Don’t Let Taxes Terrify You w/ Hannah Cole #1064

“Taxes for creatives” could have also been the title of this episode, giving the more entrepreneurially minded the boost they need to officially launch a little business they’ve been considering. But for most folks the topic of taxes isn’t comforting, it’s straight up terrifying… even though it shouldn’t be. Today’s guest, Hannah Cole, is on a mission to create fearless folks who launch into the world of deductions, bookkeeping, tracking, tax filing, and all the other terms that strike a little fear in your heart, with full confidence. Her new book, Taxes For Humans, acts as a field manual for self-employed folks to simplify their taxes and take the bull by the horns. Topics covered today:

• Taxes can be intimidating, but understanding them is empowering
• Creatives often struggle with the business side of their work, including taxes
• The IRS is more forgiving than many people think
• Receipts, tax forms, and bookkeeping are the key three systems
• Deductions are available for ordinary and necessary business expenses
• When and how much in quarterly estimates, in order to avoid penalties
• A visual guide to tax deductions
• And much more!

 

Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:

• Be sure and check out Hannah’s new book, Taxes For Humans, or just get it on Amazon. And her visual guide to tax deductions is especially cool for folks looking to organize their business expenses, who also hate IRS forms ;)
• Knowing your ‘money gear’ is a crucial part of your personal finance journey. Start here. 
• Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
• Find a thriving community of fellow money nerds by joining the HTM Facebook group!
• Massively reduce your cell phone bill each month by switching to a discount provider like Mint Mobile.

 

And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money!

 

Best friends out!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Hou of Money. I'm Joel, and today we're
talking I don't want taxes to terrify you with Hannah
Cole to many taxes are more terrifying than horror movies.

(00:29):
Not to me. But it's only because I scare easily
and I completely avoid those movies. Yeah, I don't. I'm
like being scared. It's not though, because I'm super comfortable
with the complexity of our tax system. But my guest today,
she is Hannah Cole, is on a mission to create
fearless folks who launch into the world of deductions, bookkeeping, tracking, filing,

(00:51):
and all the other terms that strike a little fear
in your heart with full confidence. Her new book, Taxes
for Humans will acts as a field manual for self
employed people, in particular to simplify their taxes and to
take the bowl by the horns. So, Hannah, thank you
so much for joining me today on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Joel, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
All right, so, first question out of the gate, we
ask everyone who comes on. I'm so curious to hear
your response. We I like to splurge on craft beer.
I think it's delicious, but it can be expensive at
the same time, I'm doing the smart thing, saving and
investing for my future. Right, you can do both things
at once. What is that thing for you? What do
you like to splurge on?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, well, I too like to splurge on craft beer,
and I live I live in Asheville, which is craft
beer paradise, but.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Well the Southern beer mecca.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Oh it's so good. But my splurge is really wonderful
coffee out of the house every single day, which is
very against that don't buy a latte.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Thing every single day?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Huh, every single day. But here's why, because I actually
use it, you know, for like as a habit builder.
So I need coffee when I wake up, right like
this is this is like a bright star to me,
and so it gets me to lace on my shoes
and it gets me you know, the coffee shop is
a mile away, and I walk to it and so

(02:12):
it gets me walking and then I do a four mile.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Loop, okay, and so you get your steps in every
day to get your coffee.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Oh I am, I am. Yeah, So it's that. And
it's also like I like the community part of it.
So like I fully recognize it is not cost efficient,
but I really like like that the baristas know me
and that I have a little chat with them. It
just like it makes me feel connected to my to
my city and my neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
So I totally get that. We we try to keep
it till once a week, but Matt and I on
Mondays will walk down to our local coffee shop and
get coffee and I love it. I love the walk,
I love Matt and Eric. We're catching up and just
kind of being out in the community, talking to the
brista's fellow, you know, humans in the coffee shop. It's
such a lovely experience. So I get that totally, and

(02:57):
I don't know, maybe off to up it to two
days a week after after can you.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I feel like the common theme with all of my
splurges is like if it makes me be social or
get exercise, you know, like because I feel like those
are those are great, Those make my life good.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah. If it's like the little lure in the mouth,
right that gets you out there doing the things that
you want to do but you might avoid if you
were just having coffee at home, that makes sense to me.
You talk early on you're an artist, and you talk
about having to figure things out the hard way. And
I'm curious. I think this you might not be alone
in that right where artists maybe and taxes are not.

(03:36):
Best friends are not synonymous in a lot of ways.
Right where it's like, I'm great at making art. I
have friends like this who are business owners. It's like
a great photographer. But when it comes to like running
the business or doing the tax side of things, the
creatives can often have a hard time. Right, So tell
me about you. If you have them figure out the
hard way, what did that look like?

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think creatives get a bad rap.
Creativity is actually a synonym for resourcefulness. And and you know,
because all my everybody I am in community with are
creative people. It's you know, what I see is that
creative people are like actually pretty incredible at making things
work on a shoe string and pulling off magic. But yeah,

(04:15):
the way I learned the hard way by you know,
going into my dad's accountant's office for the first time
when I you know, I got an MFA and painting.
I've been a professional painter for twenty years, and I
knew I needed to I kind of knew there was
stuff I needed to know. I didn't even know what
I didn't know, and just like sitting down in front
of my dad's accountant, he was like, so, why are

(04:36):
you going to get a real job. I just like
I felt so humiliate. I was like, I have a
master's degree in this, Like I have artists, you know,
I know a lot of people don't know what artists
do every day. It's a little mysterious.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
But I'm assuming paint, sculpt you know, whatever it is
they're into, that's gonna be part of it.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Definitely that, definitely that, But like the professional side of it,
I think is pretty hard to understand, and like applying
for grants and residencies, like how do you make the
money work? Honestly, a lot of artists don't know how
to make the money work. It's difficult. It's like, you know,
being in the NBA. It's like the ads they're not great.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
So you went into that account and office, you got
kind of sort of talked to in a humiliating way, Well,
how did you respond?

