The IRS Doesn’t Want Your Tax Dollars

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Mike Pine: Welcome to the Hidden Money Podcast today,

where my partner, Kevin Schneider, and I are going to work hard to try to lower the veil on what is the difference between tax preparation, proactive tax planning, and just normal CPA work. It's kind of hard, Kevin, trying to explain this to people who don't live in the business every day.

We have a hard enough time explaining the difference between bookkeeping and tax to a lot of our clients that have been with us for years. But now, we're trying to explain, and we're even changing the way our firm is structured to be different so that we can be tax planning partners with the public, not tax preparers.

How do you explain what is the difference between those two, Kevin, and where does bookkeeping fall in all this?

Kevin Schneider: Yeah, the preparation piece is what Mike and I call the 'necessary evil' of our job. It's not our passion.

It is definitely a skillset that is needed- you can't sloppily prepare a return on a whim. There has to [00:01:00] be a process. There has to be some sort of education on how to properly prepare a tax return in the taxpayer's way. It's not a just service that doesn't help anybody, but it's not our passion. Our passion is planning. So, preparation is like building your house.

If you have some lumber and a crew, you're not just going to show up on a piece of land and just start building. That's what preparation is. You show up to a CPA's office with a stack of papers, or a PDF file of all your tax documents.

You're like- 'Okay, build me a house.' --There's no foundation. There's no blueprint. There's no plan. The plan comes prior- it's the year before you prepare your tax return. Let's say you're making some significant money this year. You know you're going to have to file your taxes in April. It's not going to sneak up on you, right?

It's every April. So, we can know what is coming our way. So, let's get a plan the summer before.. the fall before, and say, 'What's our income look like? And what can we do to get our tax bill down?' --That's proactively [00:02:00] attacking something, and not just being a victim of the tax code with the preparation piece, which is a needed service.

It's not the service that we feel like people really need. I think there's a big lack in the CPA community... CPAs are just so far behind the ball. They're just always preparing, preparing, preparing. They're always worried about last year, and not just taking a step back and saying, 'Okay, I could prepare a tax return, but what can I do to actually serve my clients in a different way, and save them actual money?'

Mike Pine: --Yeah, I love your example of comparison between building a house and taxes. So, you do have to build a foundation. You do have to have architectural plans to figure this out. Hopefully, you've costed it out too. There's a lot that goes into it... but just because you've gone to an architect and said, 'Hey, build some plans for me so I can build a house,'

--not all foundations are equal. Not all plans are equal, and that ultimate house that you build, it's only going to be as strong as the [00:03:00] foundation. And I think that's where all of our initial tax planning meetings go to is- Let's figure out what we're building a foundation on. What do we have to work with? And then, let's engineer that foundation to be as strong as you need it to be for whatever you're going to build eventually, and they're not all equal.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah. And I would equate us, to keep this analogy going- we're custom home builders. We're not your spec homes. You're not going to come into our firm and just say, 'Hey, I want whatever..' --We're not going to just put you on just whatever plan that everyone else is on because everyone else is different.

You might need five bathrooms, three bedrooms, a mother-in-law suite. You might need who knows what that you're coming in the door with, and we got to design that. And that's the cool part about being a proactive tax advisor is we get a custom build a tax plan that suits your investment strategies, suits your risk tolerance, suits your disposable income, your lifestyle, your plans for 5 to 10 [00:04:00] years.

You want to retire on a beach in 10 years? Let's plan for that, and how do we do that? Why don't we get a short term rental on a beach where you want to be, anyway? Let's cashflow this thing for a few years, save some taxes, but now you're starting to work your investment portfolio to your benefit, and then move into the property in 10 years.

Then you're proactively planning your investment portfolio, saving taxes, growing net worth, and getting closer to your goal. That's just a very small example, simple example, but something we could do.

Mike Pine: It's a great example. And in that example, what I want to highlight, anyone can go and buy a short term rental on the beach where they're going to retire to one day, but not everyone realizes you can have the IRS subsidize that investment. So, you can grow that investment, get that portfolio bigger, bigger faster, by leveraging the tax code. That's what we try to do when we're doing tax planning strategies with our clients. Let's find out where they're trying to go, and by the way, if this is where you're [00:05:00] going, here are the opportunities hidden into the tax code. They're actually not really hidden- they're right there. They're just under thousands of pages of junk that you got to get to..

