the podcast recap episode with aj & rory vaden

Ep 363: 15 Legal Strategies for Entrepreneurs to Reduce Taxes | Henry Yoshida Episode Recap

Listen to the episode below

Much of what we do here at Brand Builders Group and on this podcast is geared toward helping you grow your income, but there is more to being a successful business owner than just that!

Today we are reflecting on our recent chat with Henry Yoshida and sharing 15 powerful tax-saving strategies.

Our conversation with Henry was packed with amazing insight and useful tactics, and taxes only made up a portion of what he covered, so make sure to go back and listen to that episode if you have not already.

These are all legitimate, legal, and ethical tax strategies that you can implement today if you want to save, and the crazy thing is that so many of these are not widely known about!

It is important to remember that these strategies are applicable to the US, as tax laws differ across the world, but there is also a good possibility that if you live elsewhere, there may be a comparable rule that you could adhere to in order to save.

So without further ado, let’s get into the 15 ways you and your business can start saving today!

Key takeaways from this episode

  • Maximizing contributions to your retirement account through a defined benefit or pension plan.
  • Benefits of LLC filing as an S Corp; who should look into this option.
  • Unpacking the utility of the 199A exemption for training companies.
  • Renting out your home in line with the Augusta Rule. 
  • Deductions for charitable contributions and Donor Advised Funds.
  • The QEAAP rule and how it can help you and your employees!
  • Employee expense reimbursements and what qualifies for this category.
  • Demystifying Section 179 deductions or the ‘Hummer Rule’.
  • How vacations can help you save on your deductions!
  • Set design write-offs for video creators. 
  • Hiring and paying your children; saving on taxes twice. 
  • Writing off company clothing and the power of using your logo on different items. 
  • Using a Health Savings Account and how it can aid you in the long term.
  • Why moving to Puerto Rico could make your tax dreams come true.
  • The crazy way you can sidestep taxes completely!

Tweetable Moments

“In the US, the government gives tax breaks to entrepreneurs because we are creating jobs, which means we are giving income to people, which means there is less dependency on the government.” — @roryvaden [0:15:53]

“I went to graduate school and I don’t remember learning any of this!” — @roryvaden [0:16:19]

“These are the kind of things that happen if you hang around Brand Builders Group, these are the kind of people we hang out with, these are the kind of conversations we are having.” — @roryvaden [0:34:35]

About Henry Yoshida

Henry is CEO and Co-founder of Rocket Dollar, a web platform that lets people invest tax advantaged retirement dollars into private alternative investments. He is a Certified Financial Planner professional, licensed Realtor, and has 20 years of experience in finance. In the past, Henry was the founder of venture capital backed robo-advisor Honest Dollar[acquired by Goldman Sachs], was the founder of MY Group LLC[$2.6B AUM RIA], and spent 10 years at Merrill Lynch.

He graduated from The University of Texas at Austin, has an MBA from Cornell University, and lives in Austin with his wife and two daughters.