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well? At the at the moment, I just like my
pulse was racing and I felt completely awful. Like all
the questions I had come in with and prepared they
just flew out of my head. I couldn't even make
use of that situation. And also just like I was
pretty organized. I had read a book on deductions before
I got there, because I was, you know, I was

(05:41):
trying to do a good job, be a good student.
And I had kept a mileage log. I had, you know,
artists do these things called residencies a lot where you
like it's competitive, you apply and you go to some
you know, beautiful ranch in Wyoming and paint for a month.
And I kept my mileage log like and this was
analog in a notebook in the dashboard, and it was

(06:03):
a four thousand dollars deduction and he just missed it.
And that was because I think he just didn't consider
that I was like a real business. He didn't he
didn't actually see my true legitimacy as a person in
the arts.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
So he saw it as a hobby on the side.
And you're like, no, no, no, this is my job.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
It's a business, absolutely yes. And I think one of
the real issues and it's not just artists who face this.
I think a lot of times anybody in a career
that's really underpaid. So that can be people in like
caring fields or you know, nonprofit adjacent areas, Like when
you're not making a lot of profit, it it doesn't

(06:43):
necessarily look to an accountant like it's a business. And
this is a really big issue. When you don't have
a consistent profit, your your business activity can be called
into question by the IRS, and they can come and say, hey,
is this a hobby? Just because they asked doesn't mean
it's true. It's not an accusa, it's a checkup. But
people don't know, you know, don't We don't teach taxes

(07:04):
in high school in this country, though I think we should,
and so people just don't know what their rights are
and their responsibilities, and so it's just feels like all
fear and no empowerment. So I just really want to
partly be here to witness those people who are in
those like caring fields and the humanities. People who weren't
in those like well resourced STEM departments in college.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Engineers will be fine, I know, thanks to hear themselves.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
I mean, it's hard enough. It's hard enough when you
sort of didn't get all those resources and so you
need them, but then you also feel this sort of
like shame and fear about the people you're working with,
the accountants because they really like they're not used to
working with people like you and they don't feel like
they get you.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, well, I think that that taxes course should be
side by side with the personal finance course. I mean,
those are two things that we're going to use for
the rest of our lives and what like half of
its finally do now require it in high school And
but yeah, it's there are so many things we learn
in school that are lovely and beautiful, and maybe we
don't use them for the rest of our lives, and
maybe they were still worth learning, but my goodness, personal

(08:12):
finance and a little bit of tax knowledge should go
a long way to help the average American for sure.
The tagline of your book is and I love this,
simplify your taxes and change the world when you're self employed.
That's like, that's a big promise, changing the world. So
tell me more about that.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah. So it's kind of a secret agenda inside my
book that I feel like a lot of people who
are really passionate, people in the humanities, people in creative
fields are often really good agitator's activists. They're like people
who really move the culture. That is what I think
is so important about creative work. You know, it's really

(08:52):
hard to advocate for a fair, equitable tax law if
you just have no idea how tax laws are made
in the first place. And so I just feel like,
if I'm going to do the work of getting people
up to speed on how their taxes work and sort
of where they sit inside the tax code, I'm going
to go the extra mile and be like, and here's

(09:13):
what a fairer way to do it might be.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Hint h your senator, Well, yeah, I mean, I think
some people assume that the way the tax code currently
exists is the way it's always been, and that's far
from the truth and in fact, and I want to
get to this later, buttile lot of recent task legislation
over the past few years has is making a big

(09:39):
difference in who pays what, and also in our national
debt and deficit. I'm curious, though, I want to start
in a place of optimism here too, because there is
a lot of pessimism about an individual's ability to start
a small business and to do well in this country.
But you you're far less pessimistic on that. Can you
maybe give me a little bit an overview of why

(10:01):
you think the United States is still a great place
to start a business.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Oh my gosh, I love this question, And yes, I
think hope is important and we have a lot of
good reason for it. You know, like forty four percent
of all Fortune five hundred companies were started by the
children of immigrants. I mean, like, just think about what
that means. People are coming to this country for the
opportunities that we provide for businesses, Like it is a

(10:27):
great place to start a business. And I think a
lot of people who are self employed don't even realize
that they are considered a business under US tax code.
So an uber driver, you know, person just getting paid
ten ninety nine versus on a W two, right, that's
a business person. But often that person, you know, because

(10:48):
of a lack of education, perhaps they just don't know.
They don't know that they could be keeping deductions and
getting a lot of benefits, you know, because the fact
of being paid ten ninety nine means you get to
take expenses of running that business as a deduction on
your taxes. So there's just like a lot of benefits,
really really generous, wonderful encouragement to invest in yourself when

(11:12):
you are a business, even at the tiniest little micro level,
and I just want more people to be aware of that.
I think, you know, if you went to business school,
you know this, right, But if you went to art school,
maybe you don't. So I want everybody to.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Know you even say you say the tax code is
built to give you a financial boost as a new
self employed person. Absolutely, So talk about that for someone
who's like I was afraid to start a small business
because I've heard maybe some rumors about how taxes work.
Is a self employed individual, Well, you're saying that the opposite, Like,
it's not harrowing, it's actually potentially some wind at you're back.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
I love that, Yeah, I mean, and rumor is a
lot of how we understand taxes here. Right, it's rumor
and not fact. But you're right. So one of the
incredible benefits of having what's called a schedule, see that's
a tax turn but it just it's the part of
your tax return where you put the business income and
the business deductions. So when you're self employed, that's where

(12:12):
you're reporting your income and your tax return. But one
of the benefits we all kind of know that we
get deductions. But the thing that people don't realize is
you also have the ability to take a loss. So
a schedule. See if you look at the title like
on the top of that form, it says profit or
loss from business, not just profit. Right, so the loss.

