, and commercial and all the real estate brokerage. And formally, he was with one of the largest brokerage firms, and now he's in Sacramento and he lives in Roseville, California with his wife and their five kids. So we know that he has to be making lots of money to make this work. And without further ado, I'd like to open the floor. And let's begin, tell us about transformational exit planning, versus transactional exit planning. Brett Swarts: Thanks Steve, a pleasure to be here. And yes, so Brett Swarts, founder of Capital Gains Tax Solutions. So transformational exit planning I like to kinda define in a couple different ways, and it can be transformational for different people in different ways, but we've all heard about financial freedom, right? You have enough income to pay for our expenses, and maybe perhaps we don't have to work anymore. We have enough passive income doing those things where we can free up some of our time freedom, which is kind of the second part of a transformational wealth plan or financial plan. The third one has to do with what's called entrepreneurial freedom, right? The ability to start a business or start a new venture or buy some real estate and doing that at what I like to call kind of the fourth freedom, which is optimal timing. And collectively, you have to look at multiple things and I actually have this, a Rubik's cube here, Steve, and I actually bought this on Amazon. And sometimes people show up to us and they have these different colors on different ends, and it's kind of outta whack and different ways of adjusting what's called tax flow versus cash flow planning. We try to create something where it's as congruent for life, for freedom of time, energy, entrepreneurial freedom. The last one has to do with location freedom, right? As at the end of the day, a lot of people are moving out of California. A lot of people are moving out of their business transactions, moving out of these high end primary homes. And our overall goal is what? It's freedom, freedom with their capital, freedom with their time, freedom with their finances, freedom with entrepreneurial ventures and then freedom with location. And then collectively, if you can bring these together with the right set of professionals, you can achieve what's called a transformational exit plan or wealth plan. Steve Moskowitz: And I can say that in practice, we see the client, so just leaving California in droves, and it's so important because California is an extremely aggressive state and people think, "Well, I'll just move and that's that, "and I don't have to pay those taxes anymore.

On today's episode; Steve sits down with Roger Knecht, President of Universal Accounting Center to discuss the ways in which both firms' distinction between tax planning and tax preparation helps their clients stay ahead of the game with proven strategies for your business! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome to everyone. And we're looking forward to another podcast, and we're looking forward to tell you all the benefits you can have for your tax return. And it's a shame, 'cause most people, they think about their tax return, and they think about, well, that's some guy movin' the numbers from one place to another. And you know what? We're already laughin', there's so much more to it. And in addition to savin' you taxes, this also helps you to run your business. So, what I'd like to do is go ahead ask our guest to introduce himself and tell us all about you. Roger Knecht: Happy to. First of all, Steve, thank you for having me on the webinar or podcast here. The idea is, I'm Roger Knecht, President of Universal Accounting Center, and I've worked with accounting professionals for more than 20 years now, helping them run and operate their businesses. And the advice, the suggestions that I hope to offer today are meant to help you build a better relationship with the accounting and tax professionals that you're interacting with, as you run your businesses and live your lives. Steve Moskowitz: Excellent. And what we're gonna do is go ahead and say, so somebody knocks on your door and says, "Hi, how can you save me money? "What's the secret, what do the big boys do?" What would you tell 'em? Roger Knecht: Well, the big boys have a variety of strategies that some of us lessers don't necessarily have access to, but I can give you the distinction that I think we should start with, in that there's a difference between tax planning and tax preparation. I think one of the first errors that we need to recognize is, whether we're individually or as a business, looking at the taxes, we need to realize that December 31st for most things is kind of a drop dead date, and too often what happens, whether either individually or with our companies, we fail to realize that tax season isn't April 15th or maybe some other tax deadline. It literally is the end of the calendar or fiscal year, and so anything we can do with the tax preparer before those deadlines to mitigate our tax liabilities is very prudent. It's smart, it's important. Sit down with someone and actually kind of come up with a strategy, a plan of how you're going to mitigate your tax liabilities. Steve Moskowitz: And that's so true, and that's so important. And that 12/31 deadline, I call it 12/31 Year One, is so important, and so many things do have to be done by 12/31 Year One, however, there's some exceptions. A lot of the pension plans allow you to go ahead and create them and fund them up to the time of filing the return plus extension, so that's something you can do in Year Two that will save you taxes in Year One. And another thing is amended tax returns. A lot of times clients will come into our office, and I'm sure the same with yours, and you say, "Well, you can do this and this and this." And they invariably say, "Oh, is that new this year?" And I say, "No, it's been around for years." And they say, "Well, how come my last person didn't do that?" And we say, "Well, that's why you're here." And then, we can go back and amend the federal return for the last three years. So sometimes, it's not only about saving money for the current year, but going back three years on the federal return. And if you're in a state that has a state income tax, amending that one as well, and there's different statute of limitations for those states. So Roger, tell me some other things,