Links Mentioned

Henry Yoshida on LinkedIn

Rocket Dollar

John Lee Dumas

AJ Vaden on LinkedIn

AJ Vaden on Twitter

Rory Vaden

Rory Vaden on LinkedIn

Rory Vaden on Twitter

Take the Stairs

Brand Builders Group

Brand Builders Group Free Call

Brand Builders Group Resources

The Influential Personal Brand Podcast on Stitcher

The Influential Personal Brand Podcast on Apple

RV (00:02): Well, most of the strategies that we teach at Brand Builders Group are strategies to help you grow your income, right? Obviously most of the time on this show we’re interviewing guests. Most of the teaching that we do is in our paid membership. Of course, that’s our core businesses, helping mission driven messengers to build and monetize their brand and become more well known and make a bigger impact in the world. So most of what we talk about is how to grow your income. What’s interesting though is the interview that I just did with Henry Yoshida, which if you haven’t listened to it, go listen to it. The first part of the interview is all about understanding a vehicle called a self-directed i r a, which is, it’s not a new vehicle, but it’s one that you most people haven’t heard of that’s becoming more popular, especially because of like a tools being created like the one that Henry has created. RV (00:52): Which is very, very affordable way to sort of transfer your i r a into more self-directed or non-trad, non-traditional assets. And anyways, that’s what the whole interview is about. But towards the end of the interview we started talking about just general tax strategy. And you know, there were a few things that came up that inspired me to go, you know what? I’m gonna, I’m gonna put together a killer episode here for you all and this on tax strategy, because this is not something that you normally hear. And I would consider, like when most people think of Brand Builders group, right? They think of like, oh, you guys help people, you know, crush book launches, right? Like, we’ve had at the time of this recording, 11 clients that we’ve helped hit the New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestseller list. RV (01:43): We’ve had four clients that we’ve helped that we’ve, that we’ve worked with where their TED Talk has gone viral over a million views. We’ve had five clients grow their business more than seven figures in a year. Like it’s, it’s, we we’re known for like those kinds of things. But when you are with us for a while, like a lot of our clients stay with us for many years. Like as your business starts to grow, our training gets more and more advanced. And one of the things that we talk about, but rarely, it’s more like in smaller rooms like our private Highland Masterminds and like our most experienced people is tax strategy. And, and we talk about things like managing your financial statements and, and you know, forecasting and, and just, you know, legal stuff that you don’t hear a lot. So anyways, what I wanted to go ahead and put out there into the world and just make this available for free is 15 legal strategies to help you reduce your taxes if you’re an entrepreneur. Now obviously I’m, I’m not a cpa, I’m not a C F P. I did, I did go to school by undergrad. I studied much about accounting and I do have an mba. But you should always, always, always, you know, consult with your local tax advisor. RV (02:58): You know, know. So I don’t consider this professional like legal advice officially, but I’m telling you, you wanna check into these things. And I’m not gonna explain ’em all in detail cuz we don’t have time. But I’m gonna rattle these off of 15 legitimate legal ethical tax strategies that you can, you can explore if you’re an entrepreneur. And this is important. And, and I would actually say part of why I’m putting this together, and no offense to CPAs, there’s some great CPAs out there, but in our experience, we have worked with a number of CPAs who actually aren’t very well equipped to offer tax strategy advice. Most of them just do tax returns. They’re not very creative, they don’t ask very many questions. And when I mean creative, I don’t mean creative, like they’re bending the rules. I’m saying they don’t even know what questions to ask in order to take advantage of many of the kinds of things that I’m gonna share with you here. RV (04:00): Right? And so the, the place to learn tax strategy is not graduate school. It’s it’s not, you know, professional training. Where you really learn it is from other entrepreneurs. And, and honestly, they have to be very successful entrepreneurs. Otherwise, this conversation doesn’t come up very often and very, very few people know much about it. And so, anyways, that’s why I thought let’s go ahead and just put this out into the world. This’ll be, you know, hopefully you’ll see an example of some of what our high level business training looks like. Yes, we teach, you know, all the other things. Copywriting and funnels and podcasting in the business of speaking and book launches and how to train your sales team and sell high dollar offers and, you know, build your content and write your book and your positioning and messaging. But our phase four curriculum gets pretty ninja and it gets pretty advanced on, on just general being an entrepreneur. RV (04:54): So here’s just like one example of a micro lesson. I’m gonna put this out here into the world for free. You know, take it with a grain of salt, but