(12:35):
I know this is very counterintuitive, but if you you
know every business, if you think about it, every single
business starts in the negative because expenses come first. Right,
So if you think about like a pizzeria, right, So
if you start a pizzeria, you cannot make a single dollar,
not even profit, but just like a dollar in the door,

(12:57):
until you have set up a pretty fully operational pizza
reha Right, you need an.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Oven, pizza ovens here exactly.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
You need an oven, flour, a baker, you need a storefront.
And so you can't make a single dollar from selling
a pizza until you have the full ability to make
the pizza already in place. Right. So you bought the oven,
paid the rent, paid a baker, bought the flour, right,
all of those things. You have to spend the money first,
and it might take you some time before you sell

(13:25):
enough pizza, get a reputation, get your advertising going, get
word of mouth going, maybe get I don't know, reviewed
in the local newspaper. By the local Instagram influencer or whatever.
But it might take a little while to actually get
enough money coming in that you break even. Right, that's
the moment where you actually even. That's not even the

(13:45):
moment you're profitable yet. It's the moment where your expenses
and your income equal out and it's zero. So being
able to take the laws to report a negative number
on your taxes is a tax benefit because what it
does is it actually that negative number is added to
your other taxable income. And so if your spouse is

(14:07):
earning money with a day job, your negative income will
subtract taxable income off the spouse's income that you jointly
pay taxes on. So in other words, it'll save you, you know,
thousands of dollars in taxes, which is deliberate. That is
meant to help you through that delicate baby investment year
of your business.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
So is that is that part of the iris's goal
to ensure that we have a nice playing field for
small businesses. It's like their goal is to see small
businesses succeed. And if they can't report that loss and
use it against other income, that's really hard for a
small business to last. If they're you know.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Absolutely, it's very and the first year of business, when
you have all those expenses and you don't have income yet,
that is the hardest year of business. Right. There can
be other hard years. I mean, I'm I'm coming to
you from Ashville, and we had a real hard year
last year when Hurricane Helen destroyed a lot of businesses,
including my studio, and so that loss. You can take
a loss later if something like a Hurricane Helen comes

(15:08):
and destroys your business, you can have a loss in
a later year when you thought you had every reasonably
you'd be profitable. But I think the thing to think
about is like when you're a small business, you're growing
the GDP, right, and that is one of the chief
aims of the US government. So they want that. They
want you to grow. They want you to have more
and more and more profit, maybe hire people, spend a

(15:31):
lot of money in the economy, and eventually pay taxes
on that profit. So it's not like charitable. They're just like,
this is good for everybody. We want you to win.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Tell me a little bit about the Hurricane Helen and
what you learned as a small business owner, and that
obviously just the pictures, the devastation. Going to Asheville, even
in March, like, I could see a lot of the
devastation still, logs and trees everywhere. Still. But what was
that like for you from a business owner perspective? How

(16:04):
did you get through that? What did you learn in
that process?

Speaker 2 (16:07):
It certainly made me lean on community. There's this sort
of you know, we perpetuate this myth that we're all
alone in this country, the sort of cowboy culture thing.
And you know, there's nothing like having your water go
out for five weeks to make you realize that you
were very dependent on your government and that government being
functional and well funded. You know, I wanted my water.

(16:28):
All the business, all the restaurants couldn't open because they
had no water, and my kids were out of school
because there was no water. There was no way to
flush a toilet in the school. So for certain it
was like, oh, tax dollars going to pay for you know,
infrastructure that brings clean water. And also just like a
resiliency plan. I was really happy that we have electeds

(16:51):
who had some like resiliency planning already in place. Some
forethought that was that was really great, But also rebuilding
is really hard and really slow, and the media is
here for you know, maybe a month, and then it's
gone and you are still in it. So that's a
hard part. Anybody, you know, if you were in the

(17:13):
La fires, if you were in the Texas floods, I mean,
anybody who's been through it knows that when the media
goes away, it feels lonely.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, I believe it. Yeah, there's a spotlight for a
minute and then they all leave, and then you're still
left for many months, often years, kind of cleaning up
and trying to get back to normal.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
I'm curious too. You mentioned the difference between like a
hobby and a business and can you maybe the IRS
has like specific guidelines about that, right, So it's not
like you don't necessarily say, I think I'm just a
hobbyist or I think I'm a business owner. How is
that defined?

Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, there's a real definition, and it's actually not at
all what people think. The definition of a business versus
a hobby is a business has a profit motive. Those
are IRS words. It's important to note that how having
a profit motive is different from having a profit Like
if you think of that pet pizzeria, the year that
they spend the money on the oven in the storefront,

(18:08):
and they don't have customers yet, Like, that doesn't make
them a hobby right, They're a business that's just not
profitable yet. So that's really important to know that a
legitimate profit motivated business can still have losses. That's important.
But a hobbyist does not have a profit motive. They're
doing it for fun.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Okay. So and then how how do you know when
a small business or what maybe has been your side
hustle but you're like trying to profit from it, you
want this to become a business. How how do you
know when that business needs to be incorporated? I think
this is one of those tough decisions that people like
trying to wade through the alphabet soup of you know, letters,

(18:51):
and they're like, I don't know, I'm what what should
I be? Should I be an escorp? Like I have
no idea?

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, yeah, there are there's some tricky things there. What's
important to note is that there's different order of operations,
like the start time of the various things can be different.
So what I mean is you're a business to the
irs before you're a business anywhere else. And that makes
sense because the irs is the tax collector, right, Like

(19:20):
they're there to be like, hey, okay, the minute you
earn a dollar back, like we're going to be here.
We would like the taxes on that, right. So you're
already a business to the irs. Now, a lot of
people I think, because of like Internet and the rumor
of how business stuff works, it's like they think, oh im,
maybe need an LLC, Maybe I need an escort. So

(19:41):
just to clarify what those things are, the LLC is
a legal entity and it's about a liability protection. So
that stands for a limited liability company. And what it
does is stick a shield in between your business assets
and your personal assets so that if you get sued,
only the business assets are subject to the law suit.
So that's the purpose of an LLC. It's not required