In this Episode, Steve and Chris continue their talk on corporate formalities and why they are important. They discuss the importance of board meetings, piercing the corporate veil, and shareholder basis record keeping. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome to everyone. We're here to talk to you about all the benefits that a corporation can provide to your business. I'd like to introduce my friend and longtime colleague, attorney and EA, Chris Housh. Chris, you have so much experience in this. What's the benefit of being a corporation? Chris Housh: The main benefit is that you have what's called a corporate shell. So by going and making where you're treating your business as being something separate than your own individual self and having the formalities in place, you're making it where the government and all of your creditors recognize that your personal assets are not something that can be grabbed if something happens with your corporation. Also, if something happens for you individually, your corporation, your business, is protected from your personal creditors. Now you do have to go and make sure that you follow the rules, that you actually put everything in place. But once you've done that, you've created the beneficial element of protection. You also have tax benefits, whereas, especially within current laws, as they were changed in 2018, expenses and deductions that you cannot get as an individual the corporation is allowed to deduct, as long as it's a regular ordinary expense of the business. And that includes things like the state taxes, and other expenses that you're incurring, that you would not be allowed to deduct as an individual. Steve Moskowitz: So, Chris, that sounds like really a big deal. That's asset protection, 'cause you know, there's a lot of risk in business. And a lot of people would like to go into business, but they don't wanna risk everything they worked for in a lifetime. That sounds like a tremendous deal. And how does it work for taxes? Does it make a difference of your corporation for taxes? Chris Housh: Yes, now there's two kinds of corporations. There's what's called a C corporation and a S corporation. The C is the default, but you never wanna actually be a C Corp, unless you fit into a specific category. The three times that you are forced to stay as a C corporation, is if you're gonna have a hundred or more shareholders, if you have any foreigners that are shareholders, or if you're planning on actually going and having your stock sold on the stock market, NASDAQ or the top 500, they require you to be a C corporation. The problem is a C corporation is taxed at the corporation level, and then taxed again at the shareholder level for any money that comes out of the corporation to the shareholder. So you're double taxed. You don't want that. It's more frustrating to have to go and deal with that. Instead you wanna be able to go down to the S corporation. An S corporation, again, you get to have all those deductions that are regular for a business, reduced down the profit that S corporation, as long as you don't fit into the circumstances of being required to be a C Corp, you then have it where your net profit, after all those expenses, flows down into your individual tax return, the corporation doesn't pay any tax, and then you can have your other items of income and expense deducted against what the corporate profit is. And if your corporation loses money, and you're actively working the business, those losses can actually offset your other income. So you get definite benefit out of that, while also again, protecting your assets, protecting your interests, and making where you have the safety of a corporate shell. Steve Moskowitz: Well,

In this Episode, Steve and tax attorney Chris Housh come together to discuss how Moskowitz LLP can help businesses with Corporate Formation and Formalites by creating an annual plan and meeting throughout the year to stay ahead of the game. An annual plan with Moskowitz LLP is talior-made to help save you time and money, and more importantly, give you peace of mind so you can focus on growing your business. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome everyone and thank you for listening to our podcast, and this is part two. So if you haven't heard part one, that's okay 'cause you could really do either one of these parts, first or second. But if you like what you're hearing here, do go ahead and listen to the other part 'cause we have a lot of good information in there. And just basically as a real quick summary, on the other one we talk about the asset protection of a corporation or other entity. Where if you get sued or something bad happens or you can't pay the bills, how the entity protects you from the other side going after your personal assets or other corporate assets? We've talked about how there's tax advantages. We've talked about how there's a special workaround for certain corporations to get around the limitation on deducting state taxes on the federal returns, for those of you that are in states that charge state taxes. And some of the states charge a lot of state taxes. We've also talked about potential pension benefits of a corporation and a lot of other things. And an awful lot of people are in business as a sole proprietor and that's sometimes fine, but a lot of times it's not. And a lot of times that person would be much better off if they were in an entity like a corporation. And we explained the differences between a C-Corp and an S-Corp. Where C-Corp has a double taxation, whereas an S-Corp doesn't. And a partnership, and LLC. And sometimes one entity is better for something than something else. But the bottom line is, go ahead and listen to the other podcast for this. Today, on this podcast, we're gonna work on the formalities and the formation. And one of the things that I hear when I recommend this to people is, "Well, what about, oh, there's all of these technicalities. Now I'm busy doing business, I can't be bothered with all this formal stuff." And to answer that, I'd like to introduce my friend and colleague of over 20 years, Attorney and EA, Chris Housh. Chris Housh: Thanks Steve. Yes, we understand. If you did the time for every crazy formal thing that is requested for you, you'd have no time to actually do the business that you actually are out there doing, the thing that you're best at. So as the attorneys that are working with you on this, we let you know what the formalities are, and also help you take care of them. Steve Moskowitz: So do you help 'em take care or do you just do it for 'em? Chris Housh: I look at it as that we are a team. And so I will do the actual writing up of the elements. I'll do the hard work, but I need their input. I need their help on things. I also schedule times to make it easier. Make it where you can say, okay I'm gonna set aside this time because I understand time is very valuable for everybody especially a business owner. And I try to make it where it's as easy as possible for you to go and be able to do these things. So I narrow down at the beginning, when I'm setting up for a business, I send out a eight question questionnaire so that it's not a overwhelming burden. I've seen some places that will send you a 20 page questionnaire. If you had time to do that, you know, you're not really going in needings that situation. I can narrow it down, get you started, and then ask you a couple of key questions to make it where I...

