November 11, 2024 • 23 mins
In this special episode of Drilling It Down, Wes and Tyler delve into the intricate world of taxation in the wake of recent election outcomes. Initially set to deliver a detailed analysis dubbed "The Great Tax War," the hosts pivot to discuss the repercussions of a potentially unified Republican government on future tax policies. They unpack the ramifications of the continuation of tax reforms initiated during the Trump administration, particularly concerning individual tax provisions set to expire in 2025. Lyon and Ott explore the significance of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, highlighting the urgent need for small business owners and professionals to comprehend tax strategies that minimize liabilities. They emphasize the importance of the Qualified Business Income Deduction (QBI) and its nuanced impact on profitability within dental practices and small businesses. With an eye on proactive tax planning, the duo encourages listeners to develop a written tax plan and seek expert guidance. As they wrap up with levity surrounding the post-election climate, Lyon and Ott inspire optimism for potential tax reductions while reminding their audience of the importance of preparation amidst economic uncertainties.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Wesley Lyon:
Welcome back to a special episode of Drilling It Down. Going to be a shorter episode than expected. (00:02):
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Wesley Lyon: So this is your host, Wes Lyon, co-hosting Tyler Ott. Ty, welcome back. (00:09):
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Tyler Ott: Always good to be here. (00:14):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, so today, funny, I think I've recorded this three or four times and things changed so much. (00:15):
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Wesley Lyon: Originally, the title of this episode was, it was actually going to be about (00:22):
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Wesley Lyon: an hour or two hour long webinar, and it was going to be the great tax war. (00:25):
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Wesley Lyon: Had the slides, did all the front work, to I think, on my shock, (00:28):
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Wesley Lyon: we're not going to have the great tax war. (00:35):
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Wesley Lyon: So just for everyone out there, we are going to talk about taxes, (00:37):
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Wesley Lyon: how the election impacts it. (00:41):
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Wesley Lyon: Our job is to remove the emotion from this. So we're not sitting here. (00:43):
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Wesley Lyon: It's not that we're trying to say it's some great thing or bad thing or what's going on. (00:46):
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Wesley Lyon: It just wasn't what we expected when we were looking at it. (00:50):
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Wesley Lyon: So, yeah. So, Tyler, I mean. (00:54):
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Tyler Ott: What did we expect? Yeah, I mean, I think we expected not every chamber of government (00:57):
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Tyler Ott: to go one direction and there would be some fight and there would be some war. (01:05):
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Tyler Ott: But it's looking like, well, so we know the presidency is going for Trump. (01:10):
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Tyler Ott: We know that the Senate is Republican and the House hasn't been called yet, (01:14):
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Tyler Ott: but I just did a little research. It's looking pretty strongly towards the Republicans. (01:18):
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Tyler Ott: So if we have, you know, a Republican controlled Congress, as well as a Republican (01:22):
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Tyler Ott: controlled presidency, where's the war going to occur? (01:27):
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Wesley Lyon: Well, I'll throw a little curveball your way. So the reason and we'll kind of (01:30):
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Wesley Lyon: back up and kind of tell everyone what we expected. (01:35):
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Wesley Lyon: And again, we're not political pundits here. It's not our job. (01:38):
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Wesley Lyon: It's removing the emotion. (01:40):
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Wesley Lyon: The House looks like it's going to go Republican as of the recording of this (01:42):
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Wesley Lyon: a day or two after the election. (01:46):
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Wesley Lyon: We expected the House to go Democrat and we expected the Senate to go Republican. (01:49):
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Wesley Lyon: So we expected to split Congress. (01:55):
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Wesley Lyon: It's not what appears to be what's going to happen. (01:59):
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Wesley Lyon: So that's really why we expected this great tax war. And again, (02:03):
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Wesley Lyon: it's not that we were trying to root one way or the other. We're just looking over the day. (02:06):
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Wesley Lyon: They're going, you know, this, you know, basically to get down to it, (02:09):
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Wesley Lyon: we kept it as simple as possible. (02:13):
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Wesley Lyon: It looks like there's a bunch of House seats up that are in places that historically vote Democratic. (02:15):
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Wesley Lyon: And it looks like there's some Senate seats up in places that historically vote Republican. (02:21):
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Wesley Lyon: So for that, we thought, hey, there didn't look like a lot in danger the Democrats (02:27):
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Wesley Lyon: would flip in the Senate. (02:30):
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Wesley Lyon: And there didn't look like a lot in danger the Republicans would flip in the House. (02:32):
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Wesley Lyon: And that was just kind of what we expected. The presidency, I think we were all, (02:35):
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Wesley Lyon: you know, I don't know, I didn't have an opinion on it until, (02:39):
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Wesley Lyon: you know, about, took me about one in the morning to have an opinion on it, (02:42):
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Wesley Lyon: about 3.30 or 4 in the morning to really feel like I actually had something to say about it. (02:46):
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Wesley Lyon: So that was just, we thought there'd be this split and a really big tax war over that. (02:52):
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Wesley Lyon: And the reason there'd be a big tax war is the individual mandates are set to expire. Right, Tyler? (02:58):
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Tyler Ott: Yeah. So the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Trump tax law, was created in 2017, enacted in 2018. (03:05):
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Tyler Ott: Provisions of all these were set to expire after 2025. Right. (03:12):
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Tyler Ott: That's how it was written. Now, Trump in office, Congress controlled by Republicans. (03:17):
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Tyler Ott: There's a little more option or control on, you know, which way that's going (03:22):
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Tyler Ott: to go. Impacts of that changes there. (03:27):