(20:04):
that you become an LLC to be a real business,
not at all. In fact, you might be wasting your
money if you're not, if you're not at any risk
of a lawsuit, if you're if you have no personal assets,
you know it might it's possible that you don't need
to waste money on LLC.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
And the cost of an LLC can very significantly state
to state. In some states like a hundred bucks, and
then in some states it can be eight hundred bucks
a house, and it can do just be more a
lot more expensive.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Very much. And then the ask corp is that. So
the LLC is a legal entity, it's actually not a
tax entity. So one of the interesting things is that
the IRS, if you're just a single owner of the
LLC that's called a single member LLC, the IRS disregards it,
so it actually has no bearing on your taxes. A
lot of people think the LLC is going to change

(20:51):
all their tax stuff. It actually doesn't at all. That's
the thing to know. But anes Corp is actually a
tax entity, so unlike LLC, it's totally different, and you
can have both. You can be an LLC and an escorp.
Like I actually am Sunlight taxes both in LLC and
an escort. My biggest thing that I want to tell
people is like, just don't form it too early and

(21:13):
check your state rules because you know, someone on the
internet might be talking about how you're going to save
all this money when you form an escorp. Well, if
you're living in New York State, New York taxes back
all the benefit you get from an escorp so you're
wasting your money. You're literally lighting money on fire. So
you just have to be careful when you're.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Getting just a state specific thing, and you need to
know what your state's tax rules are in order to
kind of know what designation you should be choosing.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yeah, and in the book, I have a chapter on these,
you know, sort of setup issues like LLC and ESCORP,
and I have a list of the states that have
rules that sort of tax back some of the benefit
of an escorp. Definitely check which state you're in in
the state rules before you go spend the money, because
you might be wasting the money grant you if you're
in a state like North Carolina, great, can be great.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
All right, we've got I've got more to get I
want to get to with you, Hana. I want to
talk specifically about maybe some of the systems we need
to set up as a small business owner, and then
also kind of that some of the recent tax law
changes that have been made and how those are going
to impact us as as self employed individuals and just
really everyone who's listening to Well, we'll get to more
with Hannah Cole right after this. We'll back. We're still

(22:33):
talk about Hannah Cole. We're talking about taxes. They can
be terrifying, but Hannah is demystifying them so well in
her new book, and I'm excited to continue this conversation.
Let's talk about like running a business, Hannah. This is
something you do address as well on your blog and
in the book a little bit, like the systems that
we need to streamline in order to make taxes less

(22:55):
of a bear. And I do think a lack of
organization is probably a big part of what makes tax
is so frustrating for people that are like trying to
go back to all these different folders on their desktop,
or items that have just been dropped in dragged rand
in places, a little folders inside of their email inbox.
So can you talk about the systems that need to
be streamlined and maybe offer some best tips for getting organized.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah? Absolutely. I mean one of the key things to
realize about taxes is that they're retroactive, so no matter what,
just the mantra to have is like, don't hate yourself
because things got messy, like that happens to everybody, but
just start now, start now. So the systems that you need,
you need receipts, you need tax documents, and then you

(23:39):
need bookkeeping. Those are the three key systems to get
your taxes organized. Receipts is like a five minute task.
It's like almost nothing. All you need to do is
just keep them right and they actually go in cold
storage because the purpose of a receipt is actually just
in case you're audited. You don't actually need to use

(23:59):
the receipt unless you're audited.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
So like taking pictures of those receipts or just having
a digital record of it is good enough.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Totally fine, as long as it's legible, like and as
long as you can access it so audits can come,
you know, as far you know, as late as six
years later. That's a little rare, but it can be.
So we say keep receipts for seven years for that purpose.
Just make sure, you know, if you sell your computer,
you know you want access to the files. You don't
want to digitize it and then like stop paying for

(24:28):
the you know, receipt capture software and then lose your access.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Gotcha.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
But as long as you have it digital is fine, okay,
But you don't need to be sorting receipts. Sorting receipts
is just a complete waste of time, and I everybody listening,
I dismiss you. You don't have to do it.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
And then tax documents are you just are you taking
digitizing those and sticking them in a fold receive in
or how are you? How are you handling those?

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah? So, I mean most of us get a mix
of digital and physical tax documents, you know, and to
do your taxes is going to be I find it
helpful to get them all in one format. So for me,
that's digitizing the paper ones. You know. The tax document
thing is something you really only have to worry about
at the beginning of the year. Those will tend to
roll in, mostly by February first, but there are some

(25:11):
that will come late. You know, your brokerage statement if
you're investing, which I hope listeners of this show are
me too.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
I'm coming for them.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, that's the point, right right, But just dedicate one
place in your house to keep your tax documents, you know,
as you get those important you know letters in the
mail from with the tax document stuff. Just like is
it your sock drawer, is the top drawer of your desk,
just whatever it is, Just have a place and just everything.
Make sure you have religion about those documents go in

(25:42):
that place, and then when they're all there, then you
can go through and digitize the paper ones. That's how
I do it, and I think it works pretty well.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
When we're talking about receipts, oftentimes we're talking about the
receipts for expenses right that the business has incurred. Can
you talk to us a little bit about deductions. I
think there's still just so much confusion right in the
deduction space. And yeah, yeah, how should a small business
owner think about deductions? Like meals, what counts and at

(26:11):
what percentages?

Speaker 2 (26:12):
So deductions for your business are really generous. That said,
there's a few there's a couple outlier people and some
of them are sort of loud on the internet who
just try to deduct everything in their entire life that
is not quite legit. But if it is ordinary and
necessary those are I r S words ordinary and necessary
for running your business, then it's deductible. So this will

(26:33):
include like mileage for driving your personal car to you know,
a business meeting, It includes a meal. You know, Joel,
if I were to buy you a beer and to
talk about this podcast and you know you coming onto
my podcast, that would be a business expense. Those are
actually that sounds fun. Let's do that.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
It does. Let's go in, I'm in. You don't have
to twist my arm.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
So those things that you need to do, and you know,
and if you think about it, a lot of businesses
through relationship buildings, so meals travel. We travel for business
so that we can meet people face to face and
establish that like warm human connection. So like it's kind
of fun and awesome to be able to deduct those
things through your business. You just want to be careful
to follow some more tricky rules in those areas that