In this Episode, Steve and Cliff discuss common tax issues with Stock Options. This discussion is aimed at the employee who receives stock options as part of their compensation. Discussion of Tax Strategies for ESOP, RSUs, and ISOs. 83b elections, tax timing and rules and common tax preparation mistakes. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome back, folks. This is Steve Moskowitz and Cliff Capdevielle, and we wanna show you how we can save you some taxes. I'm the head of the firm, I am a tax attorney, and before I was a tax attorney I was a CPA. I started life off in a big firm, and then opened up my own practice many years ago. My friend and colleague, Cliff Capdevielle, is also a tax attorney and accountant. He also came out of a big firm. And there's so much here that we wanna talk to you about. A lot of times when you go to work someplace, they say, "Well, your salary is so much, "but we're gonna give you extra benefits "like stock options." And one of the things that you say, "Well, okay, that's good, "but I wanna do what the wealthy do, "I wanna go ahead and make all kinds of money, "and take all kinds of tax advantages of this." So you have a stock option. There's something that you should know about called an 83 election. And basically what an 83 election will do for you, is greatly reduce the amount of taxes which you have to pay on that stock option. And you say, "What's 83 , Steve?" Well, that one refers to 83 in the Internal Revenue Code. But Cliff, tell us about what's an 83 election. Cliff Capdevielle: Sure, so what you wanna do when you're planning for employee stock options, is make sure that to the extent possible, you are capturing any gains as long-term capital gains versus short-term capital gains. Steve Moskowitz: What's the advantage between capital gains and ordinary income tax, Cliff Cliff Capdevielle: And it's huge, it is huge, Steve. It's almost double. So ordinary rate for most people is 30 to 37%, guess what, if you can convert ordinary income to capital gains, you can reduce that rate to 20% or below. So you're essentially cutting your tax in half if you do that, Steve. Steve Moskowitz: Well, I like cutting the tax in half, and I would be willing to venture, Cliff, that everybody watching this or listening to this would like to cut their tax in half too. So, okay, this is great. Tell me how do I cut my tax in half? Cliff Capdevielle: Yeah, so with an 83 election, you essentially notify the government that you're picking up an income, a very small amount, which is the the fair market value on the date that the options are granted to you and you pick that up, and that starts the running of the holding period for capital gains rate. So in other words, if you hold that stock more than a year, you've converted what would typically be ordinary income tax at ordinary income rates to capital gains rates. So it makes a huge difference. And we see a lot of mistakes, Steve, unfortunately. Steve Moskowitz: Whole lots of mistakes here. Cliff Capdevielle: With the startups in Silicon Valley and even with mature companies, we see major mistakes when people go to their local CPA firm or their local tax preparer, not making these basis adjustments, not calculating the capital gain rates, it's unfortunate these laws are pretty complicated, and if you don't know how they work, you can end up paying a lot more tax than you need to. I'll give you an example, with non-qualified stock options. These are typically called RSUs, sometimes ESPP. These options are actually included in the gross income part of wages, so these are actually included in W-2 wages. Guess what? Oftentimes the broker dealer will report these without the basis adjustment. In other words,

Steve sits down with guest Kerry Lutz to talk all things finance. From how to pay the minimum amount legal taxes, to tax incentives that motivate Kerry, and even some hot predictions about inflation. You'll want to make sure to listen to every minute! Listen to the full episode to learn more! Enjoying the Podcast? Take our quick survey to let us know what we're doing right and what you want to hear more of! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Hello and welcome to everyone out there. We'd like to thank you for joining us today. And I'm Steve Moskowitz, the host and I'd like you to go ahead and introduce yourself and tell the audience about yourself. Kerry Lutz: Okay, well, I'm Kerry Lutz, recovering attorney, podcaster, communications consultant, work in alternative investments and have got a podcast, the "Financial Survival Network" that has been running since 2011, over 7,500 episodes. Steve Moskowitz: Very nice. And tell us what your thoughts are when you think about this time Lutz, the favorite time of the year, tax season. Kerry Lutz: My favorite. My thoughts are how can I pay as little as possible and stay out of trouble? Legally, ethically, pay the least amount of taxes possible. As judge Learned Hand said "It's every Americans duty to minimize their tax burden through legal means." Steve Moskowitz: I remember many moons ago studying that case in law school. And there's so much to that. And that's what we're all about in our firm. Where you say, "Okay how do we legally save taxes?" And what everybody should realize is that the tax laws are two purposes. Everybody knows one purpose. They know extracting taxes from us but the other purpose is a system of incentives. Because in a democracy, the government can't order us to do something. But how do they get us to do something they want us to do because it's good for the economy but they can't order us? They give us tax incentives. And tell us what are some of the tax incentives that motivate you to make an investment or do something differently? Kerry Lutz: Well, obviously when it comes to conventional investments, real estate really has no equal. And I look at that tax deductibility of interests and non-cash outlays like depreciation, bonus depreciation section 179, all of that. When I look at it I like real estate, I like assets that have cashflow that can be leveraged. Different types of assets because not only the tax advantage but they do well in inflationary times. Steve Moskowitz: Excellent. And we have a lot in common. I see we've graduated from the same law school. Kerry Lutz: Oh, hey, the best little law school on Worth street. We used to call it. Steve Moskowitz: Indeed. And we're talking about real estate. Just yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, I was quoted about the value of DSTs, Delaware Statutory Trust. And most people are familiar with 1031s but DSTs, Delaware Statutory Trust provides such an additional benefit for clients. How do you feel about 'em? Kerry Lutz: Well, very familiar with trusts. I have several of myself. The benefits of trusts. So many people really don't have a clue but that's how the super wealthy manage to hold onto their wealth and pass it on to success of generations without devastating taxes, asset protection, so many different benefits accrue to you. The ability to buy things in the trust and basically deduct all expenses that you wouldn't otherwise be able to, had you not owned an asset in the trust. Meaning, well, you're the expert Steve, but the list goes on and on and on. Steve Moskowitz: Well, one of the reasons you do it is for asset protection 'cause today in our society, a lot of people feel that if you have something it's unfair and the only way to make it fair is to take it away from you....

