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Articles by Tom Wheelwright
3 More Myths About Tax Return Preparation
In fact, the IRS anticipates taxpayers to request extensions of time. The IRS even grants the extension automatically when the proper form is timely filed.
3 Tips To Get Your Wealth Building On Track In The New Year
One way to measure how realistic your wealth goals are is to break them into long-term goals and short-term goals.
The First Step To Creating A Wealth Strategy
The first step to creating a successful wealth strategy is knowing where you are going. I call this Your Wealth Vision.
3 Steps To Capturing Tax Savings With Your Bookkeeping
The business portion is the most important piece because this is what will ultimately reduce your taxes. When you code the business portion of your mixed expenses, code it to a current asset account that is used only for this purpose.
Every Day Is An Opportunity To Reduce Your Taxes
The items you purchase may be business deductions! Keep in mind that in order for an item to be deductible in your business it must have a business purpose and be ordinary and necessary in your business.
5 Tips To Planning Your Holiday Travel With Your Tax Strategy In Mind
Travel is one of my favorite deductions because it is one of those expenses that most of us already have, and when planned properly, it gives us the opportunity to increase our business's bottom line while decreasing our tax liability.
More Year-End Checklist Items For Business Owners And Investors
Tax planning that creates permanent tax savings by eliminating tax is my absolute favorite type of tax planning. The home office deduction is another great example of this.
How To Capture The Opportunities To Reduce Your Taxes
Bookkeeping is a fantastic and powerful tool when it comes to reducing your taxes. Remember, our taxes are impacted any time we receive or pay money.
Applying The New Tax Law To Your Taxes
With the end of the year just around the corner, the new law may provide you with additional tax saving opportunities. In this report, I'll share the 2 most popular tax breaks in the new law and how they apply to your taxes.
Year-End Tax Planning Tips You May Want To Avoid
The best plan of attack is to identify tax saving strategies that work with your personal goals, your business goals and your financial goals for the long-term.
Year-End Checklist For Business Owners And Investors
Bookkeeping is one of the keys to bringing a tax strategy full circle. It's one thing to know what's deductible and how to maximize your deductions, but unless that gets reflected in your bookkeeping, it's as if the tax planning never happened at all.
Of course, there are specific rules behind this permanent tax saving strategy. I find that after I go through the rules with my clients, we usually find a way to use this strategy - legally - and it creates another stream of permanent tax savings.
Year-End Checklist For Rental Real Estate
Real estate is also one of the most complex areas of the tax law. This makes it easy to overlook important steps, which can lead to missing out on tremendous tax savings.
Why Having No Estate Tax May Not Be A Good Thing
I would ask myself why my estate isn't big enough to be taxable. I would wonder why the wealth I've created is so small that the government isn't even interested in taxing it.
Deducting Your Seminar Expenses
This is an area of the tax law that is a prime example of how increasing your knowledge, can decrease your risk. In this case, it can decrease the risk of overpaying your taxes and decrease the risk of having to pay more tax (and penalties and interest) if you are audited.
2 More Reasons For Estate Planning
You've probably heard a lot about the probate process, but have you ever heard anything good about it? Most probate stories are nightmare stories. Probate can be expensive, it's a public process and it can be contested.
An Opportunity To Convert To A Roth IRA In 2010
2009 is the Time to Start Your Planning If you plan on converting, then now is the time to start planning because your 2009 tax planning may look a little different. For example, you may want to defer deductions until 2010 and accelerate income into 2009 to avoid being pushed into higher brackets in 2010, 2011 or 2012 from large conversion income.
3 Ways Partnerships Give Your Tax Strategy Maximum Flexibility
When the business starts, the owners have a profit sharing structure in mind, let's say it's 50/50. Then, a few years down the road, the owners have a need to change their profit sharing structure - maybe their roles have changed or perhaps one wants to work less.
3 Ideas For Business Financing In A Tough Market
The form of leverage most people are familiar with is a loan, which is a way to leverage your assets. Leverage in this case may be a mortgage on a piece of property or a line of credit in your business.
The Benefits Of Setting Financial Goals
If you don't know how much you are saving or when you will be able to retire, it's time to look at the benefits of setting financial goals. It's important to look at what your future plans are, how much you can contribute to them, and how you plan to manage and grow your wealth.
The 2 Questions Every Business Owner Needs To Know How To Answer
Leverage in a business comes from many sources. But the most important source is the business systems. The first key to building a profitable and valuable business is to create the proper systems to run the business. Then, the owner can spend his or her time managing the systems instead of managing the people.
How To Use Reporting To Accelerate Your Wealth
Reporting is summarizing activity in a clear and concise format. When done correctly, reporting is a helpful and meaningful tool that helps you make timely business and investing decisions. Now, be honest. Some of you saw the word reporting and immediately began trying to convince yourself you don't really need it. I find that most people avoid reporting, even though reporting can help them accelerate their wealth!
3 Tax Planning Tips For S Corporations
Recent IRS statistics say that S corporations represent the most popular form of small business corporation. That's understandable. S corporations provide some powerful tax savings benefits for small business owners and investors.
Why More And More People Are Forced To Pay More Taxes
Let me start with an overview of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). AMT is a system of tax laws that parallels the regular tax laws. It has its own rates, its own exemption and its own deductions. Every individual must compute their tax every year under both the AMT and the regular tax rules. The individual then pays the higher of the two taxes.
The Basics Of State Tax Planning
The first step to turning your state tax exposure into state tax opportunity is to identify the states you or your entities may be required to file state tax returns.
