What Your CPA Isn't Telling You: Life-Changing Tax Strategies

The author recognizes that taxes can get boring fast and opts wisely to fit the lessons into a story. Unfortunately, the author is not a good writer of fiction. If you're familiar with leadership fables by Patrick Lencioni, those are still not amazing but far better.But I still like this book as a good primer into the world of taxes because I understand the basics of the different business formation formats (sole proprietor vs. C-corp vs. S-corp), benefits of healthcare plans like HSAs, and what sort of expenses are business vs. personal. I feel far more equipped than when I went into the book.It is worth noting the author has an incredibly strong preference for rental real estate. They recommend clients, even of moderate income, buy a new rental property each year.

I devoured Kohler's book, the Tax & Legal Playbook, and couldn't stop at just one. I ordered What Your CPA Isn't Telling You and haven't put it down since it arrived yesterday. My husband and I are getting close to retirement age and Kohler's retirement strategies are helping us get on target for a healthy retirement. This book is easy to read and understand. We've implemented many of Kohler's strategies already and we're planning to start investing in real estate using the strategies discussed in this book.

The book could be made a lot more succinct. It does have some good ideas, such as HSA, business deductions for children working in the family business, real estate deductions, and self directed IRA's. But I feel the book is not being completely honest in many ways. For example, the thing about real estate deductions - even losses - when this is really not that easy to get. If you want to be a "real estate" professional for irs tax purposes, you first have to satisfy stringent (and some say impossible to satisfy) rules ... and even when you think you do, you will inevitably raise audit red flags if you do take non-trivial amounts of deductions.About real estate in general, you also don't get to write off that much - depreciating value of improvement - not land - over 27.5 (or 49 for commercial) properties. What you do deduct, you also also do have to pay capital gains later. Yes capital gains is delayed, and yes capital gains is supposed to be taxed lower, but don't forget you have to pay property tax, maintenance, etc. over the years. I am not saying real estate doesn't offer a tax benefit, much have been written about it. And whether it is good depends on many factors, but the tax benefit should be considered tangential, not primary. What drives you to real estate investment should be the business of real estate investing, not tax.Also about self directed iras, one needs to be very careful about the many "prohibited transactions." The book barely touch on that. If one isn't careful, one might even think that one can use self directed iras to fund one's small business ideas when it's strictly prohibited!About HSAs. Yes, it's a good idea. But remember you have to keep careful receipts of ALL medical expenses. Also - when I was shopping last year, HSA premiums seemed pretty high, too. Again, for some this can work ... for others (say a family of four, including 2 young children), it depends...

I have owned my business for almost a decade and have gone through my fair share of bookkeepers and CPAs. None of them have shared this kind of information with me. I read this book and an afternoon and I have far more confidence about my financial future than I have ever had. I highly recommend this book for anybody who is a small business owner or who is thinking about becoming a small business owner. I am sick to my stomach to think that I did not have this information for many many years, but I am excited about the future now that I have it.

Absolutely loved it. He explains complex tax principles in a way that is easy to understand. I am already recommending it to everyone I know who owns a small business!! I'll probably buy a second copy to loan out also!

With all the new taxes being heaped upon the small business owner (me!), I had been struggling to figure out how to structure my business, my assets and my entire financial life to maximize tax benefits and to grow and protect my wealth. This book hit me with the exact information that I needed at exactly the right time.Mark is the real deal. He is fun, goofy, entertaining, and animated. But most importantly, he is genuine and he knows his stuff. He is the first person I have ever known who actually LOVES helping people understand the boring subjects of finances, taxes and wealth protection. Plus the fact that he is both a Lawyer AND a CPA gives me a great deal of confidence in him.YES - You should read this book. Unless you want to keep OVERPAYING your taxes!

You have to read through a lot of blah, blah, blah..."we walked down the hall...it smelled like cement" to get to the point of each chapter. I get the premise that you don't want to bore people with the details of taxes and accounting. BUT here's the rub, you just bought a book to learn about taxes and accounting. So maybe I want some of those details. He gives you just enough to get you interested so want to go to a CPA (him maybe) and pay for the details. This is the second book I've read from a professional recently that the whole book was one big sales pitch for their business. Genius! And they get us to PAY for the sales pitch.In all seriousness, you will get some interesting tidbits of strategies. And depending on where you are, just starting or experienced business owner, will depend on how much you get. I didn't learn anything new until the last few strategies of pay your family, rental properties and self directed 401k's. You could get more out of it. But he doesn't explain anything in detail to the point where you could do anything with just this book. I can't really recommend it.