this is, this is stuff that we’ve learned by experience. So here we go. I’m gonna rattle through these again, I’m not gonna spend a ton of time on each one, but these are, I’m gonna say these are hints for you to go investigate and look because they’re very legitimate. So, number one is what came up in the interview with Henry and that’s what kind of inspired me to put this together for you is a defined benefit plan or a pension plan. So you can listen more to the interview cuz we kind of talked a little bit in, in detail in the interview. But the bottom line with this is that as a, as a business owner, you can create a, a mechanism by which you provide a, a retirement benefit for your employees, okay? RV (05:46): Typically, like you think of 401k, right? And but when you are an employee of the company, there are certain plans that allow, allow you as the owner to maximize or create, create large contributions to your retirement account. So it doesn’t pad your money doesn’t pad your pocket with money in the short term. In fact, it, it takes money out of your pocket because you’re putting it into retirement instead of putting it either into your checking account or or into the government’s pocket. But what it does is it allows you to have to, to, to contribute much more than you would normally be allowed to include with something like the r you know, there’s Roth IRAs and they have income limits, and then there’s traditional IRAs and they have total contribution limits, and then there’s four oh [inaudible] limits. RV (06:40): So, you know, typically, you know, 25,000, 20 to $30,000 ish somewhere in there is about what you can do. But if you’re an entrepreneur and you have a successful business and you start to make real money and you go, okay, what are other things I can do? I can provide this awesome benefit to my employees and it gives me a vehicle to sock away more money for retirement later. So, you know, pension plans, defined benefit plan, go, you know, investigate that and listen to the interview with Henry, you can check that out. Second thing if you’re making a profit the, the, you know, the entity, the legal structure of your, of your business entity dramatically affects your, your tax liability and your tax implications. So there’s, there’s more that should be considered into this conversation. But in general, okay, a a great place to look if you are, you’ve been a, an entrepreneur and you’ve got a fairly successful business and you’re making profit, is to look at the structure in L L C filing as an S corp, right? RV (07:43): So a lot of times a business starts as like a sole proprietor, then at some point you maybe become an L L C. But look into L L C filing as an S corp for lots of of entrepreneurs that are sort of in this maturing phase, starting to make money. There is a great opportunity for tax advantages. Now there’s some, there’s some other things that get triggered. And, and what I’m sharing with you, I’m not sharing with you unethical or illegal strategies. These are legal ones. Part of what makes them legal is that they have counterbalancing forces, right? So in order to take advantage of some of these, there’s certain other things you can take advantage of. But I’m sharing with you sort of like my, some of my greatest hits here. There’s, there’s a few that are not on this list that are more advanced really for like scaling companies. RV (08:31): Really, really like, as as you start thinking about selling your company that would come up. And there’s one on here. The last one, by the way, I’m gonna show you how to become filthy rich and never ever pay taxes in a completely legal way. That’s gonna be number 15 on this list. So, so keep staying tuned for that. All right, so number three specifically, this is something for training companies. So if, if you are a training company which means you train people, you, you train, you have like you know, a lot of times it’s, it’s some type of information marketing type business where you do professional training. There is something called a 1 99 a exemption. Okay? Now this is set to sunset currently, I think in 2025. But if you just go to irs.gov and just look up 1 99 A, this is qualified business income deduction and look for the FAQs. RV (09:30): This creates a major tax advantages that, you know, could, can be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. If you have a company that you know, is like, let’s say multi seven figures, that is a true, legitimate training company. And there’s certain things you have to do to qualify as a legitimate training company. Brand builders group, we’re a training company. We have curriculum and, and we have workbooks, and we have courses in systematic training and processes that we put people through. So look at, look up the 1 99. A number four is the Augusta rule. So the Augusta Rule, this is something that says you can rent your home 14 days a year. I, I, I believe, again, don’t quote me on all this, this isn’t what I do full-time, but I, I, you know, I’m, the things I’m saying shouldn’t be grossly out of out inaccuracies. RV (10:21): They, they should be pretty accurate. Off the top of my head, I think the Augusta rule says you can rent your home 14 days a year tax free. It comes from the masters tournament and people who live in Augusta who rent their home out during the masters and they make a bunch of money. So what the Augusta rule