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Wesley Lyon: Yes. And what happened back in the day was when they project out the federal (03:29):
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Wesley Lyon: deficits, you know, I think if you and again, we are not political experts. (03:36):
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Wesley Lyon: I'm going to botch this to some extent. I have not gone through the rabbit hole (03:41):
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Wesley Lyon: of spending 50 hours trying to figure out exactly how politics work. I care about tax law. (03:45):
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Wesley Lyon: But I believe that in order to pass a law that projects the federal deficit (03:50):
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Wesley Lyon: to go up by a certain amount in 10 years, that you have to have 60 senators pass the bill. (03:56):
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Wesley Lyon: If not, if you can only get 50, I think what they did to get around it said, (04:03):
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Wesley Lyon: okay, we're going to hit that threshold. We need 60. We don't have 60. (04:07):
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Wesley Lyon: So what they did was they made the individual provisions of the Tax Cuts and (04:12):
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Wesley Lyon: Jobs Act temporary, not permanent. (04:18):
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Wesley Lyon: And that meant at the end of 2025, no matter who was in office, what happened? (04:21):
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Wesley Lyon: If nothing happened and a law was not passed, that everybody's taxes would go up. (04:26):
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Wesley Lyon: And again, we were just joking as we're recording this, going through some things, (04:33):
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Wesley Lyon: going, hey, we're not here to say what's on the TV. We're here to just things (04:37):
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Wesley Lyon: in writing, things we know. (04:41):
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Wesley Lyon: And, you know, everybody's taxes were going to go up if the Tax Cuts and Jobs (04:43):
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Wesley Lyon: Act, or they will if the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act individual mandates do not pass. (04:48):
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Wesley Lyon: So for that reason, we thought there would be a big tax war, right? (04:53):
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Wesley Lyon: It doesn't matter who's in. The Democrats don't want to raise taxes on every single American. (04:58):
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Wesley Lyon: They wanted to cut it off at 400 or 450, depending on which piece of literature (05:02):
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Wesley Lyon: you wrote or read. But, you know, they want to keep taxes lower there, (05:07):
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Wesley Lyon: and they even potentially want to make them even lower for the people making less than that. (05:11):
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Wesley Lyon: And they want to go higher on the opposite end, meanwhile, the Republicans, you know. (05:17):
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Wesley Lyon: Tough to say is we're going to kind of get into what they want, (05:22):
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Wesley Lyon: because now it seems like they'll get what they want. (05:25):
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Wesley Lyon: The curveball I'm going to throw you, and the reason I thought there was going (05:27):
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Wesley Lyon: to be, we were calling it the great tax war in the CPA world, (05:30):
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Wesley Lyon: was the debt ceiling is also coming up for debate. (05:33):
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Wesley Lyon: And it does, again, I don't really know politics that well, but the debt ceiling (05:36):
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Wesley Lyon: needing to be increased, because obviously we're not paying down our debt next year. (05:43):
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Wesley Lyon: The debt ceiling needed to be increased is going to give leverage. (05:47):
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Wesley Lyon: And I don't know how much since we're going to have one party control, (05:52):
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Wesley Lyon: but there still is going to be leverage there on getting that debt ceiling. (05:56):
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Wesley Lyon: So if everyone thinks back of what causes the government and why do we go into (06:02):
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Wesley Lyon: these government shutdowns, if you hear about it, it's usually the debt ceiling. (06:07):
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Wesley Lyon: And again, I could be a little off. I don't pay that much attention to it. (06:10):
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Wesley Lyon: I tend to think here in Charlotte, with the federal government shutting down, (06:14):
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Wesley Lyon: isn't going to be the end of the world. Tyler, you were in D.C. (06:18):
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Wesley Lyon: For a lot longer than I was. It's probably a bigger deal up there. (06:20):
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Tyler Ott: A little bigger, but the places I were working, I was still working. (06:23):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, so that's kind of what we thought was going to come about. (06:27):
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Wesley Lyon: But now we've got a new situation, and it appears that we're going to have Republican (06:30):
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Wesley Lyon: control with the Trump presidency. (06:37):
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Wesley Lyon: So you would think that we're probably going to get the tax bill that Trump wants. (06:39):
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Wesley Lyon: So, Tyler, what does he want? (06:47):
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Tyler Ott: So he just wants to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. (06:49):
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Tyler Ott: So everything that he presented in 2017 and that was in effect since 2018 is (06:52):
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Tyler Ott: just going to remain in effect until, you know, (06:59):
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Tyler Ott: I guess 60 senators 20 years from now decide that something else needs to happen. (07:02):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, that's it. And for those of you listening, you know, we were joking back (07:07):
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Wesley Lyon: and forth on what the TV says, what goes on. (07:11):
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Wesley Lyon: I said, no, no, no, no. I pulled the Trump campaign website, (07:14):
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Wesley Lyon: and we just want to see what's in there. (07:17):
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Wesley Lyon: There's three lines. Let's see how many sentences are here. I think it's just two sentences. (07:19):
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Wesley Lyon: There are two sentences relating to taxes, what they want to do. (07:25):
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Wesley Lyon: So, you know, I'll just read it. Republicans will make permanent the provisions (07:29):
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Wesley Lyon: of the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that doubled the standard deduction, (07:33):
