Do Business Owners Need to Be Their Own Tax Strategist?

As the owner of an accounting firm, Matt knows taxes, and he reacts to this video that suggests business owners have to be their own tax strategist to keep some of their own profits. Matt disagrees and says the best way to handle your taxes is to let the professionals do it for you.

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video: 

If you wanna be a small business owner you also have to become a tax strategist these days. I don’t care how big of a spender you are you can’t outspend what the IRS is gonna take. The more money you make, the more money they take. 

Matt’s Review:

Yeah, I mean there’s a lot of people out there with sort of an anti-IRS, anti-tax standpoint. And yes, nobody likes paying taxes. But you don’t have to become your own tax strategist. The IRS tax rule book is thousands and thousands of pages of very complex, dense, obscure rules and regulations. Trying to learn all that and become a master of tax is a career in itself. You can go and get a CPA license if you really wanna learn tax to the extent that you know it all yourself. I’d say a much better strategy is to hire a competent tax provider, tax service provider, who can help you with that. And make sure that they minimized what you’re paying each year. But the truth is there’s not a million loopholes to figure out and if you’re really smart you end up paying almost no tax or no tax every year. Very few people can actually pull that off legally. And for most business owners the deductions are pretty straightforward. And the tax is what it is. The way to overcome that is to continue to grow your business so that it makes enough so that even after you pay the taxes that you legally owe without getting yourself in trouble or signing up for dodgy tax shelters, is that there’s still plenty left over to fulfill all your financial requirements, your needs, your wants, whatever you got and not have to worry about it, right? So that’s really the key to success is to continue to grow the business so that even after you pay the taxes you don’t have to worry about it. And rather than becoming your own tax strategist, which I – this guy doesn’t strike me as a tax strategist, I don’t know what his business is but doesn’t seem like that’s probably how he spends all his time learning tax. I suspect that he probably has a very good CPA that he leans on for tax advice. And that’s what, you know, 99% of all other small business owners do as well. Rather than becoming their own tax strategist.