But that's what we're trying to tax plan- figure out what you want to do in your life. We'd love to meet with you and your financial planner.

Where are you going? What do you want to do? What do we have to work with here? And then, we get to be the knights in shining armor saying, 'Okay, would you want a third of it paid for by the IRS this year? Because here's how you can do that.' --That's fun, man.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah, and it doesn't even just have to be real estate. It could be whatever you're passionate about.

I just spoke to a guy this morning who's looking to buy several auto repair shops. Didn't really get into the why it was just a quick initial consultation with him of why he wanted an auto repair shop.

Maybe he's just he just loves cars, or he thinks it's a good investment, and there's a lot of depreciation on those things. There's the base, the equipment, everything in those auto repair shops is going to be depreciation. So, there's going to be great ways to structure that, and [00:06:00] it's going to align in what he wants, and his goals.

He's making about $400,000 or $500,000 on a W2, and he's going to start this side business, so there's a lot there that we could utilize. You just got to find out what your passions are, and then, just have a talk with us, and say, Hey, I love this, this, and this, I love farming. I love ranching.

I love jet-skiing... I don't know, whatever you want, and maybe, there's something there. You just don't know until you talk to somebody, and that's what we love to do every day.

Mike Pine: Yeah. Let's use this example- the guy you spoke with today, and try to point out the differences by utilizing or leveraging tax planning or not. So let's say this guy is making $500,000 a year on his W2. He's probably paying around 32% effective tax, depending on if he's got anything else going on, on the planning side. 32% tax- let's say it's going to cost him a million dollars to buy this first auto repair shop.

Well, without tax planning, we know he needs a million dollars. He might be able to put $200,000 [00:07:00] down, borrow the other $800,000 from the bank, but that's going to cost him $200,000 out of pocket.

However, if he's buying a million dollars worth of a business, then we can help him leverage and harvest $400,000 or $500,000 in depreciation on that,

if we work together strategically ahead of time. There's not much we can do when someone- 'Hey, I bought an auto repair shop, help me out!' --Come to us before you buy it. Come to us before you structure the deal. Come to us during negotiation because there's so much can be changed. It'd be very possible we get $400,000 or $500,000, let's say $500,000 accelerated depreciation out of this. That would wipe out- if we structure it right- his W2 income, and instead of paying what.. $150,000.. $160,000 in taxes this year, he could pay zero.

So, he could get all of that refunded- that $160,000 back. And if he's putting $200,000 down and not utilizing tax code, he's taking $200,000 from his bank account, from his savings account, from his [00:08:00] foreign case, from somewhere to build this.

But if he does it, and structures it with tax planning in mind, he could have the IRS pay $160,000 of it, and he's only coming out $40,000 out of pocket to build this business. That is the power of leveraging the tax code! I don't know how to say it more simpler and more obvious of how powerful it is. That same person could either use $40,000 to build this business or $200,000.

Which way would you do it?

Kevin Schneider: I think it speaks for itself. Yeah. I would say the tax code is written there to give us guidelines, and we could utilize those guidelines to your advantage. I would never say that taxes are directly for our benefit. It indirectly helps us where their money goes, if the government stewards it well enough, but to go into where Mike is saying, 'If we can leverage this tax code and these tax laws to get you cashflow today, why would we not do it?' --I guess that's the [00:09:00] question.

Mike Pine: It's a matter of efficiency, right? In everything we do in our lives, we choose how we're going to do it. Generally, we try to make it the most efficient. If we're going on a road trip, we figure out the fastest way to get there.

Sometimes, you have to throw in a couple variables, like- I can get there twice as fast if I go on this toll road, but it's costing me $12.

You guys do this kind of efficiency calculation all day, every day, in all the things you do. Most people don't realize the additional benefit, the variable, the efficiency that can be added by leveraging the tax code. Yeah, I agree. The tax code wasn't designed- 'Hey, let's make the tax code that benefits everyone in the country.'

--I wish our government worked that way, but they did come up with a tax code, they believe, benefits our society, benefits our country by growing the economy more, by providing more things our country needs like affordable housing, or energy independence.

We all, in everything else, we choose. Again, if you're driving down the road, we choose the most efficient way to do that, but we know that Google maps is there, we know that the toll [00:10:00] way is there, and that's an option. Most people just don't realize the tax code is there as an efficiency enhancer in their generation of wealth, and their growth of a nest egg, and their growth of a successful business.

