Teaching Tax Flow: The Podcast

In this episode, we're diving into common tax misconceptions and debunking them once and for all. We'll be sharing essential tax facts and practical tax tips to help you with your tax planning. Join us for a crucial session of tax education and money education from the Teaching Tax Flow podcast!

"Defeating Taxes" Now Available on Amazon
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  • (00:04) - Unveiling Tax Myths and Strategies in Defeating Taxes
  • (02:18) - Debunking Tax Myths and Emphasizing Control Through Planning
  • (05:51) - Debunking Tax Myths and Effective Tax Planning Strategies
  • (16:05) - Navigating IRS Challenges with Taxpayer Advocacy and Professional Help
  • (18:56) - Teaching Tax Flow and Engaging Tax Planning Strategies

Creators and Guests

Host
Chris Picciurro
Founder, Teaching Tax Flow
Host
John Tripolsky
VP of Marketing, Teaching Tax Flow

What is Teaching Tax Flow: The Podcast?

Welcome to “Teaching Tax Flow: The Podcast”, the show that’s all about demystifying taxes and helping you keep more of your hard-earned income in your pocket.

Hosted by tax experts from the Teaching Tax Flow team, this unfiltered (but clean) podcast is designed to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need to confidently navigate the world of taxes. We’ll cover everything from understanding tax laws and regulations to maximizing deductions and credits.

In each episode, we’ll break down a specific tax-related topic in a clear and accessible way, providing practical tips and strategies you can use to optimize your tax situation. We’ll also answer listener questions, share the mic with amazing guests, and share real-world examples to help illustrate key concepts.

Whether you’re a freelancer, small business owner, real estate investor, or just looking to understand your taxes better, this podcast is for you. So tune in, take notes, and start building your confidence in taxes today.

Produced and hosted by Teaching Tax Flow.
www.TeachingTaxFlow.com

John Tripolsky:

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Teaching Tax Flow podcast today, episode 175. We've got a great topic for you. We're going to dive into some cool stuff here. I got something in my hand here.

John Tripolsky:

I'll show you the other side of it here in just a quick moment. We are gonna dive and discuss some myths in the tax world. So as I unveil this thing here really quick, it's turning, turning, turning. There we go. Defeating taxes.

John Tripolsky:

So with a little secret project we've been working on, Chris Piquiro, my cohost here, is actually gonna walk us through this. And, Chris, I thought it's something cool here that actually has never happened on a podcast. Two things. One, we have a book now. And two, it literally just hit me that this is the first episode out of a 175 that I've actually done my hair and not worn a hat.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

That is I guess it's a special occasion. And, yes, we are very excited about this book launch. It's called Defeating Taxes. And man, it's a long time coming, but I feel like this this is really going to help people out. It's going to empower everybody how to legally and ethically reduce the tax they pay in their lifetime.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

If you actually look at this book or so the the the version online, you're going to see that there are 10 myths. We're going to walk through five of them today on the podcast. So you don't even have to read the book yet to get some of these myths, but we found that that there's way too many myths out there. We narrowed it down to our top 10. It makes up one of the many chapters of the book.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

But let's talk about five of them today. I'm excited to rock and roll and, yeah, myths that cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.

John Tripolsky:

Let's do it, man. So I know there's there's just a couple. Right? We're talking five of the 10 or however many we can get to here in fifteen minutes or so. But these are great.

John Tripolsky:

Right? Because that book introduces tax planning. We're always talking about tax planning, making things as easy as can as easy as as it can possibly be where a lot of these myths get in the way. Right? Like, these are the things that small or large keep people back from making a huge impact.

John Tripolsky:

It's almost like why we chose Amazon to distribute the book on. Right? Because it's easy. We don't have to recreate the wheel. Somebody gets on there.

John Tripolsky:

They order a book that's not a sales pitch, the way, but humble brag, whatever. It follows the same process. So let's let's jump into these things, man. I'm excited to to go through these with you.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Well, the first one is I don't have control over my taxes. So that's that's a big myth. It's funny. I was honored to be record podcast yesterday for someone else in the teaching tax law community, and and we're talking about, like, what what's the biggest misconception about taxes? Is that you don't have any control over it.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

You pick your tax by the actions you take. If you don't take any actions, meaning you're not doing any tax planning or tax strategy or look forward looking at all when it comes to tax, the government's gonna pick your tax. And that government is could be your federal the federal government, state or local. So you absolutely have control over your tax. It just comes down to, are you doing any type of planning?

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

If you're not, you have surrendered or given up that control to tax agencies because the tax laws are written, remember, to encourage and discourage certain behavior. That behavior could be social. It could be economic. It could be environmental. And you have to understand how that works.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

And that is the number one myth is that you just don't wait for a result. I mean, you can just wait for a result on your tax when your tax trade is prepared or if you self prepare it, But that's not tax planning, and that relinquishes control to the government.

