Todd Mardis: Well, in football, they say defenses can win games, in tax planning, that’s not the case. In other to reduce your taxes, there has to be proactivity, there has to be you as a business owner searching out ways, structures, strategies to reduce your taxes.
Walt Dallas: Well, when clients file their tax returns and they haven’t done advance planning, and they get to April 15th, and they are directed to write a check. They feel like they have no control over it, they feel like they are on the defense. They don’t look forward to the phone call from their friendly CPA, so, they are completely on defense.
Todd Mardis: So, in other to be efficient in tax planning, there has to be a continued effort to look at the plan on an ongoing basis, and see what you are doing or what you could do differently.
Walt Dallas: Now it begins with us, we proactively look at strategies in advance, and we plan in a way, and that their actions conform with the planning in other to lower the taxes. So, they feel like they are on offense. First time in their life all of a sudden they can say “I think I’ve saved some taxes, and I’m doing it legally, and I can get completely transparent with all my tax return, and If they get audited I’m going to be completely transparent” because we are following the rules.
Todd Mardis: Also, a lot of times we see in defensive tax planning, people get pretty aggressive, right? They start trying to write off things that maybe they shouldn’t write off because they are out of ideas. And they don’t know any offensive strategies or place that are in the playbook that they could exercise.