They just don't get that, and that's what we're trying to change here on Hidden Money, and that's what we're doing with our firm. So, we get a lot of questions, Kevin, from people that have watched the podcast. You and I get on a sales call with them, and one of the most common questions I have is, what does it look like to work with you and your firm?

What does it look like to work with us in our firm, Kevin?

Kevin Schneider: Yeah, if you've never had a proactive tax plan put in place and want to see what that even looks like,

Mike and I, we offer a free initial consultations with us. And in those consultations, all it is us just getting to know you. What's your situation? How much money are you making? From what sources?

What's your goals? What are you interested in doing with your disposable income?

What are your [00:11:00] pain points with your current CPA? We try to get as much information on this initial consultation as we can, then what we'll do is tell you our initial thoughts. So, if you say, 'Hey, I had a huge bonus this year, and I'm making $600,000 of income, I'm worried about my tax bill and I...'

--I would initially take that conversation- 'Okay, what are you wanting to do with this income? Are you wanting to invest it? Do you need to pay down debt? What do you want to do with this money?' --and if you say, 'Okay, I need to invest some of this.' --'Okay. Here's some investments you can consider, even as a W2 earner on commission, that can save you on these taxes,

and it just depends on...' --and I'll explain the risks.

And this might be, going past the initial consult, but at least, we lay out the thought process of how we would tackle it, give you something to chew on, saying, 'Okay, yeah, these were some good ideas. Maybe I do want to invest in oil and gas, or real estate, or give more to charity, or figure [00:12:00] out a different way to structure my business, or whatever..' --You can take that, sit on it, then come back to us and say, 'Okay, here's

the ideas you gave me- here's the one or two ideas that I really want to focus on.' --Then from there, we would schedule another consultation, walk you through- 'Okay, you want to get into real estate? Here are the rules from A to Z...' --It's a lot of education on the front end of here's what it looks like to develop this tax plan.

Here's what it looks like to do it safely. Here's your potential tax benefit from it. We can give you an estimate of the tax savings given your budget, and given the property you're buying, for instance.. given current tax law with bonus depreciation. We'd walk through all that. Then, after that initial consult, we would link you up with the network.

So, if you need an attorney, if you need a cost segregation engineer, if you need an oil and gas expert, if you need a financial advisor, if you need anything.. Our firm is not a one-stop shop for payroll, accounting, investments, and anything like that yet.. so, when we get into those areas, we'd [00:13:00] like to put you in touch with our team and our network, so then, that way we're all working from the same playbook. And you don't have to use our network- we just say, 'Hey, here are the people that we know and trust, and have great working relationships with, and it's up to you if you want to hire them or not. You can just chat with them and see if it's a good fit.

And then,

we just keep pushing the ball down the field, little by little, depending on what the client's needs are. Some clients want to meet quarterly, some want to meet twice a year, some want to meet once a year. I like to, at least, meet twice a year.. And by 'we', that's just me, Mike and our team.

We have a really great staff here that's trained and knowledgeable, and they'll give you the best service they can, but it's proactive communication. Let's check in halfway through the year.. let's check in at your end- how'd your year go?

What could we do? It is a two way street, like Mike was saying. You can't just go make some crazy real estate moves, or business moves, and then tell us about it and say, 'Okay, help me on my taxes.' --The more information we have, the more we're brought in, the better we can serve [00:14:00] you.

Mike Pine: Absolutely. I have a lot of potential clients, even friends, say, ' What's some tax planning advice that you give everyone?' --or ' How do you structure your tax planning engagements with clients?' --The problem is it's not a one size fits all. You might have 10 people with a $300,000 W2 and that's all they have, these 10 people.

I suspect we're going to have 10 completely different, maybe some similarities... but they're going to be truly different tax planning for all 10 of those people, because, just because they have the same W2 doesn't mean that they're trying to do the same things. Some are married, some have lots of kids, some are single, some have no kids, some are building a business, and that's where their equity and retirement comes from..

some don't have anything but their job and the W2, and they need to invest to grow a nest egg. Everyone's going to have different tax strategy.

It makes it hard because I get asked all the time, and I'm sure you do too, Kevin.. 'Why don't you you write some white papers of just a normal standard tax planning case so [00:15:00] we can glean from that,

so we don't have to wait six months to get on your calendar to talk about it ourselves?' --It would be great if we could do that. My problem is every new client we meet with, we come up with a new strategy that fits them. It gets complicated that way, and I think that scares people off, because they want to know, 'Hey, do you have a tried and true system that I can just step in, just like building widgets?