allows you to do is to rent your own home to your business. So if your business has meetings and you have to rent boardrooms or meeting space and that’s a legitimate business operation and function that you have whatever the market rate is that you would pay to rent somewhere else, can be amount that you can you know, the equivalent market rate of, of renting a similar property or space somewhere else you can rent to yourself and use your home for those meetings. RV (11:08): And, and 14 days worth of that can be tax free. So this is this is one of the things you sometimes hear on the internet and you’re like, is that real? Actually is real? A few of these are gonna be like that where you’re like, man, I’ve, I’ve heard, you know, I’ve seen Instagram and TikTok videos like have gone viral. A lot of times they’re over sensationalizing things and they’re not, you know, telling you about like the restrictions behind them, but some of them are, you know, they’re actually legit and you just have to sort of investigate. The Augusta rule is one of those. Number five is a D A F, which is a donor advised fund. This is a charitable, this has to do with charitable givings. And basically, you know, when you make charitable contributions, the government allows you to, to deduct that from your taxable income. RV (11:55): Well, the thing is, is you might, let’s say you have a bunch of money come in at, at one year or something, you have a big launch or something, g great happens. You just have a good year and you’re sitting on a pile of money and you’re not sure who you wanna donate that money to. And, and you don’t wanna pay taxes on it. So you go, I’m gonna start a d a f a donor advised fund, which allows me to put my money aside in ear market for charitable givings, and I can take the tax deduction now so that I don’t get taxed this year, but then I have to give that money later. So again, it’s not like it’s some magic way of, of keeping money in your pocket, it’s just saying, rather than paying money to the government, I’m gonna pay money to causes that I care about and, and I’m gonna give, and so I’m reducing my tax liability. RV (12:44): And the government does that on purpose. It’s not like you’re sneaking one past them, right? What they’re doing is they’re incentivizing business owners and people of wealth to invest into and give money to things that make the world a better place. You know? And they have to be, you know, actual nonprofit organizations and they, they have to uphold certain standards to, to classify what, whatever it is, a 4 0 1 [inaudible] [inaudible] and i, I think is what it is. Yeah, I think, I think that’s it. A 4 0 3 [inaudible] maybe, maybe there’s both of ’em. But anyways, they have to be a nonprofit organization. But the point is, you can take the deduction immediately now and not have to give the money until later. Also, the money inside of your fund can grow and grow and grow and earn interest while you’re figuring out who you want to distribute that money to. RV (13:33): So that’s a, that’s a cool one. Number six is a keep bonus, and that’s Q E A A P. It is a rule that allows you to make up to $1,600, I believe, per employee as a gift and a deduction for any gift. So basically, instead of paying them $1,600 in income, of which you have to pay payroll taxes on and they have to pay in income taxes on, you can actually get money to your employees. So it’s a way of getting them more money where neither of you, like you get the tax deduction and they don’t pay the income tax on it. And you can do that up to $1,600 per a year per employee using something called the keep bonus. So that’s a really cool way. Again, it doesn’t put more money in your pocket, but it is, it prevents you from paying taxes. RV (14:29): You, if you don’t do that, what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna get taxed on all that money, and the government’s gonna take a percentage of that. So it’s basically like instead of paying it to the government, you could pay it to your employees. And again, it’s the reason it’s not illegal. It’s not like the government is stupid or that they don’t know this. They’re, they’re doing it as going, Hey, there’s a vehicles and ways to increase the amount of money that you give to people. And this is why, by the way, this is why entrepreneurs get tax breaks, is because the government knows you’re stimulating the comp, the, the economy you are helping you, your, you’re helping stabilize the country. And b by the way, I should have said this earlier, these are all US based tax strategies. So I know we have a lot of you that are listeners that listen internationally. RV (15:15): This is completely US based. I apologize, but I’m not, I’m not well versed in international tax law, but what I would say is my experience has been many other countries have similar types of things, similar types of vehicles. They’re often called something differently. So still worth paying attention to this and then kind of investigating your local tax code or asking a C P A or asking a successful entrepreneur or investor about some of these things. But anyways, in the us you know, the, the government gives tax breaks to entrepreneurs cuz we’re creating jobs, which means we’re giving income to people, which means there’s a less dependency on the government for their, for their income and for their health and wellbeing and their family, and also for