Steve and Cliff discuss the many tax benefits and incentives available for real estate investments. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining our podcast. And we're looking forward to telling you a lot of tax savings in a very good area here, real estate. Traditional wealth has been built with real estate and there's all kinds of advantages to it. One of my favorites is OPM, other people's money. And there's all kinds of things here. For example, one of the things that Cliff is gonna tell you about, there's a government deal where the government will pay for 39% of the real property you choose to buy. You like that? I'll say it again. The government will pay 39% of the price and guess what? That's a gift. They just give it to you. It's not a loan. You don't have to pay it back. They just give it to you. And when somebody gives you something nice, what do you say? Well, most people say, thank you, but lawyers say more. I want more. Want to talk about all kinds of things like how you can make a real estate investment, a tremendous amount of money, profit and legally not pay any taxes on it. And this is the type of things that people look at and they say, look at the wealthy, look at the Fortune 500. They're making all this money, sometimes billions of dollars they'd be in profits and not paying any taxes legally, how can that be? And here's why. There's two purposes for the tax law. One we all know about is get money out of us, extracting taxes, but the other one is in democracy, the government can't order us to do things, even though it's good for the economy or it's good for society, they can't order us. So, how's the government get you to do something they want you to do, but they can't order you? They give you a tax benefit. And that's what this is all about. And you know, a lot of people just grumble and cry about, oh they take so much taxes out of my earnings. And that's true. But what we're gonna talk to you about today, although the wealthy people do it, you don't have to be wealthy. This applies to any socioeconomic group. You can be a regular normal middle class person, do all these things, and our goal is to get you to be those people that other people point to and say, look at that wealthy guy, look at all the money he's making and he's not paying any taxes on it. And maybe some of that's because you listen to us on this webinar. Without further ado, I'm gonna introduce my friend and colleague, the head of our tax department, who's also an accountant as well as being an attorney, Cliff . Cliff, you want to take it away? Cliff Capdevielle: Sure, Steve, thanks. So, lot of wealth in America has been generated with real estate. And as you say, Steve, one of the key differentiators is the ability to leverage, use other people's money, take out loans and put down a fraction of the cost of a piece of real estate and then reap the rewards as the value of that real estate increases. I'm up in Incline Village. It is now the average, Steve, the average price for a home up here and this zip code, can you guess? Steve Moskowitz: That's a toughie. Coming from San Francisco, shacks go for millions. Cliff Capdevielle: It's five million dollars is the average house. So, that is skewed because you have Larry Ellison and the other Silicon Valley billionaires up here with properties in the 50 hundred million dollar range. But you can make a lot of money in real estate just by holding it for a long period of time. And you can purchase real estate, as you said, using other people's money, leveraging that and deducting the interest that you pay for real estate. Now, it's recently been limited on personal residences, but on investment property,

Learn about options for dealing with tax debt and what happens when you can't pay your taxes. This episode focuses on businesses with tax problems. This week Steve is joined by his long-time colleague Chris Housh. Chris chairs the firm's tax resolution and business entity compliance practice groups and is the Vice President of the Golden Gate Society of Enrolled Agents. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome everyone. And thank you for tuning into our podcast. And this is part two of what happens when taxes can't be paid. Part one was for individuals. Part two is for businesses. And I'd like to introduce my friend and colleague, Chris Housh. Chris is both a tax attorney and EA, and Chris and I have worked together at the firm for over 20 years. He's the head of department that handles these type of cases, basically when a person or a business just can't pay their taxes. And in part one of this, we talked about what happens when an individual can't pay their taxes. Part two we're gonna talk about businesses and there is certainly some overlap between parts one and parts two. But in the business area, we're gonna go over some areas that we didn't go in individually because they don't apply to individuals. So, Chris, I have a question for you. What happens when somebody comes in and says, "I can't pay my payroll taxes?" What's the difference between payroll taxes and income taxes? Chris Housh: Payroll taxes is one of the special kinds of taxes that exist, sales taxes also in this boat. They're called trust fund taxes. And the government's explanation of it is that the person that you collected that tax from, trusted you to pay it over to the government. Your employee trusted you to go and take that tax that you with held out of their paycheck, to pay it to the government on their behalf. Your customer that you charge sales tax to trusted you to go and put that sales tax into the hands of the government. So with that, the government has that as one of the few things that can break out of a corporate or LLC shell and go against the individual alongside of the business. So the IRS on a payroll tax liability is going to ask to have an interview with the head of the company and any other responsible people that were in charge of making that decision, to be able to assess against the individual, a penalty to collect against that tax. Now they are only allowed to go and put to the individual, the amount of tax that was withheld from the people that are trusting. So your employee, they can only do to you the owner, the portion that was actually withheld from the paycheck, they can't go in and hold the businesses, share of FECA or the interest penalty assessed against the corporation. They can't do that against an individual. Now at the same time what they then do is ask to go and collect against the business and against the individual at the same time to pay into the same pot. Once the pot is full, they can't collect more than what's owed. So what often happens is at the business level, they have four pots for each year, that is getting paid by the business for payroll taxes. The employers share of FECA, the employee share of FECA, the employees federal tax withholding, and then the penalties and interest. At the business level you go and first pay the business' liability then the amount that was withheld from the employee's paychecks, and then the penalties. The business owner, if they're making a payment agreement at the same time, they're paying in solely into what was withheld out of the employees. So that that part gets filled up faster. And if you owe on multiple periods, they can start having that payment go down to period two, while the business is still paying period one.