John Tripolsky:

And that's saying too, like, if somebody says, oh, well, I don't have control because I didn't do anything, and now they have it. Well, you had control up to the point that you didn't do anything. So, really, you are in full control the entire I mean, you're in control even if you get a bill from them whether you pay it or not. I mean, there is at no point that you're not in control of that.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

You're in control

John Tripolsky:

of Absolutely. All

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

so the second myth is if I earn more money, I'll lose everything to taxes. You know, how many times have you heard this? I'm sure, you know, I always in the inside chuckle when you're here listening. Well, I wouldn't have worked overtime, but it all goes to taxes. No, there's no 100% tax rate.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Now your marginal tax rate is your number one key performance indicator when it comes to tax planning and strategy. And I've been doing this for a long time. I've yet to see a 100% tax rate. Now there's some nasty tax rates out there. Right?

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

There's 50% in some situations, but not a 100. You're not gonna lose in all of your income to taxes. It's just you hear it all, you know, you hear it all the time.

John Tripolsky:

People say, like, oh, I don't I don't want a promotion. I don't wanna make more. Don't pay me more because my tax bracket's gonna go up.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Right. Like, oh, I don't wanna sell that stock because I'll pay you know, it'll all go to taxes. It's not gonna all go to taxes. Now should you harvest a capital gain or a capital loss? That comes down to tax planning.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

That comes down to the first myth of having control over when you pay tax on it and actually what tax you pay. Because remember, different income is taxed at different rates. So there's no 100% tax rate. If you earn more money, it's not all gonna go to taxes. And, actually, the more money you earn, the more tax planning and strategy plays a a role in your life and should play a role in the the bigger impact planning and strategy could could make could be.

John Tripolsky:

Hey, Chris. I'm like, this is no joke. Everybody probably thinks it's come across very salesy. I just open up to a random page in here. Right?

John Tripolsky:

And I know this thing like the back of my hand because you read it. And I feel like on every page, it says something that supports all of this. Even one section, I don't even know what chapter this is, you know, the long term cost of ignoring this, talking about defeating taxes and tax planning, and then income tax touches every part of financial life. I mean, this is like I would carry this thing around me every day except on Sunday. Got something else with me.

John Tripolsky:

But this is these are great, man. And, like, I get excited about talking about these things because they're kinda funny when you know the answer. Right?

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

We'll call defeating taxes your tax bible. Only available Monday to Saturday. Yeah. We won't have we won't have it on the Sabbath.

John Tripolsky:

It's like trying to buy produce in town here when I think it's the Amish that they don't sell here on Sunday, but anyways.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Well, you should rest. Alright. The third myth. This is a huge one. I I talk about this all the time.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

My tax preparer already does tax planning. Remember, tax preparation is a compliance activity. A compliance activity means you're looking backwards. Tax preparation, you're looking backwards at the previous year and preparing a tax return based on those facts. Tax planning is looking forward.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

There are very, very different tasks. They're very complementary tasks, and they can be different people. They can be the same person. In our private CPA firm, each client, excuse me, has two CPAs that they work with. Their signer, we call it, or their member relations CPA, that's the person that's handling their day to day relationship, their tax preparation, organizing documents, leading a team to get you the best result possible, and their tax planner CPA, that's the team I'm on.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

That's the person that's working with them looking forward. So your tax preparer is not doing tax planning, and please don't expect them to. And, you know, we talked about this a little bit when we talked about how to pick the right tax professional. If you are weaning with a tax professional once a year, and at that point, you are either uploading a lot of documents and meeting with them virtually or handing them a lot of tax documents, that is the absolute worst time to start asking them about forward thinking planning. The hay a lot of times is in the barn.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

It's a great time to say, hey. Let let's work to get the best result possible on this tax return. And you know what? I I'd like to see I'd like to have a conversation with you down the road a little bit and talk about 2026. So your taxpayer preparer is not doing tax planning.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

They might give you a little bit of advice, and it's not fair to expect them to do it because they're two different tasks yet very complementary.

John Tripolsky:

And this one, Chris, I'm over here chuckling. I won't be able think I'm just laughing at what Chris is saying, but I found this very relatable, and here's a great example. Right? Like, me trying to plan for something and asking my wife when we had a a newborn at home. She's changing diapers, busy as heck doing 10 things, and I'm asking her about, like, hey.

John Tripolsky:

What are we doing next weekend? Like, you'll get an answer. It's not gonna be a well thought out answer. It's kind of a shoo shoo go away answer. Same thing as this.