their retirement, right? And, and that takes pressure off of the government. And so that’s, that’s kind of why this works. RV (16:03): It’s not like we’re pulling a fast one over them, but it, it’s also, if no one tells you this, you’re not gonna know any of this stuff. And I went to graduate school, right? Like I went to graduate school and I don’t remember learning any of this. like virtually none of this you know, prepared me to be like the entrepreneur mindset at least when it comes to taxes. So that’s the key bonus. There are also employee expense reimbursements. So there’s things like travel if they’re traveling for work, if they have education, like if they go attend conferences, things like a cell phone and even I believe exercise programs and certain, like gyms like the Y M C A and stuff like that, you can reimburse your employees for those certain expenses. And then you get those as a tax deduction. RV (16:51): So you don’t have to pay taxes, payroll taxes on that money, but you’re, you’re transferring money from the business to your employees without having a, and it’s lowering your tax burden. It’s lowering your, your tax impact. So that’s number seven. Number eight, okay? This is another classic internet viral video One is something called the section 1 79 deduction. This is sometimes referred to as the Hummer rule. And you go, people are going and buying hummers and taking a hundred percent of that as a deduction. Is that really real? And the answer is yes, it was for a while, and it kind of is still. So section 1 79 refers to that section of the, the tax code, which says that vehicles that weigh over 6,000 pounds are they were, they were a hundred percent deductible. I think that’s trailing off. RV (17:50): I think it trails down a little bit year over year. But this, this is something that we actually took advantage of because when you have these, it’s the catches, it has to be a, it, the vehicle has to have a gross vehicle weight rating, G V W R, gross vehicle weight rating of more than 6,000 pounds. And if that is the case and you buy a vehicle that weighs over 6,000 pounds, that’s considered to be like a commercial vehicle for your business, you could take a hundred percent of that amount as a deduction in the year that you made that purchase. Now this was like a year ago, I think this is already factoring out, but and, and, and, and may, it’s gonna disappear at some point unless the tax law changes. But anyways, investigate the details of a section 1 79 deduction. RV (18:42): Number nine is vacations, okay? Business trip slash vacations. It is true, you know, to my knowledge that you can take deductions for vacations if more than 50% of the time is for work, right? So you have to be doing work related activities more than 50% of the time. So there are details around this that matter and that, that, that are important. There’s details around all of these things, like I should have mentioned. Going back to the Augusta rule, which was number four on this list, one of the things you have to do if I remember, is you have to take meeting notes and you have to produce meeting notes that say I had, I actually had this meeting in my house on this date. This is what we talked about. And this is a meeting that we would’ve had somewhere else at a hotel. RV (19:32): And I would’ve, I would’ve or could have had to have paid that money to a hotel. And rather than doing that, I’m, I’m taking it as you know, a tax deduction for on my taxes, but I actually had a real meeting. You have to actually have a real meeting and have, have notes. Now you know exactly how long the meeting is and what exactly do you cover. Those things are, you know, a little more gray area and a little bit depends on your appetite for, you know, how much you follow the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law, et cetera, et cetera. But on business trip vacations, a good example of it is, Hey, I’m gonna go to Miami and I’m going to, you know, set up work meetings on Friday and on Monday, and then I’ll just stay there Saturday and Sunday. RV (20:14): All now of a sudden that becomes a business trip that I can write off you know, in full or large portions of, or certain components of, so again, there are, that is a legal, legal deduction. Number 10, this one is interesting. I almost didn’t put this one on the list cuz we’ve, we don’t, we’ve never done this, but I’m hearing of a lot of people doing this. So I would approach this one with extra caution, but if you have a company and you own a video production company, okay, so you have to start a business. You, you know, which means there has to be some legal documents, right? And you create an actual business that is a video production company that does video work. Then anything that you buy that shows up in your videos, it can be a deduction because it’s considered a part of the set design. RV (21:10): I’m sure it’s not anything you buy, it’s probably not cars and houses and, and helicopters and things although maybe, but you know, just like certain other things, like anything that would appear in one of your sets, which again, there’s probably limitations to this, but a lot of times it’s much more flexible than you realize if you actually go investigate the details. And this is where I talk about, you know, CPAs aren’t super creative, they don’t think of this kind of thing. And you go, well, if you shoot videos