Learn about options for dealing with tax debt and what happens when you can't pay your taxes. This episode focuses on individuals with tax problems. This week Steve is joined by his long-time colleague Chris Housh. Chris chairs the firm's tax resolution and business entity compliance practice groups and is the Vice President of the Golden Gate Society of Enrolled Agents. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Hello everyone. Thank you for tuning into our podcast. We're really excited to talk to you about this. This is an area that affects so many people and a lot of people get embarrassed about it, or they don't want to talk about it, but it's a common problem and there's so much help. This is what happens when you can't pay your taxes. And we're going to do this in two parts. Part one in part two part one is going to be individuals. That's where we're going to start. I'd like to introduce my friend and colleague Chris Howes. Chris is an attorney. He's also an EA and Chris and I have worked together at the firm for over 20 years. Chris heads the department doing these cases, and he's done thousands and thousands of tens of thousands of these over the past couple of decades. Chris, tell us what happens when you can't pay your taxes. What do you do? Chris Housh Well, there's a variety of things that we can do, and that's one of the things I love doing for our clients is finding what's the right thing for them. I don't treat it as a cookie cutter situation. There's the ability to go and try and work with the government. Find the ways to go and figure out what is manageable, reasonable for your budget, and also look at different ways to try and relieve and reduce some of that liability as well. Using elements of timing, elements of what is the important expenses for you and what does the government allow you to do? I play with all that, figure out what the best thing for someone and try and get the best result for someone in those situations. Steve Moskowitz: Chris, there was a word in there that I think everybody want to jump on reduced. Tell us about how do we reduce our taxes? Chris Housh Well, first of all, we look and see is it actually the right real liability? Is it that the IRS created a false number for you when they didn't get your return? If that's a situation we get the tax return correctly in there reduce the amount that you owe. The other part is we look at whether or not financially, you have the ability to do an offer and compromise. We look at that, is there that financially, you're never going to be able to pay it in the time that the government it wants so therefore they should accept the lesser amount. Sometimes though, that dollar amount that the government wants to not offer and compromise is too high, but I can use something called statute limitations, how long the government is illegal allowed to collect might make it where making monthly payments over the time they are allowed to collect might make it where you be paid even less than you would've done in the offer and compromise. Then also after you've either entered into the install pay agreement or have a base tax paid the original tax from return paid, we can also look at penalty abatement to go and say to the government, let's remove the penalties due to the events that were outside of your control in the year that the tax return was originally due. From that go and have them reduce out that penalty and also the interest related to penalty, but that part is if you have to go that route, that's the last piece in the puzzle because the government's not going to let me go and get rid of the penalty for not paying until you actually start paying. One of the things that a lot of the clients look at is going, oh,

Steve Moskowitz and managing attorney, Cliff Capdevielle discuss Cryptocurrency and U.S. Taxation as of Spring 2022. Discussion of taxable events, reporting requirements and federal policy updates. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Hello everyone. And welcome to our presentation. Thank you for being here. And today we're gonna be talking about crypto and there's so much happening in crypto. There's even a country, that's now recognized that, as their national currency. And a lot of people are making money, or losing money in crypto. And one of the things that the IRS is doing is something called operation hidden treasure. Now that's sounds like something from an action invention movie, but the IRS has the belief that a lot of people are engaging in crypto, and forgetting to report their transactions or reporting them improperly. Another thing is there's different softwares, that report crypto. And different softwares come up with different answers. That's why in our firm, we're using the same software, that the IRS uses. We'll also talk to you about accounting methods for all these transactions, which is very important, and also determines how you figure something is a profit or a loss. And again, crypto is an area that's just burgeoning more and more people are getting involved in it. And a lot of people are making good solid earnings. But watch out, we don't wanna trip up on any tax problems. And that's where we come in. Now there's so much involved here, and I'd like to introduce my friend and colleague the head of our tax department, tax attorney and accountant, Cliff Capdevielle. And also, just so you'll know Cliff nickname is in the firm is crypto, and Cliff even gave me crypto cuff links. So the bottom line is, Cliff, take it away for us. Cliff Capdevielle: Thanks, Steve. So the big news this week , of course is Biden's executive order March 9th on digital assets. And, he has announced that we are as a country going to explore the idea of a U.S central bank, digital currency. What does that mean? Well, this is an attempt to create the benefits of digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum and the other digital assets. With the protection of the us federal government. So that is the goal. That is not the reality of course. And importantly, in addition to that, Biden has announced that the U.S federal government will make an attempt to protect consumers, investors and businesses from the rampant fraud associated with digital assets. And of course, part of this is to create additional security not just for individuals, not just for investors, but for the U.S government, and the United States leadership in this area, of course is important. And the Biden administration recognize the importance of digital assets. And this is an attempt an announcement that the Biden administration is going to make efforts to promote access and to promote security with regard to these digital assets. So that's the big news, obviously. Steve Moskowitz: And along with that, a lot of people trade in crypto and they think, oh, that's a secret. And the government doesn't know what they're doing. In reality, the opposite is the case. There's such good record keeping that the government has access to all this information. Cliff, you wanna explain that to us please? Cliff Capdevielle: Yeah. So as part of the government's attempt to regulate, and control the reporting of digital assets, there is starting next year, a requirement that the exchanges are going to have to track and report sales of digital assets essentially on 10 99. So they'll be reported in the way that the brokerage firms, the banks, are all required to do which is to report sales, and to track basis, to the extent possible.