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Wesley Lyon: expanded the child tax credit, and spurred economic growth for all Americans. (07:38):
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Wesley Lyon: This next one really won't apply to dental, but we will eliminate taxes on tips (07:42):
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Wesley Lyon: for millions of restaurant and hospitality workers and pursue additional tax cuts. (07:46):
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Wesley Lyon: So there you kind of have it. I think the first sentence says it all. (07:52):
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Wesley Lyon: They want to make permanent. (07:55):
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Wesley Lyon: And, you know, we were a little young for this back in the day. (07:56):
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Wesley Lyon: However, I believe the current set of rates that we were under were also done under the same manner. (07:59):
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Wesley Lyon: I believe it was the Bush presidency. And I believe he went in and, (08:07):
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Wesley Lyon: lowered the rates, but they were also temporary, but then they had enough votes, (08:12):
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Wesley Lyon: they made them permanent. (08:18):
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Wesley Lyon: And again, we're not that old, so we probably were dealing with high school (08:19):
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Wesley Lyon: sports or something and not caring. (08:25):
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Wesley Lyon: But at the time, I don't believe that this was as big of a deal as it would (08:27):
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Wesley Lyon: have been coming into this one. (08:32):
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Wesley Lyon: So I think something similar where it's probably just going to extend the current (08:33):
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Wesley Lyon: provisions, which I think on the upside, the tax rates went a little bit lower for everybody. (08:38):
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Wesley Lyon: On the downside, the downside or upside, depending how you look at it, (08:46):
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Wesley Lyon: the 20% qualified business income deduction could be here to stay. (08:50):
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Tyler Ott: And that's what I was going to say. What is the biggest impact to dentists probably? (08:54):
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Tyler Ott: It's going to be still having that option of maximizing it if you're in that income range. (08:58):
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Wesley Lyon: So for those of you who aren't as familiar, because CPAs tend to leave this (09:03):
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Wesley Lyon: one alone, it's pretty complex planning. (09:07):
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Wesley Lyon: But the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, you know, what was going on right there, (09:10):
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Wesley Lyon: if you kind of remove the emotions from it, was a bunch of corporations were (09:13):
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Wesley Lyon: fleeing, and the hot spot to go to was Ireland. (09:18):
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Wesley Lyon: And they weren't bringing their money back because, well, were we 35%, 40? (09:20):
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Wesley Lyon: I can't remember exactly what our corporate income tax rate was. (09:25):
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Wesley Lyon: But we had a very, very punitive corporate income tax rate, one of the highest in the world. (09:29):
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Wesley Lyon: And that's why corporations were fleeing was, you know, their mandate is to (09:35):
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Wesley Lyon: increase shareholder value and giving a high percentage of profits over to taxes. (09:39):
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Wesley Lyon: It goes against that mandate, you know. (09:43):
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Wesley Lyon: So Trump's idea, his team was they want to encourage these corporations to come back. (09:46):
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Wesley Lyon: And in order to do that, they lowered the tax rate. (09:51):
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Wesley Lyon: We were 21 or 17. We don't really deal with corporate income tax here, (09:55):
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Wesley Lyon: so we're not as familiar. We know our stuff like the back of our hand. (09:59):
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Wesley Lyon: But they lowered that rate to get the corporations to stay. (10:02):
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Wesley Lyon: That was always permanent. So when we look at this end of 2025, (10:07):
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Wesley Lyon: this tax law expiring, provisions were expiring, and it was the individual provisions. (10:10):
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Wesley Lyon: The corporate provisions were not expiring. (10:16):
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Wesley Lyon: So that brought the tax rate down for corporations. (10:19):
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Wesley Lyon: Big problem they ran into was when they looked in and dove into the data, (10:23):
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Wesley Lyon: they realized that some of these big corporations, when you actually look at (10:26):
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Wesley Lyon: the shareholder level between the corporate income tax and the tax rate they (10:31):
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Wesley Lyon: were going to pay as individuals, (10:35):
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Wesley Lyon: you were actually going to pay less in certain scenarios as a C corporation (10:37):
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Wesley Lyon: than you were a subchapter S corporation. (10:41):
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Wesley Lyon: Now, given that most small businesses in America operate as a subchapter or (10:43):
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Wesley Lyon: S corporation or a sole proprietor or something else. (10:47):
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Wesley Lyon: Most small businesses are no longer C corporations because the small businesses (10:51):
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Wesley Lyon: were gonna pay more in certain situations than the large businesses. (10:56):
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Wesley Lyon: Obviously, we had a problem here politically. (11:00):
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Wesley Lyon: And, you know, again, not not really. I want small business owners to pay less (11:04):
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Wesley Lyon: because I am one and we deal with them every day. That's what we do for a living. (11:08):
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Wesley Lyon: However, just removing that emotion from it and saying, you know, (11:11):
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Wesley Lyon: hey, OK, maybe you don't think that's a bad idea or whatever it is, (11:14):
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Wesley Lyon: you know, politically, obviously, they don't want to be out there, (11:18):
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Wesley Lyon: you know, having somebody on the campaign trail going. (11:21):
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Wesley Lyon: And they're taxing you more than they're taxing Apple. (11:24):
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Wesley Lyon: I mean, that's my one thing on politics. I say I'm pretty certain that would (11:27):
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Wesley Lyon: have been devastating for any candidate. (11:31):