As long as I get my widget in there in the beginning, at the right time and place, it's going to come out looking like everyone else.' --It doesn't work that way with us. I wish I could figure out how to scale it that way! It'd be easy- we wouldn't have to come to work every day, Kevin, but it doesn't work that way.

It's different for everybody. And then, every year, the tax laws change. Every year, the investment world changes- it's different. I like that because I remember when I was trying to decide what I want to be in college, I did not want to have the same day in, day out job. That would be so boring, but every day.. even when we meet with the same client, one week to the next- the same client.. it's a different [00:16:00] meeting, it's different solutions, it's different problems.

It's fun. It keeps us on our toes.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah. I like that about this job too. Being a CPA is a great career for anyone listening who wants to get into the field. It's great, especially when you get into the consulting piece, just because you get to see all these different scenarios. There are some things we can give blanket advice on- I mean, there are tax laws that have been in play since the eighties, and there are things that have been tried and true for years and years, that you can give very broad examples and advice on, but everyone's situation is different. I can talk all day if you buy a short term rental property- material participation. You may be managing a property across the country, someone else may be managing a property down the street.

Material participation looks differently for those two. So, that's where the devil's in the details- we can say, 'Yeah, you're going to have someone manage the property halfway across the country, and someone that has a property up the street and [00:17:00] they're going to manage it

themselves- same Material Participation tests stay, but the facts of your specific case vary differently on how to apply the law. So, we can give you the law in a big overall blanket, but you're really going to have to nail down your specific circumstance to see how it equates to you, because not every taxpayer is the same.

Mike Pine: Agreed. I just remembered an example with one of your clients, earlier this tax season. You'd met with them. They were getting in the short term rental. They were going to take some money out of a retirement account. I think they mentioned they were just going to take the down payment out, but it turns out they paid cash for it out of their retirement account,

and they didn't call you. They didn't reach out to us and say, 'Hey, I know we were talking about 10% down, but I'm going to go and take the whole thing out.' Or other people that did 1031s, they told you they were going to do 1031s. If they would have reached out to you, it could have saved them so much pain before they pulled the trigger.

In that case where the person pulled out the retirement account, they took it. They [00:18:00] paid cash for the whole thing, and they had to recognize income for the entire purchase price by taking out their retirement account, and pay a penalty on it.

And yes, we got them the short term rental loophole, but they paid a heck of a lot more tax than they were anticipating because, like Kevin says, The devil's in the details. It depends how you do that.

Again, there was another client of Kevin's, I think, that did the 1031, and y'all talked about it. It was a great strategy for him. Unfortunately, they worked with one of these fly by night intermediaries and didn't realize- 'Hey, if we pay down debt and come out of this, I got taxable income on this 1031 exchange.'

--they didn't know that. They came to us after it was all done, tied in a bow, and there was no way to go back and change any of it.

And Kevin had to say, 'Yeah, you paid down a million dollars in debt. You got a million dollars in income.' --I remember the client. I could hear him over the phone.. someone else was talking to him and I can hear him in the hallway.. 'But that's.. What's the point of a 1031 exchange

if I have to pay a million dollars in tax??' --Or [00:19:00] tax on a million dollars' income? We need to have that two-way relationship, that partnership.

That word partnership is a big deal and we don't just say it because it sounds good in marketing.. It does sound good in marketing, and everyone wants a partner in what they're doing in life, for the most part..

But a partnership is two people. At least two parties, if not more, working together, not going and doing it all, and then send it to their partner and saying, 'Okay, hook me up.' --It doesn't work that way. We need a two way relationship with our clients.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah, does that work in marriage? How would it work in your house if you went and bought a car, or bought a house, and then came home and told your wife, 'Hey, I did this thing, and how do you think we should tackle the debt I just got us in?' --How's that conversation going to go, if in that partnership, you do things without communicating?

Mike Pine: That would not go over well in my household. My wife would have my butt.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah, it's the same theory. Now, you're not married to us. We're going to serve you no matter what. We ain't going to be mad at you, [00:20:00] but if you line up the facts and it's not buttoned up, we have to be the bearer of bad news. We'll move every mountain we can to get you out of a situation, or to get you out of a hole.