(27:22):
people you know might tend to abuse, like meals like travel,
you want to lock it in and make sure you're
following the rules because those are the most frequently audited categories.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Okay, yeah, talk to me about small business owners paying
themselves and then also when it makes sense or when
it's necessary to start paying corely estimated taxes. So typically
now you're beyond the stage of the starting losing money, right,
like you're making money, Like, how do I pay myself

(27:52):
and start paying the taxes in advance? Because that's what
DIRUS requires.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, first, just the paying yourself thing something that people
get confused about is you know when you are when
you have a schedule c which is where you start
right before you form something like anes corporation. Everybody's got
a schedule. See on a SCHEDULECEE. Paying yourself is not
a deduction. So even though it might be a good

(28:18):
idea and a good business practice and it is, it's
still not a deduction for your taxes. So that's just
important to know. But with that said, it's good to
get in the habit when you have consistent income. It's
really good to get into the habit of making a
transfer from your business account to your personal account. And
let me just pause on that, because having a business

(28:40):
account is really important too. That helps your bookkeeping, that
helps your record keeping, and you want to do all
your business deduction spending through that account because if you
think about it, then your book your bank statement for
that business account is going to become the backbone of
your bookkeeping.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
It's a firewall of.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Sorts, absolutely, and it makes everything simpler. And then later,
if you decide to get an LLC, that separate account
is absolutely mandatory because that is part of you maintaining
that legal separation between business and personal. Okay, but with
that said, it's totally fine to transfer money in between them.
That's normal and fine for a business to do. You

(29:18):
just want to know that. You know, in your accounting
when you put money, when you pay yourself moving money
from your business account to your personal account, it is
called an owner's draw. That's actually how you classify it
in your bookkeeping. And you can actually go the other way.
You can invest in your business. You can move money
from personal into your business. Maybe I want to buy
you know, maybe I'm a podcaster and I want to

(29:39):
buy a big new like gorgeous mic and like, you know,
do a renovation in my room with soundproofing. Right, yeah,
So I can put money and maybe I don't have
the cash in my business account, I can do an
owner's investment from personal into business and put it in
my business account and spend the money there. Because you
have the right as the owner to invest in your
business and also to to take profits from your business. Okay,

(30:02):
but the thing to know is that even though that's happening,
that is not reported on your taxes. So when I
put money in for my podcast studio, that's not going
to be income to my business. So I don't have
to pay any taxes on that. That's the good news.
The other side of that is that when I pay myself,
it's not a deduction either, so it just doesn't count. Yeah,

(30:23):
just doesn't even touch it.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Let's talk about recent tax law changes. Yeah, what's been
called the Big Beautiful Bill made a bunch of tax changes,
Like can you maybe highlight some of the big ones
and should they be changing our approach to taxes as
individuals or as business owners?

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yes, So let me just say that this bill is enormous.
There is so much in it. I like to have
the stats at the tip of my tongue, but it's
so big that I find this difficult.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
It it'd be nice if legislation was bite sized and
easy to understand.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Well, I had, you know, in my podcast, which is
the Sunlight Tax Podcast, I have been breaking down the
bill by topic. So I did one on like the
expiring energy credits, and I did one on healthcare. In fact,
tomorrow I'm interviewing like a healthcare expert, so I am
trying to do the bite sized version. But basically, there's
big changes to healthcare. A lot of the energy credits

(31:17):
that were available under the Biden administration have expired, some
have already expired, and some are set to expire at
the end of the year and some next June. I
guess the way that that bill was designed, and you know,
this is sort of typical. There's some sugar rush upfront
to make people like the bill. I mean, legislators want
people to feel that it was a good thing, and

(31:38):
then there's some consequences that don't actually kick in until
a little longer term. Most of the healthcare you know,
people losing their healthcare that is sort of going to
kick in around twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight, so
people aren't going to feel that stuff right away. But
there are big, big changes to healthcare like HSAT. You

(32:01):
explained this on one on your Friday podcast.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
I think hsas are more widely available to people on
bronze plans who signed up through healthcare dot Gov. So there,
which is that's a great thing, right, So there are
there are some lovely changes, and then there are and
then there are also some things that are just harder.
But like, is there anything As a small business owner,

(32:24):
for instance, I was reading something about why people are
buying private jets now because of because of the ability
to deduct that and or depreciate that asset fully in
a single given year. Right, So is that is that
like something that that small business owners. I mean, most
of your listenings still won't be buying private jets, but
anything for there in that for small business owners to

(32:45):
know about.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Well, a lot of the benefit of this current legislation
is actually just keeping in place benefits that were established
under the first Trump you know, the the TCGA, the
Tax and Jobs Act of twenty seventeen, So things like
the QBI deduction, the Qualified Business Income deduction. Just quick

(33:08):
primmer on that. The rules are a little more complex,
but short version is you get a twenty percent deduction
on your business profit and that's a nice little bonus
for small businesses. People with a schedule see you know Uber, driver,
side hustler, you count, you get this deduction. I don't
think it feels like a revelation when you get something

(33:30):
that you've had for the last five years. Sure, you
just continue to be able to have it, But that
actually is the news because those were set to expire
at the end of twenty twenty five and they actually
just all got extended.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
So which is interesting too because in the way the
legislation was done, so many of the things that were
kept around and the changes are many of them are
set to sunset in twenty twenty nine. So from a
tax planning perspective, how does that impact How do you
think that impacts small business owners?