as a part of what you do and you go, can I start a little side business that does this legitimately? Like it’s gotta be a business. You gotta have some other clients beyond just you. But how many clients do you have to have for it to be considered legitimate? You know, is is kind of a flexible conversation. RV (21:53): So and then you go, man, I’m gonna, I’m gonna buy a prop you know, and I’m gonna buy a $200 set of bows headphones, because I’m gonna use that as a prop in a video and it’s part of my set design, right? So yeah, there’s an ethical gray area that comes into this, but there’s a, there’s a legal component that is, is perfectly legal if you are abiding by certain things. So pay attention to that. Alright, number 11, another internet one. This one is often becomes, you know, one of these viral videos is to hire your children. And this is true, this is a, is a, is a perfectly legal strategy. As long as your kids have an actual job, I think they have to have a job description and they have to have certain, certain form formalities and certain things that establish them as an employee of the company. RV (22:46): So in this case, you can pay your kids up to, at the time of this recording, I think it’s $12,500 a year, and the kids don’t have to pay taxes. Why? Because nobody has to pay taxes on the first $12,500 per year. So how does this save you money on taxes? Well, it’s basically a way that you can get money to your children with pre-tax dollars instead of after tax dollars, right? If, if I were gonna, you know, buy something for my kids, I’d have to buy that with after tax dollars. Like I draw income, I pay taxes, and then I have money to pay, put give to my kids. If my kids are an employee of the company now I can pay them $12,500 every year. They don’t have to pay taxes. And now they have actual money that is theirs that they have earned. RV (23:38): Now that money has to, will go to them. It cannot be money that you use otherwise that is like, you know, illegal. But if it is money that is going to them that they’re using for their things, paying for schooling, paying for sports, paying for whatever I don’t even think there’s restrictions on like toys and things. Like I think they can spend the money double check that, but, but it’s their money. It can’t be your money. You can’t pretend to pay that money and then take that money and go buy yourself a car with it. But it can be money that they have and they can, they can then start to invest that money and use that money to pay. I think they can even pay for like private school and things that are of personal direct benefit to them. And you go, the reason it’s an advantage is you’d be paying that money anyways, right? RV (24:22): Like if you didn’t pay it to him, you’d be paying that out of your pocket and you’d be paying that money with after tax dollars. So look into the specifics again of exactly you know, you can’t just say they’re an employee, you have to give them certain duties and things, but it’s, that’s reasonable, right? And you’re the business owner. So you’re, you are within your legal rights to determine what you pay people for and what you hire them to do and how much you pay people, right? The, as, as long as it’s above minimum wage, there’s no, there’s no government mandate on what tasks you choose to pay certain money for. And so, you know, there’s a limit here, there’s a threshold, but again, this is perfectly legal. Number 12, anything with your logo on it is considered a uniform or advertising expense, including clothing, right? RV (25:12): So brand builders group, you know, I, I’m for some of you are listening to this, you can’t see me, but I’m wearing my brand, a brand builders group sweatsuit that we got. It’s got our logo on it, this is a hundred percent write off, right? So I’ve got this little tiny logo on here, and now all of a sudden this piece of clothing is a hundred percent write off as advertising expense and I would say is very legitimate, right? Those of you that are watching this video, you see the logo right inside the video. So it’s like very, very legit now. So considering put your logo on things now there’s probably some limits here. Like putting a logo on your car doesn’t necessarily mean you can just write off the whole car, but there are some things like that where people wrap their cars and they do certain things. RV (25:57): You should look at that. Number 13, number 13 is an H s a A health savings account, okay? A health savings account. Think of it like an I r A, it’s just an account where you can put money in. You know, kind of like how we were talking with Henry about the, this, our whole conversation in this last interview was about SD IRAs, self-directed IRAs. It’s just a, it’s just a special type of account that has special tax treatment in the eyes of the government. And HSA is an account. When you put money into your hsa, that money you don’t get taxed on the money you put in there. Now, here’s the catch. All of that money has to be used for health expenses, right? So that’s why the government, again, you’re not pulling a fast one over the government, it’s legal. RV (26:46): They, they ins they create this tax incentive and the whole tax system, right, is not about penalizing people, it’s about incentivizing people to use their money in certain ways, in ways that benefit the economy, the overall health and stability of a country