John Tripolsky:

Right? Talk about timing.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Absolutely. And and, you know, during tax preparation process, there's nothing wrong with asking questions about the tax return, etcetera, etcetera. But, again, a lot of the hay is in the barn. And just because you're tax professional, that could be an enrolled agent or a CPA or an attorney. Those are licensed tax professionals.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Just because they don't focus on tax planning and strategy or maybe they don't offer that service doesn't mean that they're doing a bad job. They're doing a probably a really, really good job. So, you know, it's just they're just different. You know, they're different. They're different activities.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

One's forward looking, one's backward looking. They're both very, very important. So. Absolutely. So number four, myth number four kind of ties into myth number one, but I wanted to specifically talk about employees.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Now we know The advantage of being a business owner and a rental property owner is that you pay tax on your net income, not your growth and gross income. But the myth that employees can't do anything about taxes is the the the sentiment that employees can't do anything about taxes is absolutely wrong because the sentiment is, well, I'm an employee somewhere. The taxes are magically taken out of my paycheck. I don't have if I if I you know, back to your Sunday analogy, when I have my tax return prepared, I'm gonna sprinkle some holy water on the documents, and hopefully I get the best result possible. Employees absolutely can control their tax in many, many ways.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

A lot of times, and we talk about this all the time, just, you know, within our defeating taxes, you know, Facebook community or in other parts of this of this YouTube channel and the YouTube channel or podcast is that trying to take things that are typically nondeductible personal expenses and making them deductible legally and ethically. Medical expenses. So employees, hopefully, they can contribute to a health savings account. That's that's something. Employees can contribute to a retirement plan typically.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Now, should it become a, you know, should it be a pretax account like a traditional four zero one ks, traditional IRA, or Roth? That's a great debate. And actually, John, that would make a really good podcast episode. We should write that out. So we're gonna do that in the future, Roth versus traditional.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Daycare expenses, can you put those in pretax? How much withholding should I have? You know, should I so so employees have control. They also have control not just with their income from their employer, but they have control over deductions as deductions as well, like itemized deductions, and they can still participate in tax advantaged investments or tax mitigation strategies. You know, they could still maybe buy rental property.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

It might be a short term rental property, and they might they still could they still can do tax planning and and make moves. Just because the vast majority of their income comes from an employer doesn't mean they can't they can't do tax planning.

John Tripolsky:

Right. And then and honestly, in in full transparency, I know, Chris, we're talking about this one specifically before we get to really our last minute that we'll cover on this one. I I'm glad that one you mentioned in this book, especially, because there's so many people that feel that way. Right? Like, they just they talk about, you know, dreading tax time or tax season air quotes.

John Tripolsky:

But when you plan, there goes season. Like, there is no season anymore. It's just the way you do things. But even from, you know, sometimes as a business owner, I look at somebody who is a w two, so full time employee. And sometimes they have a little bit of envy for them because there's the consistency with everything, so they can almost do a little bit job maybe of planning in some regard.

John Tripolsky:

But then also too, like, there there's some limitations, but there's a lot of opportunity as well. So I think that's probably one of the most impactful ones that we talked about in all that content is because it if you never start, you never find out if you're right or wrong. Right? So Absolutely. Try it.

John Tripolsky:

They just can go their whole life like that, which isn't the case.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

And that's one of our teaching tax flow laws. The tax planning is that your tax return is a verb and not a noun. It's something that's living and breathing. So every as an employee, every time you receive a paycheck, you're looking at that paycheck. And now more than ever, it's important because.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, if you're getting paid overtime, if you're getting paid with any type of tips, those might be deductible. So there's just a lot that could be done with as an employee, believe it or not. It's more might be a little more challenging. You got to be a little more proactive, but absolutely there are there are things you can do.

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Chris Picciurro, CPA:

So the fifth myth, that's a tongue twister, right, that we're gonna talk about today. And like shame it's shameless plug. If you wanna hear figure out what myths six to 10 is, you're gonna have to check out defeating taxes. It the IRS

John Tripolsky:

doing this a long enough time, twenty five something years, you could put as many shameless plugs as you want to because it's not like you conjured this up in the shower one day. Right? Like, there's a lot of there's a lot of meat on the bones.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

No. And I'm sure that there's some people driving or walking their dog and listening to this that are thought that I might be in the shower and just flew off the road in disgust. So, you know?

John Tripolsky:

We're not liable for any damages.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Let's put that out there. So the fifth myth is the IRS is out to get me. The IRS is not out to get people. We focus on legally and ethically reducing the tax you're paying your lifetime. The IRS is a collection agency, right?

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

And remember, tax laws are written to encourage and discourage certain behavior. And remember that tax agencies are involuntary business partner. So the IRS is not out to get you. The IRS is trying to do its job, which is collect the tax it's supposed to collect based on the tax laws that are out here in The United States Of America. The IRS is going to be, you know, now, are they understaffed a little bit?