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, you know, it's really hard to predict the future.
I think you probably teach us as you teach investing too,
about timing the market. It's just it's hard to know
what is going to happen. We can guess, but nobody
knows the future. And it's important to know that nobody knows.
There's no expert who can tell you, but I will
tell you this. One of the effects, like really big

(34:25):
effects of this legislation is a massive explosion in the
federal deficit. And because of that, it is going to
mean that it crowds out the ability to spend money
on programs, you know, social safety programs like that is
simply going to happen because we're going to have such
a large debt that it needs to get serviced and

(34:46):
the interest paid on it so that we can can
continue to have credit as a nation.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
So I think these are topics.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
These are definitely bigger topics but I think I think
an important thing maybe to unders stand is one you
probably will get less benefits from the government, like that
is probably going to happen. They're probably going to be
some pretty ugly cuts that have to come in twenty
twenty nine, twenty thirty four, especially ten years out as
a long time. And also I would expect tax rates

(35:15):
to go up in the fire at some point in
the future. Yeah, I think that's that's one that is
the most likely.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
I don't think you're alone in that prediction. And actually
that when they were forming the bill, that was one
of the things that was discussed was raising that tax
bracket in that very upper echelon tier of income earners,
but that was that was not done.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah, I almost I almost.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Curiously, just from like a general tax filing perspective, you
are all about empowering people to DIY, to understand the
tax code so that they can DIY their taxes. Can
you make the case to me and to our listeners
for why a self employed person should not hire a
pro maybe why they should figure this stuff out and

(35:56):
learn to do it themselves.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
I feel frustrated personally, and you know as a taxpayer
that I have to pay to perform my civic duty
of paying my taxes. That just feels wrong. And I
know because I've looked at other countries, like other countries
don't all do it that way. It doesn't have to
be that way, and so it just feels to me, honestly,
just like as a civic right, it just feels like

(36:19):
we should be able to just pay our taxes for
free without paying a third party. And I think those
companies they use a marketing method that is to just
make us all feel really fearful and a lot of
dread about the irs and about tax law and just
say like, hey, it's so complicated and so scary. Just
pay us and we'll do it for you. But actually

(36:39):
a lot of stuff you don't need. You're probably doing
most of the work on your own anyway when you
do pay someone, And so if you just knew a
little bit more, you'd be able to file the taxes
on your own. And so to me, you know, it's
kind of against my own interest, right, nobody's going to
pay me to do taxes now. But I just this
is a book I wanted to exist in the world

(37:01):
because it just think this is fair, and they just
want people to be able to do their own taxes.
With that said, I do have a chapter in the
book that I think is an important one which is
about tax triage, because there are some scenarios that just
have complexity. If you go by Joel a corporate jet
for yourself, the depreciation might be a little complicated.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
I've already done it.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
So is that your craft beers yes?

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yes, Now you know when you get to the upper echelon,
you know, like me, you need corporate jets of necessity.
Right when does it become complex enough to need Like,
for instance, I'm a real estate investor, right, and that
owning multiple rental properties does complicate things, But you're right, Like,
I'm gathering a lot of that information anyway to give

(37:49):
to my tax professional to then do the actual filing
and then and then when it comes to making like
not just year end decisions to try to save on
some taxes this year, I think sometimes having the input
of a tax professional who is like up to speed
on the changes in the most recent tax bill like
that could be helpful from hey, here's like what changed

(38:12):
and how it's impacting you now, and then also how
you should be thinking about your taxes, how much you're
contributing to like donating maybe bunching donations to maximize tax
deduction this year versus you know, donating equal amounts in
over multiple years. Like, there are some complexities like that,

(38:32):
and people could save more on taxes, but maybe they
just don't know that exists or know how to go
about it.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
You're absolutely right about that, and there are things. Tax
planning is something that actually costs a lot of money
but is worth it. I actually think that I think
of that almost differently than just tax preparation, which is
not always worth it because you often do have to
do most of that work yourself and could just get
over the hump with a little extra info. So my

(39:01):
book really I the people that I was thinking of
or like, you know me, younger me who was like
an artist with all the complexity of a larger business
but not the income, and younger people who tend to
have you know, a young person recently out of school,
in their first job or in their first you know,
just starting their business for the first time. That's a

(39:23):
person who hasn't accumulated a bunch of real estate, maybe
a spouse, maybe a mortgage right that your taxes are
simpler when you're younger, and so a younger person who
has a much more limited budget, who's listening to your
show to get all your amazing tips on that stuff.
That's the person who needs this book and who need
you know, needs to be able to just do their
taxes on their own because they actually probably have a

(39:46):
simpler situation. Yeah, once you do have multiple real estate
investments and you know, a marriage and a mortgage and
depreciation and all these things like those, that's where one
you have the resources, you have the money to pay
somebody professional, and probably more need for it. So it's
that like zone of people I think who have been
left out, who are paying three hundred dollars to turbo

(40:08):
tax when they have really a very simple tax return.
That's who I'm really trying to talk to.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, I love that you kind of distinguish too between
paying for advice and paying for someone to file your
taxes on your behalf. And especially for people who have yeah,
simpler situations, there's there are free tax software like I
I have always liked. I think it's cash app taxes
now used to be done by credit Karma, and they

(40:34):
have you can file your federal and state for free,
and you can even have greater complexity than some of
the major tax softwares that are like well, if you
meet this like tiny, you know, people who have a
ten can file at ten forty easy, then we'll let
you file for free. But cash app taxes opens it
up to a wider rate of people who can file
for free in di Wyatt. But yeah, I think paying

(40:56):
for that advice and insight maybe or even just like
buying your book and then like learning it downloading the
information that way can make people feel more confident in
their ability to kind of go the DII route.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, I think, you know, honestly, I just want people
to have a better sense of what their rights are,
and because I find when people have that information they
feel much less scared. They're really made for humans. They're
made for people who are imperfect, which is literally one
hundred percent of us. The only really hard and fast

(41:31):
rule about taxes is meet the deadline, right. But if
you make a mistake, you can file an amended return.
Like they're actually more forgiving than I mean, you have
to follow the rules and do your best. I'm not
saying cheat on your taxes, definitely not but like you
can fix mistakes, you can arrange payment plans. There are
ways to get out of a bad situation. And I

(41:53):
just want people to have the information so that they
can kind of go in eyes wide open and not
just pay money out of fear.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah, let's let's talk about perfection and a few other
quick topics. Hannah will get to just a few more
questions with Hannah Cole right after this are back. We're
still talking with Hannah Cole, who don't want taxes to
terrify you. Getting towards the end of the year and