and, and, and you know, a government, et cetera. Well, this, if people have money saved for their own health expenses, that reduces the dependency again on the government. It keeps you healthy, et cetera, et cetera. There’s advantages to the government and to the overall, you know, country of keeping people healthy. So when you put money into your health savings account, now you have money that is earmarked. You can only use that money for health expenses except once you are over a certain age. So if you put money into an HSA year after year after year, and it’s growing, right? It’s an, it’s, it’s, you can have that invested that is growing. RV (27:43): You at a certain age, which is probably 59 and a half or 62 and a half or 65 or whatever the number is. Now, if you haven’t used that money for health expenses at that point, I believe you can then take it. And you can use that money. You, you can, you can use that money as retirement if not, even if you can’t do that or even if the legislation changes around that. The advantage is you have money growing and growing and growing. So even if you’re gonna use it for your, you know, your to, to be in a retirement home one day and and assisted living home, the advantage is you’ve had money growing and earning interest and, and, you know, you’re, you’re saving on taxes throughout your lifetime. It’s growing. You’re not paying taxes on that. And then when the time comes that you need it for large health expenses, the money is there, right? RV (28:34): So that’s a huge advantage. And I actually think that once you reach a certain age, I think you can access some of that money as retirement money. In, now again, in the interim, it doesn’t put more money in your pocket. It, it’s, it’s all of this is allowing you to invest. Notice the theme here. The government is incentivizing you. The government is using tax law to incentivize you to use your money in certain ways, providing jobs, taking care of your health, investing in things, and providing for your own retirement and for the retirement of your employees. That’s why these things are all legal. It’s, it’s, it’s because they want you to use it in a certain way. So what a lot of successful entrepreneurs do is they go, ah, let me put some money. You know, if you max out your I r a and you max out your 401k, and you start to make real money every year in profits, every year you go, well, let me put all my money, let me, let me max up my hsa my health savings account, which is I think at the time of this recording, around $3,600 a year, you can put $3,600 a year in there and now that account grows. RV (29:38): And then if you have the money or hopefully then you just, you pay your health expenses with after tax dollars so that you can have this big thing growing as a nest egg that gets bigger and bigger and bigger over the, over over time. So that’s a great, a great legal strategy. Now, these last two are huge strategies and they, they are gonna, they will sound crazy, but these are ways that you can actually legally avoid paying taxes at all. Like and you know, or certain parts of taxes. Okay? So here’s what number 14 is, and you may have heard of this. The, the more successful you become as an entrepreneur, the more you’ll start hanging around people who are having these kinds of conversations. And you will start to hear about Puerto Rico Act 22, Puerto Rico Act 22. RV (30:32): We have several friends now at this point who have moved to Puerto Rico. John Lee Dumas was our first friend that did this. And now I can, off the top of my head, think of like five other friends who all live in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico Act 22 allows you to play a, a flat tax rate of 4% again, at the time of this recording. But you have to live, you have to be a primary resident of Puerto Rico. So if you like Puerto Rico and you don’t mind living in Puerto Rico Puerto Rico is a US controlled territory, right? So you’re under the protection and the, and the rule of the United States. But you, you, there, there are some caveats here. So you have to live in Puerto Rico, you know, one day more than half a year. So whatever that is, 162 or 163 days a year, whatever the number is. RV (31:23): You have to live there. You also have to do certain things to establish Nexus. Like your banking account has to be there, your place of worship your your, your primary mailing address, your your driver’s license, things like that have to be legit. You have to become a legit Puerto Rican resident. But when you do that, you then do not have to pay federal income tax of the us. You only pay Puerto Rico taxes, which are 4%. Now one of the other things to be aware of is that you give up your right to vote, as I understand it, right? So you can no longer vote in elections, but and you gotta move your family to Puerto Rico. So there’s some trade-offs, right? But you’re also going, you might be going from a 40% tax bracket or 50% tax bracket if you live in California. RV (32:09): And if you can set up your business and operate legitimately in Puerto Rico, you’re gonna go to 4%. So you could like almost double your income just by moving. And you have to stay there a certain number of years. I think it’s like three years or something. And if you, if you come back before then you have, you know, there’s, you have to like do back taxes or whatever. But so anyways, look at this. It’s a real