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Wesley Lyon: So what they did was they came up with a patch. I call it a patch. (11:33):
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Wesley Lyon: A true fix would have been to make sure that the individual rates probably go (11:38):
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Wesley Lyon: down lower, but that wasn't what they wanted to put onto it. (11:42):
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Wesley Lyon: So what they did was created this 20% Qualified Business Income Deduction, or QBI. (11:46):
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Wesley Lyon: The QBI is an extra 20% deduction on your individual tax return that relates (11:54):
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Wesley Lyon: to your business profits. (12:00):
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Wesley Lyon: Only the profits, not your salary, not what goes into your retirement plan, only your profits. (12:02):
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Wesley Lyon: However, there is a phase-out range, so not everybody qualifies for this. (12:06):
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Wesley Lyon: If you make a million dollars as a dentist in profit, you make too much to qualify. (12:11):
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Wesley Lyon: So, a lot of our complex planning actually happens around, okay, (12:16):
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Wesley Lyon: how do we set up the retirement plan, the salary, everything perfect so that we maximize this QBI. (12:20):
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Wesley Lyon: And Tyler, what are the, I mean, I feel like you've been doing it long enough now. (12:26):
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Wesley Lyon: It doesn't take as much time, but the first few times you do this calculation, (12:30):
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Wesley Lyon: it takes you like 10 hours to figure everything out because it's pretty complex. (12:33):
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Wesley Lyon: So what all is going into this calculation that makes it so complex? (12:37):
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Tyler Ott: Yeah, so you got the salary. So obviously lower the salary, you're going to (12:41):
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Tyler Ott: have higher profit, higher income. So you got to balance that in there. (12:45):
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Tyler Ott: Also comes the retirement plan contribution. So you lower the salary, (12:48):
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Tyler Ott: you might get a lower retirement plan contribution versus you might raise the (12:51):
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Tyler Ott: salary, get a higher retirement plan contribution, but then that decreases the (12:57):
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Tyler Ott: profit, so then you get a lower QBI. (13:00):
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Tyler Ott: But also, there's some instances where we can get a large retirement plan contribution (13:02):
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Tyler Ott: where we're able to bring the income down so that someone who was above the (13:07):
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Tyler Ott: threshold now becomes eligible for the threshold. (13:11):
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Tyler Ott: Now, the other part that we also need to account for is payroll taxes, (13:14):
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Tyler Ott: you know, the impact of increasing the salary versus getting a little more in (13:18):
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Tyler Ott: the QBI deduction, you can kind of see how... (13:22):
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Tyler Ott: You may not follow along with what I'm saying, how confusing that can get. (13:25):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, the one last thing in there is staff cost of the retirement plan, too. (13:29):
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Wesley Lyon: So even if you can keep the benefit level the same, as you lower the salary, (13:33):
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Wesley Lyon: you lower the payroll taxes, but you might increase the staff cost. (13:37):
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Wesley Lyon: So you've got to get in there. (13:41):
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Wesley Lyon: And, I mean, we tried to build about eight different calculators to do this. (13:43):
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Wesley Lyon: And eventually we just came to the conclusion that you just have to run it both ways with the facts. (13:48):
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Wesley Lyon: And eventually, you know, you do a few hundred of them and you get used to it (13:53):
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Wesley Lyon: and you go, okay, now I get this retirement plan thing enough. (13:57):
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Wesley Lyon: I'm going to ballpark it and I'm going to bet I'm going to be right. (14:00):
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Tyler Ott: But yeah, we would, we would do multiple retirement plan proposals, (14:03):
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Tyler Ott: multiple tax scenarios just to see, and then run it through our cashflow. (14:06):
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Tyler Ott: It's, it was a lot, but yes, as we got into it, as our, my experience grew, (14:11):
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Tyler Ott: knowledge grew, it's, it's much easier. (14:16):
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Wesley Lyon: It becomes like doing something like the back of your hand, but it's kind of (14:18):
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Wesley Lyon: like, you know, If you're a dentist and the first time you're doing an endo (14:21):
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Wesley Lyon: procedure or something. (14:25):
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Tyler Ott: You're going to be a little shaky. (14:26):
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Wesley Lyon: Eventually, you get good. But a lot of the CPAs, because it's not really their (14:27):
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Wesley Lyon: job to understand the retirement plans, and that's a big portion of it, (14:31):
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Wesley Lyon: is what impact does moving this salary have on my retirement plan? (14:35):
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Wesley Lyon: And am I going to do something? You know, a CPA doesn't want to come in there, (14:39):
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Wesley Lyon: and the maximum salary you can pay for a retirement plan is like $345. (14:43):
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Wesley Lyon: And that's pretty darn close to that taxable income threshold to phase out of QBI. (14:48):
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Wesley Lyon: So as you go down, let's say, hey, I'm going to go down from $345 to $200, (14:54):
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Wesley Lyon: your retirement plan, how much you give the staff. (14:59):
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Wesley Lyon: In order to put extra money in for you, you always have to pass testing and (15:03):
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Wesley Lyon: you have to give the staff. (15:06):
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Wesley Lyon: Problem is those aren't done on dollar amounts. They're done on percentage of compensation. (15:08):
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Wesley Lyon: So if your benefit's the same and your W-2 is lower and that's what your retirement (15:13):
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Wesley Lyon: plan is based off of, you have a higher percentage, which means your staff are (15:18):