Top 3 Incorrect Uses Of Like-Kind Exchanges
If like-kind exchanges are used incorrectly, the result is not just an increase in taxes, but also a slow down in the ability to build wealth. Here are the top 3 ways I see like-kind exchanges used incorrectly
Exploding The Myths Of Financial Health In A Recession
The hot topic on everyone's mind right now, including radio, television and print media is how to cope with the current recession. The worst advice possible in recessionary times, or any other time, for that matter are what a lot of the analysts and talking heads are recommending today, which is businesses and investors pull back, reduce their expenditures, create a budget and save their money.
How To Determine The Type Of Investing That Is Right For You
Now, it is not bad to have a team around you to do the work. In fact, it's fantastic to build a wealth team! But there is a huge difference between handing everything over with no further involvement versus understanding the type of investing being done and letting the systems manage the team members so less involvement is required.
The 3 Big Limitations With Itemized Deductions
The current itemized deduction calculation is so complex that it can be difficult to identify just how big the limitations already are. To help quantify the current limitation on itemized deductions, I'll review the 3 big limitations with itemized deductions.
3 Questions To Evaluate The Internal Controls In Your Business And Investing
A wealth protection tool that I rarely see business owners or investors use, yet it is quite possibly the most effective tool against internal threats - specifically embezzlement. This form of protection is a system of internal controls.
In a perfect world, the tax preparer would have asked the right questions to learn more about Pierre's goals and situation and would have translated "confusing accountant talk" into something clear and understandable. In general, S Corporations are good entities for businesses. But, they can be terrible when there are losses, and losses are common when a business first begins.
Why You Must Change Your Mindset Before You Can Reduce Your Taxes
The number one reason given for the erroneous overpayment of taxes was the complexity of the tax code. This plays right into molding the mindset that taxes are just too complicated to even try to understand.
Accuracy in a tax return simply means that the information provided by the client was reflected on the tax return. It does not mean that the tax return was prepared in the BEST way it could have been prepared. In fact, I RARELY see a tax return from a new client that was prepared the way we would prepare it at ProVision.
The common theme in all of these questions is the lack of flexibility. Again, I'm not saying don't use an IRA or 401(k), I'm saying be aware of your options in those plans and how they will impact your wealth and tax goals.
Forming Your Personal Tax Strategy
Think about planning a vacation. Let's say you are going to Hawaii. When you go to book your ticket, you need to know where you are departing from, right? This is your starting point. It is impossible for you to get to Hawaii unless you know where you are starting. The same applies to a personal tax strategy. You must know where you are starting. In your personal tax strategy, this means you must know your current financial position.
Tax Planning After April 15th - 5 Secrets To Massive Tax Savings
The best potential to create massive tax savings comes from planning your taxes not only throughout the year, but years in advance.
How State Taxes Can Become Very Scary
Many business owners (and real estate investors!) get into trouble by not even realizing they aren't complying with the state tax laws.
Last Minute Filing Tips For April 15th
While it may be tempting to just get it done, you definitely want to make sure you give your CPA time to analyze your tax return. My team and I are often able to find tax savings opportunities during the tax return preparation process, and come up with tax savings ideas for the new year, but you don't give your CPA an opportunity to do this when you file at the last minute.
3 Ways To Prepare For An Audit Before You Are Ever Audited
I still find it hard to believe, but I've seen people give up thousands in LEGAL tax savings in an effort to hopefully reduce their audit risk, and many times at the advice of their own accountant! This is often an emotional decision - the fear of an audit.
How To Turn Your Investing Into Something You Like To Do
When I speak on the topic of building permanent wealth, I say repeatedly that money can be made in any type of asset and what works for one person will not work for another. This is why I start with broad categories of investing - it is not so much the specific investment itself but how the investment complements what I like to do.
Don't Drive By This Tax Deduction!
Have Your Business Reimburse You for Its Use of Your Personal Vehicle Your business can reimburse you for allowing it to use your car - even if you are the one using it in the business!
3 Tax Strategies To Maximize Your Tax Benefits Even When Your Income Is "Too" High
The tax law offers many tax deductions, credits and other benefits that can save a taxpayer thousands of dollars every year. However, many of these tax benefits are eliminated when a taxpayer has income that is "too" high. Knowing how to legally get around these limitations can save you thousands in taxes!
Here's What Businesses Need To Know About The New Tax Law
The recently enacted "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" (2009 Economic Stimulus Act) includes a wide-range of tax incentives. The new law extends this temporary benefit for qualifying property purchased and placed into service in 2009.
Here's What You Need To Know About The New Tax Law
The new tax law enhances the credit by eliminating the repayment obligation for taxpayers that purchase homes on or after January 1, 2009.
Is Your Investing A Business Or Just A Hobby?
You really don't hear about great fortunes being made by investors. Ever wonder why? It's because business done right provides the most leverage, greatest velocity, and least amount of risk of any money-making activity.
What Are Reasonable Wealth Goals?
Avoid These 5 Traps if You Want Your Wealth Goals to Stay on Track
Avoid These 5 Traps If You Want Your Wealth Goals To Stay On Track
More than 50% of New Year's resolutions have already been abandoned and we are barely in to February!
What I find missing most often in wealth strategies is reporting. I find it amazing how so many people think they don't need reporting. Some think they will be so successful that they don't need a report to tell them that. Others think that reporting is just for their accountant to do their taxes. And, others think they aren't big enough to need reporting.
Top 3 Reports Every Business Owner And Investor Must Have
A question I commonly hear is what reports should I use for my businesses and investments? I have several customized reports I use, but today, I'm going to share the 3 standard reports I use - these are reports that can be pulled from my accounting software. I use QuickBooks but these reports are standard in all accounting software packages.
3 Tips To Start The New Year With Your Wealth Building On Track
It's that time of year when resolutions are made. If you are one of the many who have a resolution that involves your finances, you'll want to read this article. Studies show that less than 50% of resolutions are kept so it's vital to get started on the right track.