thing. Puerto Rico Act 22 and then number 15, this is the grand finale, the Grand PBA of how you can literally become a millionaire, a multimillionaire, a billionaire even, and never pay any taxes at all. How does this work? How could you possibly, how is this real? Yes, this is real. Okay? This is how wealthy, wealthy, wealthy people think. How do we know we happen to know a lot of wealthy people? RV (33:06): Because a lot of, I mean, we’ve had four clients at Brand Builders Group who are billionaires in like the last 18 months, billionaires with a B, right? So we’re starting to see and hang out with some like really wealthy people. So what is the best way to create wealth and never pay taxes? How is this possible that you can have billions of dollars and never pay taxes? So here’s, here’s how you do it. It’s not easy, but it is real. Is you start a company as an entrepreneur, you grow that business, and then you take that company public. Once you take that pump, that company public, now you have stock that is actually worth real money. It has a, a real market rate. And what a lot of these billionaire founders do, and I’m talking big companies, right? Big time people like celebrity entrepreneurs that you hear about. RV (33:59): So what they do is they take their company public, they have millions and millions and hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars in stock. And then what they do is they take a loan against that stock from a bank and you never pay taxes, right? So, so, so they’re using their stock as collateral to take a loan from a bank. So that’s how they turn it into money. If they were to sell the stock, that would be a liquidity event. So they would then realize that as income and they would have to pay taxes on it. But there are, there’s plenty of banks who will look at a public, publicly, publicly held stock as a, as a strong collateral against alone. And so they’ll take a loan from the bank, they hold up the stock as collateral, they technically own the stock. They never have to sell the stock. RV (34:48): And what’s happening is the bank is giving them a loan against it. And now they’re just paying, they’re paying interest, they’re paying interest on that loan to the bank. But it is, it pales in comparison to what you would pay in taxes to the government. I found this, bam. That is how you can 100% legitimately avoid paying taxes and become filthy, filthy rich if you wanna do it. So there you have it, no gimmicks nothing illegal. Definitely some things that have some stipulations and some criteria that you want to pay, pay attention to. But these are the kind of things that happen if you hang around brand builders group, right? These are the kind of people we hang out with. These are the kind of conversations we’re having in addition to how do we change the world and how do we help you change the world? RV (35:35): And how do you add your service to more people and, and make an impact and make the world a better place? And a big part of how you make the world a better place is how you use your money to do that. So we have no problems making money, right? We love money. Money’s just not the most important thing in our life, right? For us we’re, we’re Jesus followers, we’re Christians. Like for us, we’re a hardcore Bible thump and Jesus freaks. So we don’t serve money, money serves us. Money is a tool, but we, we care about money, we’re deliberate about money. We like to make money, and we want to help you make a lot of money, and then use your money to do good in the world for you and your family and your employees and for the people around you. RV (36:17): So there you have it. 15 legitimate legal ways to save money on taxes. Investigate these, check these out. Hey, share this, share this episode with someone who needs to hear it and request a call with our team. Will you go to brand builders group.com or sorry, wrong number, wrong number go to free brand call.com/podcast. Go to free brand call.com/podcast. Learn about us. Read a little bit about the people we work with you know, the clients that we serve. We, we serve major celebrity clients, ed Mylet and Lewis, how, and Eric Thomas and Amy Porterfield and Peter Diani, and John Gordon and Matthew West, right? Like, we have major celebrity clients, but our heart is also for the people who are just starting out and who are real entrepreneurs trying to find their way and figure this all out. And we’re gonna guide you. We’re gonna guide you on everything, marketing, sales, positioning and then scaling your company with leadership and financial strategy that is legal and ethical and that actually works to make the world a better place. So check out free brand call.com/podcast. Share this episode with an entrepreneur that you know who needs to save money on taxes. So I want you to think in your head right now, who do I know that is an entrepreneur that needs to save money on the taxes? Share this episode with them. You might just change their life and the lives of their employees and maybe the people around him and the investments that they make. And keep coming back here every single week listening and in to the influential Personal Brand podcast. Bye for now.

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25 of the World's Most Recognizable Influencers Share Their Tips on How to Build and Monetize a Personal Brand

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