In this week's episode of the Practical Tax Podcast, Steve and Cliff discuss how business owners can optimize their yearly profits by implementing Moskowitz LLP's year-round tax planning strategies. Learn how you as a taxpayer can avoid 'March Madness' and no, we don't mean the basketball tournament. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome to everyone, and we're so happy to have you join us. We're going to be talking about subscription services today. And what's really important here, over the years there's so many people that have said, "Wow, you really did a great job on that. Whether it was legal advice, tax advice, tax return, getting somebody out of a tax problem. I sure wish I could go ahead and see you on a regular basis." And the answer is, why of course you can. And before I was a tax attorney, I was a CPA. And in our firm, we have both tax attorneys and accountants, and we do a lot of maintenance work. That's advising, accounting. And what we've done is we go ahead and we offer this as part of our subscription services package, where we've taken the needs of various individuals and businesses, put together a package that covers everything. We have different departments in the firm, and the different departments work on your case. And then we talk to each other, and then we go ahead and coordinate it. So it's not just, well, your estate plan is really strong, but there's a problem here or a problem there. We go ahead and we talk about everything, whether it's financial planning, estate planning, tax planning, your accounting work. Another thing that we do, and I've always said my whole career, that the tax return, and that's what all the people focus on. The tax return, the tax return. The tax return should merely be the summarization of a year's worth of planning. And so many people don't realize that, but that planning is so vitally important, and that's why you see in the newspaper all the time where the Fortune 500 make billions with a billion profits, and don't pay any taxes, because they do spend their entire year of planning. And that's what we want to offer to much smaller businesses and individuals. And we'd like to go into the details, and now I'm going to turn the floor over to my friend and colleague, Cliff Capdevielle, who is the head of this, and is going to explain it. Cliff, take it away. Cliff Capdevielle: Thanks, Steve. So as you said, what we're offering is business advisory services, which big companies have had access to forever, right? If you're a Fortune 500 company, you can hire McKinsey, or Bain, or Boston Consulting Group, and they'll come out with a group of four or five team members. You'll put them up at the Ritz Carlton for a couple of weeks, and they will spend that time analyzing your business, and come back with some recommendations. Only a couple problems with that. For small, medium sized businesses, the typical consulting fee, minimum consulting fee from McKinsey and Company is about a $1,000,000. For most companies, and most of our clients who are in the $25,000,000 or less gross receipts category, they just can't afford that fee. So what do you do? How do you get access to regular meetings with experienced experts, tax and legal experts, who can give you the kind of advice you need? And that's what we're offering, Steve, to these small and medium sized businesses who need regular consulting help, business advisory services. We're going to talk in detail about what that means. And the advantage of working with a firm like Moskowitz, of course, is that we've got broad experience from a diverse number of industries. We work with construction, real estate companies. We work with restaurants and other hospitality businesses,

In this week's episode of the Practical Tax Podcast, Steve Moskowitz sits down to discuss Pension Planning with Stephen Dobrow; the President of Primark Benefits. Steve Moskowitz and Stephen Dobrow have served clients of Moskowitz LLP for many years, as part of the Moskowitz tax planning and business services practices. Today, we will discuss why would a business owner, decision maker want to consider retirement plan, changes in law or procedures this year, key deadlines and some common questions. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Liz Prehn Hello, welcome to Practical Tax. Today, we are discussing retirement plans with Steven Moskowitz and Stephen Dobrow. Stephen Dobrow is the President of Primark Benefits. A firm that provides pension consulting, plan administration, actuarial services and record keeping. As a retirement plan expert, Stephen regularly meets with Congress, the Treasury Department, the Department of Labor to advise and serve private retire systems. Steve Moskowitz and Stephen Dobrow have served clients of Moskowitz LLP for many years, as part of the Moskowitz tax planning and business services practices. Today, we will discuss why would a business owner, decision maker want to consider retirement plan, changes in law or procedures this year, key deadlines and some common questions. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome to all. Thank you for joining us. And Stephen, we've worked together so many years and here is a common question I hear all the time. You know what? I'm paying too much in taxes, I know there's some secret. I see all these big companies making way more than I do and not paying taxes. What's the secret? And the first thing I start off with is the big four in pensions. And the big fo- I'm gonna ask you to talk about the details in all of them. And the big four are saving taxes, not having to pay taxes on the income until you take it out of the plan. Cash flow, where unlike everything else, almost everything else we have to write the check by December 31st of year two. Here, there's a way to write the check in year two and still deduct it from year one. And asset protection, where if something bad happens to you, like you get sued, the plaintiff can't take away your pension. Although I hate to mention his name, the perfect example for this is OJ Simpson. So let's begin and Stephen, tell us about the pensions and all about the big four. Stephen Dobrow: Well, thank you. Primark Benefits has been doing retirement plans for now, 50 years here in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area. And we have 34 employees, about 700 clients at any given time. What we do is take the retirement tax dollars you would normally send to the government and find a way to put it in the retirement plan just like what Steve was saying. You've heard of a 401k plan, you've heard of an IRA. Those are actually just two of 24 different types of retirement plans that a planned sponsor and employer can put in. And so the really secret is, and part of the answer to this question is, well, there's lots of choices and there's lots of ways that we can help and why would people want to get our help? Well, first of all, this is a lot about recruitment and retention. It's an employee benefit, you wanna take good care of your employees and you wanna be able to keep them, you wanna be able to get them. And Steve, you'll remember that just recently, I caterer came to us and he said, "You know, I'm having trouble attracting people to work at my catering business. And I really wanna have something that gets them to here, you know?" The catering business never offers benefits. If I offered benefits, that would be an attractive feature. And so we talked to him and he decided to set up a program where if people put in their money,