We never just throw our hands up and say, 'Well, you got yourself in here. Good luck.' -- that is not our heart. Our heart is, 'Hey, if you come to us after the fact, what can we do now? Can we amend some agreements? Can we go back and back-date? Can we go change some sort of the facts of this and have a leg to stand on, and have a more likely chance to pass an audit?' -- That's a conversation we'll have with a client saying, 'Hey, this is the facts. Can we get you out of this? Yeah, maybe.. but it's about a 50-50 shot that when you get audited, this is too aggressive.' --Or we will give you our best opinion on it, then you got to take the risks of knowing- Okay, if we take this aggressive stance, it is defendable.

It's a done in good faith, but we just may not be able to argue in front of the agent, for whatever reason. We might have to pay some penalties and taxes- that's the [00:21:00] risk. But yeah, we'll always try to serve you in whatever capacity- it's just a matter of, please, just reaching out ahead of time,

and before signing the dotted line on the 1031 exchange. Just going- 'Hey, I'm going to email Kevin's team real quick. I'm just going to run this by them for 10 to 15 minutes, really quickly.' --It might be more than 10 to 15 minutes, but just getting a CPA's blessing on something...

Mike Pine: ...could save you $250,000 in tax or $300,000 or more.

Kevin Schneider: And it might be $1,000 of billable work, who knows? That's the other thing, I think, you hit on, Mike, is cost effective. No one builds a house and doesn't count the cost first- that's very Biblical too. Before you do anything, you need to count the cost. So, if you're making $100,000 a year and you want to spend $20,000 on tax planning, don't do that.

More than likely, you're not going to see the savings. So, you don't need the Mercedes of tax plans- you just need a good Toyota that's reliable, and get you there, and we could do that a lot more cost effectively. We [00:22:00] just may not be able to meet every month.

We may not be able to run numbers ad hoc, once a month, or we just have to work out that relationship of what works for your budget. But if you're making a million dollars plus, I don't think you cannot not afford to proactively meet with us on a quarterly basis, or at least, have some heavy consulting, and get a tax plan and a roadmap put together for you.

Mike Pine: Agreed. You can afford not to, but just consider the cost of what you're giving up. If you're making a million a year, paying $250,000.. $300,000 a year in taxes, or more- that's a guaranteed cost. Do you realize there are literally hundreds of options for you to reduce that?

It's your choice though.

What bothers me, Kevin, is a lot of people don't realize that's even a choice. They just accept it, and move on for decades. And there are some people that love the efficiencies of our government, and are willing to fund [00:23:00] it as much as they possibly can.

I'm not one of those, and if you're not one of those, don't just send your tax bill to the treasury department each and every single year without delving into- could you utilize that tax code for your benefit and for the country's benefit? This whole concept of proactive planning, it really comes down to a simple equation of- you have more opportunity before all the facts have become written in stone.

If you meet earlier on, the whole world is your oyster. You can choose to do anything you were planning on doing in many, many different ways. So, you have more opportunity ahead of time. Like these examples Kevin and I were talking about, if you don't do it ahead of time, but you come to us and say, 'Hey, this is what's happened.'

--and we realize there's a problem there, there's probably some opportunities still to help mitigate it, but most of those opportunities are gone. [00:24:00] They've passed you by. Everyone wants to procrastinate taxes. I like to procrastinate my own taxes.

But realize how much it's costing you in money if you are not proactively planning the taxes.

Kevin Schneider: Opportunity cost is a big thing- that loss hurts, and I would say for the cheapest option to even just kick the tires on this thing, it's probably $1,000 to get a good initial consultation, a good hour to 3 hours of tax planning or consulting, reviewing of tax returns, just getting to know you and doing a deep dive.

I bet we could probably do that for $1,000, for most people, just to see if there's any meat on the bone- then you know, at least. And then, if we move forward with the tax plan, we'll talk about costs, and things like that. I mean, at the bare minimum, that's not a lot to risk.

People spend $1,000 on an iPhone in a blink of an eye every year, right?

Mike Pine: Yeah.

Kevin Schneider: This thousand dollars you spend on a tax plan just to even get [00:25:00] peace of mind, knowing you're doing everything, or the options presented to you are not something you want to do, you could buy 20 iPhones with the return on the investment.

Mike Pine: Yeah.

Unless you know, without a doubt that you are not leaving any chips on the table, you are not leaving any untapped tax opportunities out there.. unless you're confident about that, you should really consider investing in a consult.