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Wesley Lyon: going to have a higher percentage. (15:22):
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Wesley Lyon: So now all of a sudden, you know, I'm not here to dog the CPAs. (15:23):
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Wesley Lyon: It's just, they don't know that. They've never needed to know that. (15:27):
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Wesley Lyon: Understanding retirement plans like the back of their hand and what moving salaries (15:31):
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Wesley Lyon: changes on staff costs is not something they're going to be able to learn very quickly. (15:35):
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Wesley Lyon: So for that reason, a lot of people have ignored this planning. (15:40):
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Wesley Lyon: And, you know, I think from a CPA standpoint, some of us were probably going, (15:43):
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Wesley Lyon: oh, if the QBI went away, our lives would get a lot easier. (15:48):
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Wesley Lyon: So good news and bad news. I mean, good news is the, you know, (15:52):
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Wesley Lyon: we're not going to have major tax changes for everybody. (15:56):
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Wesley Lyon: Bad news is we still have the complex planning. But there's, (15:58):
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Wesley Lyon: something interesting in here and pursue additional tax cuts. (16:03):
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Tyler Ott: Yeah, there's that's what that's where it's, you know, what you've heard on TV. (16:09):
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Tyler Ott: He said, she said, who knows? There's it's not in writing. So there's a lot (16:13):
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Tyler Ott: that can be changed and up in the air. (16:18):
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Wesley Lyon: So so I'm only going to go over one on the he said, she said. (16:20):
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Wesley Lyon: But the reason I want to go over this one is because I've heard it and it might (16:24):
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Wesley Lyon: have even I can't remember. (16:29):
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Wesley Lyon: I looked at the green book, which is the president's proposal. It's been a while. (16:30):
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Wesley Lyon: It's funny, we had this webinar ready to go. (16:35):
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Wesley Lyon: We're leaving California from our Napa seminar, and John looks at me and goes, (16:39):
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Wesley Lyon: you better hold off on that. Biden's not going to be the candidate. (16:43):
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Wesley Lyon: And I'm going, well, how do you know that? And I won't say it publicly, (16:46):
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Wesley Lyon: but John had some insider information. (16:51):
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Wesley Lyon: Sure enough, about three or four days later, Biden's no longer the candidate. (16:53):
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Wesley Lyon: So we waited to see if something else would come out. (16:58):
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Wesley Lyon: Then we actually did record the webinar of the great tax war. (17:02):
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Wesley Lyon: And, you know, it just, it became less and less factual there. (17:08):
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Wesley Lyon: And the less and less factual we got, the less comfortable we felt with putting it out there. (17:13):
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Wesley Lyon: So we decided to wait and see if we get as factual as we can. (17:19):
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Wesley Lyon: But the one thing commonly I kind of saw as I was doing all this research between (17:23):
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Wesley Lyon: both was expanding the child tax credit. (17:27):
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Wesley Lyon: So, that is one where I could see the child tax credit being expanded for. (17:30):
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Wesley Lyon: Everybody. So whether or not there's income limits on there, (17:35):
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Wesley Lyon: how it actually shakes out, I don't know. (17:39):
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Wesley Lyon: But it seemed like it was something that the Democrats wanted. (17:42):
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Wesley Lyon: It seemed like something the (17:45):
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Wesley Lyon: Republicans, I don't know if the Republicans came out as strongly for it. (17:47):
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Wesley Lyon: But, you know, I would assume, given the Republican stance on things, (17:51):
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Wesley Lyon: that the Democrats came and said, we're willing to extend your law, (17:56):
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Wesley Lyon: but we want to expand the child tax credit. (17:59):
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Wesley Lyon: I don't think you'd get a lot of pushback. (18:02):
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Wesley Lyon: So, that's one I could see going through. (18:05):
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Wesley Lyon: Otherwise, when it comes to additional tax cuts, start calling your lobbyist (18:09):
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Wesley Lyon: if you want something. I don't know. (18:14):
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Wesley Lyon: My guess would be as good as anyone else. I mean, from the he said, (18:16):
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Wesley Lyon: she said, we've heard the no tax on overtime issue. (18:19):
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Wesley Lyon: I don't know about that one. I always think through things. You know, (18:23):
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Wesley Lyon: hey, what do they want to do and what can feasibly be done? (18:27):
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Wesley Lyon: Like the, But for example, the Democrats in their proposal wanted to tax unrealized gains. (18:29):
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Wesley Lyon: Whether or not you want to tax that as somebody that works in the tax industry, (18:36):
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Wesley Lyon: that is a nightmare and is going to cost so much money to enforce. (18:39):
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Wesley Lyon: There's going to be so many legal battles over what something is worth or not worth. (18:44):
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Wesley Lyon: I mean, that's just if you want to do it, it's just not feasible to do it. (18:49):
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Wesley Lyon: But the no overtime thing, I was thinking through this, I might have the same (18:55):
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Wesley Lyon: opinion on the no overtime. (19:01):
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Wesley Lyon: And I was like, well, what if they did that? You know, would we want to move everybody hourly here? (19:03):
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Wesley Lyon: I mean, wouldn't you want some of your paying overtime if you're not getting (19:07):
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Wesley Lyon: taxed on it? So I don't know how feasible that one is either. (19:11):
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Wesley Lyon: Even the no tax on tips, I don't know exactly how feasible that is and what (19:15):
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Wesley Lyon: people do on it. So kind of wait to be seen. (19:23):