In this episode of Practical Tax, tax attorneys Steve Moskowitz and Cliff Capdevielle discuss the benefits of choosing a Limited Liability Company (LLC) as your business entity. Listen to the full episode today! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Hello, and welcome to everyone to our podcast about practical tax. And today we're gonna be talking about LLCs and all the benefits they have for you, we're gonna be talking about asset protection, because unfortunately in our society, a lot of people that don't have what you have wanna take it away from you in a lawsuit. We don't want that to happen, and we're gonna explain how you protect against that. And also we're gonna ask you the tough question; if you have the legal choice to pay taxes on either 80% of your profit or 100%, which would you choose? And all kinds of other benefits. On that happy note, I wanna to turn it over to my friend and colleague, the head of our tax department, tax attorney and accountant, Cliff Capdevielle. Cliff, take it away. Cliff Capdevielle: Thanks Steve. One of the first questions we get from new clients and often from existing clients is, "What's the best entity structure for me?" And it seems like a simple question but there's a lot to it. So, should you be a partnership, an LLC an S-corp or a C-corp? Oftentimes clients come in and they're operating as a sole proprietorship. Sole proprietorship is simple and easy but it's fraught with a lot of problems. The sole proprietorship is essentially you doing business in your own name, or as a DBA. And while it's simple, it doesn't add much in terms of asset protection. So, if you have a claim by a creditor, a vendor, anyone, your personal assets are exposed and that's why we- Steve Moskowitz: I have a question about that. Suppose you have a woman and has a business and she's in sole proprietor and her husband is a house husband, does that mean if the plaintiff would actually win, they can take assets away from her husband. Cliff Capdevielle: That's right, they can take the assets that are unrelated to the business. And that can be assets that have been in the family for years, totally unrelated to the business at all. Steve Moskowitz: That is not gonna make a happy marriage. Cliff Capdevielle: Not at all. So, we almost always recommend that an operating business choose a pass-through entity structure of some kind, an S-corp or an LLC. We occasionally will recommend a C-corp structure if the client is intending to raise money from professional investors, because the C-corp has the advantage of allowing different types of shares preferred in common. Steve Moskowitz: Cliff, I have a question about that. Cliff Capdevielle: Yeah. Steve Moskowitz: Suppose somebody chooses a C-corp, 'cause you see, their plan is to work the business for a while and then sell it, will there be any advantages to selling the shares of a C-corp? Cliff Capdevielle: Sure, it depends on what type of entity is, but the tax code does provide substantial tax benefits for startups, we see this all the time, Section 1202. Stock allows startups to sell up to $10 million, in some cases tax free and that's a huge tax- Steve Moskowitz: Wait a minute, $10 million dollars tax free? I bet that got our list of attention. Folks, how would you like to sell $10 million tax rate? And that's one of the reasons I became a tax lawyer. Look at the Fortune 500. They make billions of dollars in taxes, excuse me, they make billions of dollars in profits, and some of 'em legally don't pay a penny in taxes. How is that possible? 'Cause they have an army of people like Cliff and Liz and our colleagues and me, saying, "Hey, do this and do that." And that could make such a difference in your life. Imagine that.

In this week's episode, Steve and Cliff discuss the benefits of choosing an S Corporation as your business entity. S Corporations provide a myriad of benefits as a business entity, but there are some formalities that must be maintained. Learn more about S Corporations in this episode. Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome to our podcast, and today we're going to be talking about business entities, corporations, certain types of corporations, like S-corporations, partnerships, LLCs. And, I'd like to introduce my friend and colleague the manager of our tax department at Moscowitz LLP, Cliff Capdevielle. Cliff is both the tax attorney with many years experience, and also an accountant. Cliff, tell us about these different business entities. Cliff Capdevielle: Sure, Steve, so one of the first questions that we need to answer for any new client, and oftentimes for returning clients, is what's the best way to structure your business? Is that gonna be as a sole proprietorship, a C-corp, an S-corp, or a partnership structure, like an LLC or limited partnership? And there are different answers depending on the type of business. So, the simplest form of structure is what's called a sole proprietorship, and that's when you're essentially doing business in your own name or as a DBA. It's the easiest business structure to set up, but it's not a separate legal entity. And for that reason, we usually don't recommend it. As you know Steve, a lot of what we do is asset protection. We want to, we wanna the business owners assets and the sole proprietorship does not separate personal assets from the business assets. And as a result, we usually don't recommend the S-corporation or sorry, the sole proprietorship. Instead, we usually recommend an S-corporation or an LLC, depending on the type of business. Steve Moskowitz: Somebody has a sole proprietorship and something goes wrong in the business, they could sue and take away the person's personal assets. Cliff Capdevielle: That's the problem with it, Steve. And I know you've seen this in your practice, comes up all the time, and we've also seen businesses survive and owners keep substantial assets, if they've properly separated their assets from the business assets. Steve Moskowitz: You know, you told us about different forms of assets and corporations is one of them, but sometimes a business owner and say, "But Cliff, you know if I form a corporation, it's great for asset protection." which I'll ask you to explain to us. But people say, "Well, wait a minute, I don't wanna be paying taxes twice." First, the corporate taxes and then the personal taxes. How do we handle that? Cliff Capdevielle: Yeah, so today we're gonna talk about S-corporations. And S-corporations are considered pass-through entities for tax purposes. So, what does that mean? That means that there's no tax, typically at the corporate level. The tax attributes pass to the individual owners. So, you're only paying tax at one level with an S-corporation, or an LLC. Just like you would with a sole proprietorship. But the advantage, the huge advantage of the pass-through entity is that asset protection that we mentioned. Steve Moskowitz: So, does that mean that if the business gets in trouble that the assets of the owner are safe? Cliff Capdevielle: If they run the business properly, and they mind their Ps and Qs, they can potentially protect their personal assets from the assets of the business. Steve Moskowitz: And Cliff, what happens if the business makes a loss? Cliff Capdevielle: Well, in that case, in many instances the business can pass through those losses to the individual owner, who can deduct those losses against other income. Steve Moskowitz: So, if the owner made a loss and his or her spouse had...