(42:21):
taxes are, you know, starting to get on people's minds
where whether it's last minute moves to potentially reduce taxes
for next year, whether that's contributing more to those taxi
and retirement accounts or you know, donating more money, which
you have to be thoughtful about that too. Like I
just mentioned with the bunching, is donating more money gonna
actually get you a tax break this year? It depends

(42:43):
on a bunch of things. But what you were just
talking about, Hannah right there, you I think a lot
of people feel like their taxes need to be perfect
before they file, and that feels like an impossible thing, like,
what does that even mean? What is the IRS really
looking for from us when it comes to avoiding getting
audited and making sure we're jumping through the right hoops.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
Well, nobody can promise you not to be audited because
it's the only check and balance in the system, and
so that is that they have a right to audit
you at any time for the last three years. But
even though that sounds a little scary. The thing is,
the thing that I think people don't really consciously think
about with taxes is that you have to pay taxes

(43:24):
all year, and it's an estimate. And the whole job
of a tax return is to reconcile the estimated taxes
that you paid, whether it was through withholding on your
paycheck or through paying estimated quarterly taxes, which is how
you have to do it when you're self employed. And
so you do that estimated payment all year, and then
when the tax year is over, so December thirty first

(43:47):
goes by, then you get those tax documents in the mail,
you do your bookkeeping, you see what the actual was
versus the estimate, and the tax returns job is to say, oh,
you overpaid your taxes. Here is your refund or you
underpaid your taxes, here's your bill And so if you
think about that, perfection is not in there at all.
Estimates are imperfect, and reconciling is part of the process. Okay,

(44:11):
So I hope that just feels like diffusing to this
idea like it has to be perfect. No, Like the
tax returns job is to do the math on that,
you know, to make change on those final numbers.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
That's all when people come to visit you or in
the process of writing this book, as you're talking to people,
what are the biggest misconceptions that people tend to have
about taxes and like what do you maybe trying to
combat fiercely here that people believe that's that's maybe not true.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
I mean, one is that they're super scary. I mean,
because I really do find I do a lot of
workshops around the country just teaching people about taxes, and
I find consistently people come up to me after and
they're like, Oh, I totally feel like I can do
it now. Yeah, like.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
You heard my intro, Like it's fear based like that.
There is a lot of like I don't like horror movies,
like that was not that's that's not a joke, Like
I get scared, but I think taxes have a similar
like people feel that way about like even just the
work getting spoken in a room.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Absolutely well as a person who has called the IRS
a lot because before I knew, you know, before I
went back to school for accounting, I myself got in trouble,
like some of this book is written based on my
own pain. But just as a person who also calls
the IRS on behalf of clients, they're so nice, Like nobody,
nobody you talk to in bill collection, in any other

(45:28):
private area is ever going to be as kind and
sort of forgiving as the IRS. They just want basically
for you to pay your taxes in any way that
you can. It's not actually so terrible.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Well, I'm gonna say maybe some of the things that
will get you in the most trouble is like not
filing right like that can talk about how big of
an issue that can be.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
And actually, you know, you were asking like one of
the most you know, the things that people get wrong
thinking that estimated taxes, estimated quarterly taxes don't apply to me,
or that I'm going to get some written in stone
engraved invitation to start paying estimates, Like, no, I wish
everybody had this education and I'm trying to provide it

(46:12):
in this book. But estimated quarterly taxes apply to you
if your tax bill last year was over one thousand dollars.
So like you can actually look, that's a knowable number.
You can pull out your ten forty from last year,
look at that tax you know amount you o line
and you can see you can see the answer. If
it's greater than one thousand dollars you have to pay quarterly.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
What happens if you don't pay quarterly.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Estimated tax Yeah, so if you don't pay quarterly taxes,
then the following year, when you do your tax return
for that year, you'll be assessed up to four penalties
for each of the quarterly deadlines that went by that
you missed, right, So you might pay four, you might
have four penalties. You could only have three if you
figured it out and paid your last payment, right, So
you can stop the penalties by getting on board the train.

(46:58):
And then there's also daily interest, and of course, like
you know, that's a penalties and interests are an incentive
and negative incentive. So the incentive with the daily interest
is to say Hey, okay, you missed the quarterly deadline
for you know, January fifteenth. But if you get on
board and make your payment before the don't wait till
the next quarterly deadline, pay tomorrow. Pay today. It's always

(47:21):
going to be more cheap to pay your taxes today
than to wait till tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
And what's your advice on how people can figure out
how much they should be paying in quarterly estimates to
the irs?

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah, So there's two rules called safe harbors, and your
goal as a taxpayer is just to meet one or
the other of them. It can be either one. The
easy one is one hundred paying one hundred percent of
last year's tax this year. So if you just look
at the total tax line on your ten forty summary,
that's the page. It's on the page that has your signature,

(47:54):
There's a line that says total tax. You take that number,
divide it by four. That will be a good baseline
for meeting the first safe harbor rule for paying your
estimates for this year. So if last year, for example,
my total tax was twenty thousand dollars, I'm going to
take twenty thousand divided by four. Because it's quarterly taxes

(48:14):
and that's a five thousand dollars payment each quarter, and
that will meet the safe harbor for.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Me, which is great for not running a foul of
the IRS. But if you make a lot more money,
you could still find yourself short shrift at the end
of the year when it comes to or when it
comes down to file taxes and having the money to
pay what.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
You actually out absolutely, and I think that that is
the hardest part for people to realize. I think a
lot of times people get their head around the retroactive
part of taxes. They look at last year's tax return
because that's the only one they've got and they can
get a handle on last year. But meanwhile, this year
is happening, right, and this year's taxes are not actually

(48:51):
going to be based on last year. They're actually going
to be based on this year. So the IRS lets
you estimate based on last year with the assumption that
this year looks like last year. But sometimes this year
doesn't look anything like last year, and so that's where
it gets much more tricky. There is a safe harbor
rule that helps you. You can pay ninety percent of this

(49:11):
year's tax, but you know you're paying ninety percent of
an unknown total, so that's much harder to get your
hat around. I'll tell you the cheat code, though, Jel
is just you have to do bookkeeping once per quarter, okay,
and that's.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
How you know, maybe we'll end there. Bookkeeping is how
difficult is that? And I know that there are so
many It's funny we do it ours in house. Matt,
my co host and best friend, it loves to do it,
like he just is thrilled to do our own bookkeeping,
which is rad god bless, I know, Right, But then
there are these bookkeeping softwares out there that seem to

(49:48):
be relatively inexpensive. So is it pretty simple to use
those for small business owners? Is that typically the best solution?