I'd say three out of four of my sales calls, where we agree there might be a fit between us and the prospective clients I'm talking to, three out of four times I recommend- 'Hey, let's sit down. You sit down with our team. Pay us for that hour.. hour and a half.

Let us see what strategies we can come up with. Let us see what fruit is harvestable for you, and show you how we work.' --and if you don't see value in it at that point, at least you didn't hire us to go prepare a big tax return. You're not signing up for some long subscription of services.

But there are times where we present great, wonderful tax opportunities or tax planning strategies, but [00:26:00] none of them make sense to that person, or they don't feel comfortable about that.

There's almost always ways for you to save taxes, but a lot of times, most of those ways don't make any sense to you, and that's what we figure out in strategy sessions.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah, I mean, we can lop off a lot of income- just go buy a carwash. Go be a carwash owner- all that equipment, bonus depreciation, Section 179, the shell of the building.. you'll depreciate that over 39 years. Everything else, you're going to get a tax write-off for it. All right. There's your tax plan. You may not want to be a carwash owner, right?

So, it does have to fit you, but we'll give those a chance. We'll give you some ideas like that. And then, not every client is a good fit for us. Mike and I, we do part ways with relationships from time to time, if people just don't engage or want to be led to water. We're not going to stress and chase you and hound you. I'm not a car salesman, Mike's not a used car salesman.

We have so many people who want work done, and who really are passionate about our vision and our [00:27:00] mission. And you don't have to be perfectly aligned with everything we do- we just ask that there's a good two-way conversation every so often, and we're involved. And every time I say 'we',

it's Mike and I, and our team. --That you're engaged in your situation. We're not following up with you every month, you go silent, and then, all of a sudden, it's a storm! 'Oh, I need lendings.. Here's my stuff.. I need to meet tomorrow.' --Probably not a good fit. Now, we'll help you, but we also are looking for really good clients who are passionate about their wealth, their financial freedom and saving money on taxes-

and that's what we are. We would be a great fit for those people.

Mike Pine: Yeah. There are plenty of times where clients outgrow us or we outgrow clients we've worked with for a long time. It just doesn't make sense- we're not adding enough value for them to continue paying our fees. There are times when people just get in a holding pattern in their tax life, and there's no need to do strategy for the next two years until [00:28:00] they get that next promotion, or something like that. There are times when we're very honest with people about that.

We're also working on different ways to serve those kinds of clients, so they don't have to be continuing to work with us at high level strategy, even though there's no fruit there- trying to change pricing and change our production process when we're preparing a tax return. Not everyone needs all three steps of quality control reviews that we instituted firm wide. So, we're figuring out how can we pull some of those out, make our clients' bills cheaper, but allow them for the couple of years that they're not doing anything new.

We're trying to figure that out.

I mean, in any industry they have processes, they have procedures- everything that they do is to ensure quality, and we have the same checks and balances. I could just speak from my past experience from my past firms that I've been at, from what I see in the marketplace of returns that come to us, we are well and above on quality. We're well and above on service. Are we perfect? No. No company is. It's [00:29:00] impossible.

Kevin Schneider: But what Mike and I always guarantee- if mistake is done on our end at no fault of yours, meaning, we prepared a tax return and you got an IRS notice with some late fees.

You sent us the K-1, and our team somehow left it in your portal, and didn't bring it into the tax return, or something like that.

Yes, 100%, you are not going to be on the hook for any penalties. We'll fight for those penalties for free. We will amend the tax return for free. That is a service error on our end that our clients will never feel.

Client service is always No. 1 for us, and no company is perfect, but we sure try to get the best quality product out there with a good service, and then maintaining relationships- because clients are still clients today because they saw that they have peace of mind knowing we're going to have their back hell or high water.

And that's what we can assure you.

Mike Pine: Yeah.

That's what it's like to work with us. Just get that free initial consultation. Let's just learn about each other. Mike and I will tell you all about our firm in more detail, if you've got questions. We want to ask [00:30:00] you questions. We want to get to know you, your situations, your passions, your goals.

Kevin Schneider: Now, you can go to www.pinecocpas.com and click Schedule a Consultation, get some basic information in there in front of us,

and then, you could meet with Mike and I, probably within a week or two.

Mike Pine: So, if you think we might or might not be a good fit for you, the best way to figure out is have that initial consult with us- that free initial consult. Just go to our website. Our link is in the notes- all over the place here on our podcast. Come check us out. Schedule a meeting with us. We'd love to chat with you.

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