In this episode of Practical Tax, tax attorneys Steve Moskowitz and Cliff Capdevielle discuss the recent passing of Senate Bill 113 (SB113) in California and how it can affect your annual tax payments. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome, everyone. We have good news followed by some more good news. July 16th, 2021, California passed AB150 that is going to save you some federal taxes on the state taxes that you pay. And just this month, it was modified in SB113 to make it even better. So here's the deal. When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act came along, it took away our ability to deduct state income taxes on our federal return in excess of $10,000. And that really hurt in high-tax states like California. So what California did, and this was just been approved by the IRS, so you don't have to worry there's going to be a conflict there, that you can make an election. And again, it's not for everybody, but for those it'll benefit, and there's going to be significant benefits here, you can make an election to pay your state taxes at the entity level, like an S Corp, LLC, that would normally just pass these things through. At the entity level, you reduce the amount of your profit on the K-1 and therefore pay less federal taxes. So effectively, it's almost like going back to when you could deduct the state taxes on the federal return. Again, the reason for this is doing it this way, it's going to reduce the profit of the entity on the K-1, so the amount that's going to be on your federal tax return from your entity is going to be less the state taxes. You pay less federal taxes. And again, the IRS has approved this. Cliff, you want to tell us some more about this? Cliff Capdevielle: Yeah, so this is big news for owners of S Corporations and LLCs and partnerships. The new law allows you to make an election and compute your entity level tax. For California, it's 9.3% and a flat rate. And that will pass through to the individual owners on their K-1s. And obviously this gets around that 2017 law which limited the state tax deduction to $10,000. Steve Moskowitz: Thank you, California. Outro: You've been listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. To hear more podcasts, go to moskowitzllp.com/practical-tax The information contained in this podcast is based on information available as obtained at the date of its release. Moskowitz LLP and its affiliates are under no obligation to update this information as changes occur. Applying this information to your specific situation requires careful consideration of all factors which may be applicable. And any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice. Further, this is attorney advertising, and the facts and circumstances displayed in this case are dependent entirely on the facts of that particular case. Please consult your tax advisor before acting on any matters discussed.

In this episode of Practical Tax, tax attorneys Steve Moskowitz and Cliff Capdeville discuss the many ways to file for, and claim the Employee Retention Tax Credit for your business. In many cases, business owners feel like they won't qualify for a litany of reasons, but they are often misinformed. Steve and Cliff are here to shed some light on the details of the Credit, and how Moskowitz LLP can help you file and claim. Listen to the podcast and learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Steve Moskowitz: Hello, and welcome back to the Practical Tax Podcast. I'm your host Steve Moskowitz, Senior Partner at Moskowitz LLP. Today, I'm joined by the Managing Attorney of Moskowitz LLP, Cliff Capdevielle. Our topic today is why so many business owners have completely failed to take advantage of the billions of dollars the government's made available to business owners with the Employee Retention Credit, ERC. And how you can get your share of this massive of government giveaway before it's too late. But before we jump in, a little bit about Cliff. Like I said, he's the Managing Attorney at Moskowitz LLP, a leading law firm, laser focused on tax planning and tax controversies. A tax attorney with more than 25 years experience helping business owners and investors save money on their taxes. He hails from the California Bay Area, Go Bears! And now leads our entire remote team around the world. Cliff, welcome to the show. Let's first define the Employee Retention Credit or ERC. Cliff Capdevielle: Steve, the Employee Retention Tax Credit is a refundable credit, for employers who are keeping their staff during the pandemic. This is a credit that's available to all employers including employers who took advantage of the Paycheck Protection Program, the PPP. And, today I hope we can straighten out some common misconceptions and help all of those businesses that have yet to take advantage of this credit, to do so. Thanks for having me, Steve. Steve Moskowitz: It's a pleasure. Cliff, can you tell us the difference between a refundable credit and a non-refundable credit? Cliff Capdevielle: Sure, very easy. Refundable credit is money in your pocket. So with the Employee Retention Tax Credit, businesses are receiving a refund check in the mail just like you do with your income tax refund. You can cash it, you can spend it however you want. If you wanna increase staff, if you wanna buy equipment, if you want to go on a vacation. Like I hear, you're on your way to a vacation next week. Steve Moskowitz: A working vacation Cliff 'cause I'm always there for our clients. Cliff Capdevielle: Absolutely Steve Moskowitz: So Cliff, tell me, this ERC, is this something that we'd ever have to pay back? Cliff Capdevielle: You don't have to pay it back. It's not a loan. It is a refund, just like your tax refund. You can keep it and spend it, and never worry about paying it back. And you don't have to use that money in any particular way. You don't have to use it on payrolls or any other particular purpose. Steve Moskowitz: Do I have to do something to ask forgiveness like I did with PPP? Cliff Capdevielle: You don't, this is a credit just for keeping your staff on payroll during this pandemic. And it's in addition to the PPP. So a lot of people call us every day, they're worried they're not gonna qualify for the Employee Retention Tax Credit because they already took PPP money. That's not true. You can get both. Steve Moskowitz: Is that a change in law, Cliff? Does it used to be that you couldn't get both? Cliff Capdevielle: It is exactly, well, now 2020, you could not in some months get both PPP loan and the Employee Retention Tax Credit. Starting in the fourth quarter of 2020, the law changed and now eligible employers are allowed to get both the ...

In this episode of Practical Tax, tax attorneys Steve Moskowitz and Liz Prehn discuss the issues people can face if they have unfiled taxes. In these cases, many people feel like it’s too late to get their taxes in order, but Steve and Liz are here to tell you that it’s never too late. Listen […] The post Episode 9: Unfiled Taxes appeared first on Moskowitz LLP.

In this episode of Practical Tax, tax attorneys Steve Moskowitz and Liz Prehn discuss economic loss, or, in the tax world, tax deductions that you fail to take. In order to get the possible outcome for your tax situation, you need time, attention to detail and knowledge of the law. A tax attorney can provide […] The post Episode 8: Economic Loss appeared first on Moskowitz LLP.

In this episode of Practical Tax, tax attorneys Steve Moskowitz and Liz Prehn discuss the range of services tax attorneys can provide for their clients. Above all, the goal of the tax attorney – and this podcast, as well – is to make the client aware of different opportunities for saving taxes so they can […] The post Episode 7: The Value of a Tax Attorney appeared first on Moskowitz LLP.