Speaker 2 (49:55):
I honestly think the best solution is the one you're
going to stick with and the one that works for you.
You know, like, if it's really complicated to set up
and expensive and you don't have the money, maybe that's
not the best one for you. You can absolutely do
your bookkeeping on a spreadsheet. There's nothing wrong with that.
Just understand, a spreadsheet is going to be manual, right,
It's not going to pull a feed from your business

(50:18):
bank account and start putting those into categories for you.
If you want some of that automation, it's going to
be worth it to pay for some software. So yeah,
you really. I think the number one thing to think
about if you're going to pay for bookkeeping software is one.
If you're not paying your being sold, you are the

(50:38):
product you're being sold, right, that's a thing to know.
But you want to look for the automation of pulling
in your bank statement, so if you're bookkeeping software won't
play well with your bank. And I've had this happen.
I use Fidelity, and I tried to set up on
a bookkeeping platform that wouldn't pull a Fidelity bank statement.

(51:00):
Was a waste of all my time and all my work.
I was like, oh, this is going to be manual anyway,
and I'm paying for automation that I don't get, So
that's what I would look for.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Okay, wonderful Hannah. Thank you so much for taking the
time today. Where can how do money listeners find out
about your awesome new book that demystifies taxes and makes
it all just super reassuring to know that you can
do it yourself.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Thank you too, It's so fun to be here. Yeah,
the book Taxes for Humans is available anywhere books are sold,
and if you go to my website, I made a
page for how to money listeners. You can go to
Sunlight Tax dot com slash how and you can you know,
get a link to buy the book at any independent
bookstore or your favorite you know, large retailer.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Amazing. We'll put that link in our show notes too,
off on the site of how toomoney dot com.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
Awesome. Can I also tell them tell you that you
know on on my website at Sunlight tax dot com,
I have a visual guide to tax deductions for small
businesses and self employee people. So that's a really cool
free download for those like visual learners among us, with
all the tax rules written out. So if that, if
anybody's interested in that, Sundly Tax dot com is a

(52:08):
place you can get that too.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Wonderful Hannah, this has been great, Thank you so much
for joining me.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Thanks for doing this, Joel. It's just awesome to talk
to you, and I love what y'all are doing over there.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Oh man, such a great conversation with Hannah Cole. I
just I love it when somebody has the ability to
talk about something that most people feel where it feels
like another language, and I think for a lot of people,
taxes feel like another language. And this is why we
spend so much money hiring other people who understand that

(52:39):
language to do tax work for us, right is because
we don't want to take the time to dual lingo taxes.
We just don't and so we pay the price one
in terms of not understanding how they work. And maybe
so I think the price gets paid many times over.

(53:00):
Sometimes it's in the deductions we don't take, or maybe
it's in the fact that we don't really understand that
we're a business and so we're not paying those quarterly
estimated taxes, which costs us, like Hannah was saying, in
terms of interest and penalties. And then it also costs

(53:20):
us when we pay the professional to not just file
our taxes, but maybe we're paying for advice as well,
and so there can be a lot of money sunk
into paying for tax help. And it's not that it's
never a good idea, Like we even talked about the
complexity of being a real estate investor, and especially once

(53:42):
you get past a certain point, maybe it makes the
most sense for you from an ROI perspective to hire
someone to help. But similar to I just think I
always think of this as a real estate investor, when
you are getting started out, we always talk about not
hiring someone to manage those properties for you, because there

(54:03):
is something about the learning curve of at least doing
diying it for a couple of years that's going to
be really good for you. You're going to have this
hands on approach. Yeah, it doesn't mean you're fixing everything
that goes wrong at the house yourself, but you're managing
the tenants, you're finding tenants, you're learning what it looks
like to be an effective manager. And then when you

(54:25):
do hire a manager in the future, you have a
lot better understanding and knowledge to hire a good one.
You know what questions to ask, you know how to
hold them accountable. And I think the same thing is
true of especially in those early years, di wying your taxes,
and I think it's wise, it's very wise. Just like

(54:47):
we're learning about your personal finance and DIY investing so
that we don't have to pay somebody, you know, one
percent assets under management fee every single year to do
something that we now feel confident that we can do
on our own. Maybe the same is true especially early on,
that a little bit of knowledge, garnering some wisdom in

(55:08):
this space can avoid us having to pay a fee
that can be pretty significant to somebody else. And then
when we do feel like that's the best place for
us to go to hire a professional to be in
our corner on the tax front, well, now we know
what question to ask them, and we know how to
hold them accountable, and we know how to look at

(55:29):
our own tax return and tax information and say, well,
wait a second, you what Hay and I alluded to
early on in the conversation, My tax pro missed this
massive deduction. And I knew that because she brought enough
to the table in that conversation to know this tax
professional is not right for me, and they're missing out
on some really important things. And if you don't know

(55:50):
those things, you're assuming your tax pro is doing everything properly,
is taking advantage of all the deductions that you are
eligible for. But you don't actually know that right until
you actually know something about taxes yourself. So I do
recommend her book Taxes for Humans. I think it's a
great one, and I think Hannah has just such a

(56:11):
great perspective on taxes and the empowerment in that space
because we could all use a little bit of it.
All right, that's gonna do do it for this episode
if you want. If you want links to Hannah's site
and where you can buy her new book, you can
find that up on the website at howtomoney dot com.

(56:32):
Until next time, Best Friend Out.