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Wesley Lyon: But overall, I think we're likely to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. (19:27):
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Tyler Ott: Pretty simply, yeah. (19:31):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, so those of you out there, hopefully the world will return to sanity next (19:32):
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Wesley Lyon: week and we'll stop having to get all the election ads or eight phone calls a day. (19:38):
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Tyler Ott: That's the best. Commercials, don't have to have those anymore. (19:42):
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Tyler Ott: Don't have to have any text messages, phone calls. That's gonna be incredible. (19:45):
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Wesley Lyon: I know, you should have been able to go to the early voting and check a box (19:48):
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Wesley Lyon: where it goes, look, I voted, stop. (19:52):
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Wesley Lyon: I don't need to hear from you. And gosh, I don't know about you, (19:55):
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Wesley Lyon: but I still get it from Virginia. (19:59):
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Wesley Lyon: I have my mom's old cell phone number. So Georgia contacts me and somehow they (20:00):
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Wesley Lyon: think I'm my dad and he owns property in South Carolina. (20:06):
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Wesley Lyon: So I get four dang states where I'm like, you guys know I only vote in the state I'm registered. (20:09):
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Tyler Ott: Yeah, I just definitely get in some Virginia ones, but it's always hard to tell (20:14):
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Tyler Ott: if it's a, because I don't pick them up if it's truly an election or if it's (20:17):
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Tyler Ott: just another robocaller. (20:21):
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Wesley Lyon: Oh, you know, they have all those data centers out in Ashburn. (20:22):
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Wesley Lyon: So a lot of the robocallers have Northern Virginia phone numbers. (20:25):
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Wesley Lyon: Makes it really tough if you're in Northern Virginia to know who's actually (20:28):
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Wesley Lyon: calling and what's, I mean, they're calling me all the time for, (20:32):
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Wesley Lyon: you need to apply for Medicare. I'm like, you got the wrong West line. (20:35):
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Wesley Lyon: I'm not the one that's applying for Medicare. (20:39):
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Wesley Lyon: Overall, though, not a whole lot of change here coming. We're likely to see it made permanent. (20:42):
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Wesley Lyon: It will be interesting. The last thing I'm going to say is what they do if they (20:48):
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Wesley Lyon: fully extend the estate tax limits. (20:52):
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Wesley Lyon: But otherwise, you know, I don't think we're going to get a humongous change (20:55):
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Wesley Lyon: that really changes how we plan. (20:59):
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Wesley Lyon: So, now is a really, really good time if you've kind of been putting it off, waiting and seeing. (21:01):
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Wesley Lyon: Now's a really good time to get back in the saddle, get everything planned out. (21:05):
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Wesley Lyon: We feel pretty good about what's going to move forward. (21:09):
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Tyler Ott: Absolutely. (21:12):
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Wesley Lyon: Otherwise, thanks for tuning in, and we'll be with you next time. (21:13):
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Wesley Lyon: And for those of you who like the entertainment, sorry it wasn't more entertaining. (21:17):
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Wesley Lyon: I was kind of looking forward to this one, The Great Tax War, (21:20):
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Wesley Lyon: but The Great Tax War is no more. (21:23):
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Tyler Ott: Yeah, it was a landslide. (21:25):
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Wesley Lyon: So, hey, fortunately, I was really looking forward to having all you guys who (21:27):
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Wesley Lyon: have never had to stay up till four in the morning reading a 10,000-page tax law. (21:32):
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Wesley Lyon: I was really looking forward to that. (21:36):
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Tyler Ott: And we got four years. There could be changes. (21:39):
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Wesley Lyon: At some point, we'll get a new one, but no big changes. (21:42):
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Wesley Lyon: So everyone, make sure, big takeaways, make sure you have a written tax plan. (21:46):
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Wesley Lyon: If you don't have a written tax plan, highly recommend that you either come (21:51):
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Wesley Lyon: to one of our seminars, give us a call. (21:54):
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Wesley Lyon: McGill and Lyon Dental Advisors, 704-424-9780. Make sure you have a plan, (21:57):
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Wesley Lyon: especially now that this stuff is permanent. (22:04):
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Wesley Lyon: I think people tend to put things off as they think there's going to be a lot (22:06):
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Wesley Lyon: of change right around the corner. or I don't want to do it now, (22:09):
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Wesley Lyon: and then I come in, and, you know, all right, great. We're past that. (22:11):
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Wesley Lyon: Everybody needs to get their lives in good financial standing and move forward, (22:14):
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Wesley Lyon: and hopefully everyone will be nice to each other again. At least I find it funny. (22:18):
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Wesley Lyon: On the TV, they're not nice to each other, but I've never seen anyone in person (22:22):
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Wesley Lyon: not be nice to each other. (22:25):
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Wesley Lyon: But hopefully people on the TV won't be projecting their anger at everybody else. (22:27):
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Wesley Lyon: They can just go in a back room. (22:32):
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Tyler Ott: Go back to the news. (22:34):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, get back to the news. With that, thank you, everyone, for tuning in, (22:35):
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Wesley Lyon: and we'll be with you next time. (22:39):
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Tyler Ott: Thanks for having me. (22:40):
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Wesley Lyon: So this is your host, Wes Lyon, co-hosting Tyler Ott. Ty, welcome back. (00:09):
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Tyler Ott: Always good to be here. (00:14):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, so today, funny, I think I've recorded this three or four times and things changed so much. (00:15):
