Die zwei Steuerstrategien, die wirklich standhalten

0:00Hi, so I am a new business owner. I will be 1 year in December, so thank you to that cuz I wouldn't have gotten here without both of you and all of your content, so I appreciate it. I'm not sure if this is even the right question. The thing that I'm the most ignorant about is the accounting and like the legal structures of my business. So please correct me if this is the wrong question to ask. But how should I structure myself from a tax and legal perspective to look appealing for an investor in the long run, especially if I'm a sole proprietor right now and I have no idea like what's the right direction to go?

0:33I would ask this before we answer the question, which is what type of business are you? I'm a brand agency. I was going to say something totally different. I have the second thought on what you're going to say. to say say it. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Doesn't >> Yeah. You can change later. >> Yeah, yeah. Like what matters is you make lots of money, plenty of people be interested. And they're like, oh yeah, we need to like reincorporate these things. It happens all the time. >> We reincorporate all the businesses we invest in. We have to do the legal work for them because they're all [ __ ] It's very common also for It's also common for an acquirer to So zooming out for a second, a lot of acquirers will prefer to purchase assets because they have they basically the liability will die with the old LLC. So there's an advantage to that. The disadvantage for the founder is they have to pay regular income on that because it's an asset sale and not it wouldn't be recognized as capital gains.

1:18This depends on what country you're in whatever in the US. And so the like founders want to sell the entire company, the entity so that the liability goes to somebody else and they get capital gains. And so the nature of the transaction will like those those are all negotiated at point of sale. So like Jim Launch for example, we sold the entity and the liability and everything with the purchase. The original LOI that they gave us was an asset purchase.

1:44And we said we don't want to do that and said then they transition. So all that to say it's super common for people to reincorporate during the sales process and it is part of the negotiation, so just don't worry about it. Just protect yourself, have an LLC and just don't worry about it. Last thing I'll to is this. The reason it doesn't matter is also because the structure acquisition.com has versus Sequoia versus A16Z all different. So, they actually want you to be, you know, some of them want you to be a C Corp, an S Corp, an LLC. It just depends on the firm structure. So, it really depends on who you sell to, which means might as well not worry about it now cuz they're going to just restructure you anyways.

2:15>> Just make lots of money. Will do. Um I do have a follow-up question. So, what's the short-term goal? Cuz I again, I'm super ignorant about it and you hear all these I don't mean to judge anyone, but it seems like when it comes to taxes a lot of people seem a little skeevy about it and I'm not quite sure what's the right direction. >> disgusting. Um No, for real. I mean, like it's literally something that we talk I mean, our lawyer is like so mad about it because the amount of businesses that we look at that we partner with that they've been given the wrong advice by these strip mall CPAs who are like, "Hey, I'm going to You don't have got to pay taxes." And you're like, "Really?

2:47Okay. I can do all that in my business account?" >> still waiting for the billionaire tax cut, but anyways. Um it hasn't really happened. Uh the the the the two the two big actual shelters are real estate professionals who can take 100% of depreciation against the regular income and charitable foundations. You can donate up to 30% of your income and then not have that be taxed. So, it's an effective savings of like nine or nine-ish percent on on your regular income. Besides that, where you live is going to be the biggest thing and so, there's a reason that we're here and we were in Texas like the first thing I'll do is like I only really care about the four-mile radius that I live around anyways. That's all that affects my life, but I you know, the difference between 50% taxes and 37 isn't 13%. It's about a third in terms of if you think about take home, the difference between the two. And so, like move to tax, you know, efficient uh jurisdictions. You are business owners, so you can expense some some life expenses through there, so that's pre-tax money. But beyond that, um Leyland I've been very much by the book because when we try and reverse engineer uh outcomes, it's like, "Okay, what are all the things that can kill us? And how do we systematically remove each one of these things that could that could kill us? And if you remove everything that can kill you, by default, you will you keep living and keep fighting. So, that's kind of how we think about it.

4:00I'll say one little story. So, there's always like little tax things that people are trying to pitch us probably until last 3 years. And so, for the first, you know, 5, 6 years of business, it's like, there's this thing and it can save you all this money and it's that, whatever. And there was like one that we got like really close to. And then I was like, "Alex, I don't know. This guy, he seems a little slippery. You know what I mean? When I say slippery, I mean gross." And we're like, "Yeah." And so, we ended up Yeah, it was like a really great guy. And I was like, Uh he looks like a snake. And so, we didn't end up doing this thing. It was apparently this tax saving vehicle, whatever. Uh yeah, he's in prison now.

4:33>> [laughter] >> This actually happened three times. >> Yeah, this happens all the time. So, we have three separate people where I've been like, "I think this guy's legit." >> [laughter] >> And I'm like, he's like literally has like, "I will steal your money and you will go to jail." I'm the eternal optimist of two of us. No, but I I I'll say that like I pretty much put a kibosh on this mostly because the amount of effort and time that went into So, I mean, I I refer to Charlie Munger on this, but he's like, "95% of tax saving schemes, even if they are legal today, will be illegal and unwound in the next 5 years.

5:01The IRS just hasn't caught up to it. And then you have to pay back taxes and interest and penalties." Right? So, even if you think you're in the clear because someone does your taxes this year, the IRS is literally 4, 5 years behind right now. Like, I got like, I think in 2021, I got a a notice about my 2016 taxes. Like, they're so behind. And so, people basically have this running head start where they can sell people for years on schemes that basically don't work. Um and so, anyways, 95% of them he said are swampland. And then the 5% of that that are legitimate, um typically they fall in those buckets.

5:30It's usually real estate or some sort of charitable thing. Um but is it worth the time of kissing the other 19 toads versus like just make more money? Wait. So, if I'm going to be looking for an accountant or someone and they're like, "Oh, I'll take, you know, save you on all these taxes." Just like run away. >> Just find someone who's by the book and is willing to sign off. I would say just in general, if somebody advertises their services by how much they're going to save you, they're probably not the person like I That's a very general statement I'm making, but they're probably like The people that do our taxes are not like, "Hey, we're going to save you all this money." They're like, "Yes, there are strategies and we can look and I will cite the law of number 60 and and then you would have to do" and you're like, "Oh my god, that sounds awful."

6:08And then you're like, "All right, we're good. It's fine. [ __ ] it. Pay it." >> make more. Got you. Thank you so much. By the way, Leila, I love your dress. Oh, thank you. I picked it. If you're a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so, we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of those of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.