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Absolutely. But if you get correspondence from IRS and you, you know, work either either, you know. Correspond with them on your own or I would highly recommend using a tax professional, someone that's licensed to to represent you in front of the IRS, things could get resolved quickly. John, I wanna I mean, I don't wanna get too personal. I'm gonna put you on

John Tripolsky:

the spot a little. Please do. Because I think I know where you're going with this question.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

I'm IRS. Yeah.

John Tripolsky:

And I'm very open about this.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

You in which and I'm I know about the situation in which you were right and they were wrong. And and and could you I mean, you probably felt at times they were out to get you, but you actually had someone someone help you out a lot through taxpayer advocacy, and they and we wanted to have that person on the podcast. They're just not allowed

John Tripolsky:

to come on, unfortunately. 100%. And, yeah, I know we I've peppered this in there a little bit. I'll I'll keep this kinda short. So and, again, I'm very open with this.

John Tripolsky:

Right? So I know, Chris, we had we had mailed something in. It ended up being lost. We had documentation. Things were mailed, blah blah blah.

John Tripolsky:

A whole I think years passed where where this kinda came up, snuck its head up. A lot of there was a lot of money involved there being tied up. But you're right. I mean and then you had COVID on top of the Right? So there was no office to walk into.

John Tripolsky:

And me as the taxpayer, I was complete I literally felt like completely chained to the ground. Couldn't call anybody because phone lines are blowing up. Couldn't walk in and talk to anybody. And I think of all this, Chris, if I remember, I think you wrote one half page letter to them explaining something, and I cannot speak high higher about that taxpayer advocacy service. And it's not like a, oh, we're gonna help you out as a charity.

John Tripolsky:

Basically, what what they did is they just took what the situation was. They communicated it, streamlined it to the IRS, and it was solved. It was solved, and they actually called me every two weeks and gave me an update, which I hear is not usually the case, but it was fantastic. And I absolutely would have given up if if I didn't have somebody like you, so, yeah, kudos to you, to write that letter, and you knew what to put in it. And it was fantastic, and they appreciated being short and not 30 pages long like I would 've written.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Right. And great point as we wrap it up. Great segue that the IRS is not your enemy, and it's not your ally. It's your silent business partner. So when they ask for information, give them the information.

Chris Picciurro, CPA:

Don't give them 10 times the information they need and don't not give them the information. Now, obviously, when we're dealing with IRS, we are advocating for our clients as a tax professional. However, don't think of them as your as your enemy or ally. They're just a silent business partner that that you wanna try to control the relationship with by doing tax planning and strategy.

John Tripolsky:

You got it. You got it. And on that note, I know we're a couple minutes over where we planned here. But again, Chris, I think the content in that book really it it's it's a lot of what we talk about anyways. Now it's just in written form.

John Tripolsky:

If anything, it's a little it's a table of contents to teaching tax flow, really, in a sense. So I know we kinda threw the idea around there. May maybe we'll do a little informal, maybe a book launch, little virtual one or something. Give some more advice on it. But again, we'll put the link in the show notes here to Amazon.

John Tripolsky:

Again, we make things easy. Check it out. Super, super cheap for what it is. It's not a long book. I think we're at a 140 something pages in there.

John Tripolsky:

There's some resource links in there, etcetera. Check it out, and I'm honestly, either get one yourself or steal somebody that you know and, you know, heck, draw some smiley faces on it if you want to. See if you can draw Chris on it. But even that, I mean, maybe I just think of this now off the cuffs. Maybe grab a highlight or highlight some things in it that you have questions on.

John Tripolsky:

Get into Feeding Taxes, our private Facebook group, defeatingtaxes.com. Drop the questions in there, and let's get it going. I mean, so really it's taking something that you've never done tax planning before. Now you got something tangible, throw it in your backpack, throw it in your car, take it, kind of chuck through it a little bit. But a good info.

John Tripolsky:

So, again, Chris, you could do as many shameless plugs as you want. It's fun when I get to do it for you because I feel smarter. So I enjoy this, but, thanks for running through these again. We're gonna see everybody back here again next week as always on the teaching tax flow podcast. Have a great week, everybody.

Disclaimer:

The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature. It reflects the opinions of teaching tax flow and does not take into consideration the viewer's personal circumstances. It is not intended to be a substitute for individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. Consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making any decisions. Securities are offered and supervised through Cabin Securities Inc member, FINRA SIPC.

Disclaimer:

Investment advisory services are offered and supervised through Cabin Advisors LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. Chris Picuro is a registered representative of Cabin Securities and an investment adviser representative with Cabin Advisors LLC, teaching Tax Flow as an independent entity and is not affiliated with Cabin Securities or Cabin Advisors.