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Wesley Lyon: Originally, the title of this episode was, it was actually going to be about (00:22):
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Wesley Lyon: an hour or two hour long webinar, and it was going to be the great tax war. (00:25):
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Wesley Lyon: Had the slides, did all the front work, to I think, on my shock, (00:28):
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Wesley Lyon: we're not going to have the great tax war. (00:35):
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Wesley Lyon: So just for everyone out there, we are going to talk about taxes, (00:37):
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Wesley Lyon: how the election impacts it. (00:41):
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Wesley Lyon: Our job is to remove the emotion from this. So we're not sitting here. (00:43):
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Wesley Lyon: It's not that we're trying to say it's some great thing or bad thing or what's going on. (00:46):
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Wesley Lyon: It just wasn't what we expected when we were looking at it. (00:50):
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Wesley Lyon: So, yeah. So, Tyler, I mean. (00:54):
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Tyler Ott: What did we expect? Yeah, I mean, I think we expected not every chamber of government (00:57):
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Tyler Ott: to go one direction and there would be some fight and there would be some war. (01:05):
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Tyler Ott: But it's looking like, well, so we know the presidency is going for Trump. (01:10):
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Tyler Ott: We know that the Senate is Republican and the House hasn't been called yet, (01:14):
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Tyler Ott: but I just did a little research. It's looking pretty strongly towards the Republicans. (01:18):
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Tyler Ott: So if we have, you know, a Republican controlled Congress, as well as a Republican (01:22):
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Tyler Ott: controlled presidency, where's the war going to occur? (01:27):
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Wesley Lyon: Well, I'll throw a little curveball your way. So the reason and we'll kind of (01:30):
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Wesley Lyon: back up and kind of tell everyone what we expected. (01:35):
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Wesley Lyon: And again, we're not political pundits here. It's not our job. (01:38):
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Wesley Lyon: It's removing the emotion. (01:40):
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Wesley Lyon: The House looks like it's going to go Republican as of the recording of this (01:42):
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Wesley Lyon: a day or two after the election. (01:46):
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Wesley Lyon: We expected the House to go Democrat and we expected the Senate to go Republican. (01:49):
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Wesley Lyon: So we expected to split Congress. (01:55):
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Wesley Lyon: It's not what appears to be what's going to happen. (01:59):
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Wesley Lyon: So that's really why we expected this great tax war. And again, (02:03):
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Wesley Lyon: it's not that we were trying to root one way or the other. We're just looking over the day. (02:06):
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Wesley Lyon: They're going, you know, this, you know, basically to get down to it, (02:09):
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Wesley Lyon: we kept it as simple as possible. (02:13):
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Wesley Lyon: It looks like there's a bunch of House seats up that are in places that historically vote Democratic. (02:15):
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Wesley Lyon: And it looks like there's some Senate seats up in places that historically vote Republican. (02:21):
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Wesley Lyon: So for that, we thought, hey, there didn't look like a lot in danger the Democrats (02:27):
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Wesley Lyon: would flip in the Senate. (02:30):
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Wesley Lyon: And there didn't look like a lot in danger the Republicans would flip in the House. (02:32):
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Wesley Lyon: And that was just kind of what we expected. The presidency, I think we were all, (02:35):
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Wesley Lyon: you know, I don't know, I didn't have an opinion on it until, (02:39):
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Wesley Lyon: you know, about, took me about one in the morning to have an opinion on it, (02:42):
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Wesley Lyon: about 3.30 or 4 in the morning to really feel like I actually had something to say about it. (02:46):
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Wesley Lyon: So that was just, we thought there'd be this split and a really big tax war over that. (02:52):
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Wesley Lyon: And the reason there'd be a big tax war is the individual mandates are set to expire. Right, Tyler? (02:58):
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Tyler Ott: Yeah. So the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Trump tax law, was created in 2017, enacted in 2018. (03:05):
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Tyler Ott: Provisions of all these were set to expire after 2025. Right. (03:12):
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Tyler Ott: That's how it was written. Now, Trump in office, Congress controlled by Republicans. (03:17):
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Tyler Ott: There's a little more option or control on, you know, which way that's going (03:22):
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Tyler Ott: to go. Impacts of that changes there. (03:27):
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Wesley Lyon: Yes. And what happened back in the day was when they project out the federal (03:29):
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Wesley Lyon: deficits, you know, I think if you and again, we are not political experts. (03:36):
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Wesley Lyon: I'm going to botch this to some extent. I have not gone through the rabbit hole (03:41):
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Wesley Lyon: of spending 50 hours trying to figure out exactly how politics work. I care about tax law. (03:45):
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Wesley Lyon: But I believe that in order to pass a law that projects the federal deficit (03:50):
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Wesley Lyon: to go up by a certain amount in 10 years, that you have to have 60 senators pass the bill. (03:56):
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Wesley Lyon: If not, if you can only get 50, I think what they did to get around it said, (04:03):
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Wesley Lyon: okay, we're going to hit that threshold. We need 60. We don't have 60. (04:07):
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Wesley Lyon: So what they did was they made the individual provisions of the Tax Cuts and (04:12):
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Wesley Lyon: Jobs Act temporary, not permanent. (04:18):
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Wesley Lyon: And that meant at the end of 2025, no matter who was in office, what happened? (04:21):
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Wesley Lyon: If nothing happened and a law was not passed, that everybody's taxes would go up. (04:26):
