On this week's episode: how a kid who got kicked out of school for demanding fairness grew up to build a tax firm on the same fight.
You'll hear how a PwC internship Mike Pine talked his way into turned him on to partnership tax, why he told every partner he worked for that the CPA model was broken, and what it cost him to build a firm with time for proactive tax planning. Mike also shares the story of buying a bookkeeping firm and amending most of its clients' prior-year returns for free, and the one fact about him nobody knew.
The Fight Behind the Firm:1.
Tax is law, not accounting. Mike nearly dropped his accounting major six months before graduating, on his third try at Advanced Accounting. Then PwC's venture capital and private equity group turned him down for his grades, he hounded the managers and a partner until they gave him a three-week shot, and he landed in partnership tax for billion-dollar funds. A 2.87 undergrad became a 3.9 in his master's, once he could see how the law applied.
2.
The model is broken, so he built another one. Mike told partner after partner to hire more staff than they needed, so CPAs had time for proactive planning instead of grinding out returns at 70 to 80 hours a week. They laughed him out of the room. He built Revo that way anyway, with no income for four or five years, payroll made on 0% credit card offers and his 401(k) funding the firm.
3.
A few hundred returns, most of them amended for free. When Mike bought a bookkeeping firm, its tax returns had been built by running the QuickBooks categories through consumer tax software. So many opportunities had been missed that Revo amended roughly 70 to 80 percent of those clients' prior-year returns at no charge, and a lot of them are still clients today.
4.
Fairness was always the fight. Kicked out of elementary school three times, Mike was told life isn't fair. His answer: "No, we're gonna make it fair." Today that's the mission: as long as there's death and taxes, nobody should pay a dollar more than they're legally obligated.
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https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenMoneyPodcastChapters[
00:00] Intro, then Kevin puts Mike in the hot seat
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02:41] Football scholarships, shin splints and a move to Montana sight unseen
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09:43] The accounting major Mike almost dropped, and his grandfather's advice
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11:22] Talking his way into PwC's venture capital and private equity group
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13:44] "Tax is not accounting"
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15:14] Office politics and rebelling against the widget model
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17:46] Starting Revo: credit cards, payroll and the excess-capacity bet
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22:30] Buying a bookkeeping firm and amending returns for free
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26:36] What Mike first thought of Kevin, and what he'd do if Revo disappeared
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31:11] Kicked out three times: where the fight for fairness began