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Wesley Lyon: And again, we were just joking as we're recording this, going through some things, (04:33):
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Wesley Lyon: going, hey, we're not here to say what's on the TV. We're here to just things (04:37):
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Wesley Lyon: in writing, things we know. (04:41):
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Wesley Lyon: And, you know, everybody's taxes were going to go up if the Tax Cuts and Jobs (04:43):
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Wesley Lyon: Act, or they will if the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act individual mandates do not pass. (04:48):
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Wesley Lyon: So for that reason, we thought there would be a big tax war, right? (04:53):
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Wesley Lyon: It doesn't matter who's in. The Democrats don't want to raise taxes on every single American. (04:58):
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Wesley Lyon: They wanted to cut it off at 400 or 450, depending on which piece of literature (05:02):
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Wesley Lyon: you wrote or read. But, you know, they want to keep taxes lower there, (05:07):
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Wesley Lyon: and they even potentially want to make them even lower for the people making less than that. (05:11):
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Wesley Lyon: And they want to go higher on the opposite end, meanwhile, the Republicans, you know. (05:17):
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Wesley Lyon: Tough to say is we're going to kind of get into what they want, (05:22):
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Wesley Lyon: because now it seems like they'll get what they want. (05:25):
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Wesley Lyon: The curveball I'm going to throw you, and the reason I thought there was going (05:27):
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Wesley Lyon: to be, we were calling it the great tax war in the CPA world, (05:30):
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Wesley Lyon: was the debt ceiling is also coming up for debate. (05:33):
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Wesley Lyon: And it does, again, I don't really know politics that well, but the debt ceiling (05:36):
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Wesley Lyon: needing to be increased, because obviously we're not paying down our debt next year. (05:43):
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Wesley Lyon: The debt ceiling needed to be increased is going to give leverage. (05:47):
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Wesley Lyon: And I don't know how much since we're going to have one party control, (05:52):
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Wesley Lyon: but there still is going to be leverage there on getting that debt ceiling. (05:56):
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Wesley Lyon: So if everyone thinks back of what causes the government and why do we go into (06:02):
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Wesley Lyon: these government shutdowns, if you hear about it, it's usually the debt ceiling. (06:07):
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Wesley Lyon: And again, I could be a little off. I don't pay that much attention to it. (06:10):
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Wesley Lyon: I tend to think here in Charlotte, with the federal government shutting down, (06:14):
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Wesley Lyon: isn't going to be the end of the world. Tyler, you were in D.C. (06:18):
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Wesley Lyon: For a lot longer than I was. It's probably a bigger deal up there. (06:20):
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Tyler Ott: A little bigger, but the places I were working, I was still working. (06:23):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, so that's kind of what we thought was going to come about. (06:27):
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Wesley Lyon: But now we've got a new situation, and it appears that we're going to have Republican (06:30):
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Wesley Lyon: control with the Trump presidency. (06:37):
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Wesley Lyon: So you would think that we're probably going to get the tax bill that Trump wants. (06:39):
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Wesley Lyon: So, Tyler, what does he want? (06:47):
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Tyler Ott: So he just wants to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. (06:49):
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Tyler Ott: So everything that he presented in 2017 and that was in effect since 2018 is (06:52):
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Tyler Ott: just going to remain in effect until, you know, (06:59):
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Tyler Ott: I guess 60 senators 20 years from now decide that something else needs to happen. (07:02):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, that's it. And for those of you listening, you know, we were joking back (07:07):
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Wesley Lyon: and forth on what the TV says, what goes on. (07:11):
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Wesley Lyon: I said, no, no, no, no. I pulled the Trump campaign website, (07:14):
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Wesley Lyon: and we just want to see what's in there. (07:17):
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Wesley Lyon: There's three lines. Let's see how many sentences are here. I think it's just two sentences. (07:19):
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Wesley Lyon: There are two sentences relating to taxes, what they want to do. (07:25):
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Wesley Lyon: So, you know, I'll just read it. Republicans will make permanent the provisions (07:29):
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Wesley Lyon: of the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that doubled the standard deduction, (07:33):
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Wesley Lyon: expanded the child tax credit, and spurred economic growth for all Americans. (07:38):
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Wesley Lyon: This next one really won't apply to dental, but we will eliminate taxes on tips (07:42):
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Wesley Lyon: for millions of restaurant and hospitality workers and pursue additional tax cuts. (07:46):
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Wesley Lyon: So there you kind of have it. I think the first sentence says it all. (07:52):
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Wesley Lyon: They want to make permanent. (07:55):
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Wesley Lyon: And, you know, we were a little young for this back in the day. (07:56):
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Wesley Lyon: However, I believe the current set of rates that we were under were also done under the same manner. (07:59):
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Wesley Lyon: I believe it was the Bush presidency. And I believe he went in and, (08:07):
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Wesley Lyon: lowered the rates, but they were also temporary, but then they had enough votes, (08:12):
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Wesley Lyon: they made them permanent. (08:18):
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Wesley Lyon: And again, we're not that old, so we probably were dealing with high school (08:19):
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Wesley Lyon: sports or something and not caring. (08:25):
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Wesley Lyon: But at the time, I don't believe that this was as big of a deal as it would (08:27):
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Wesley Lyon: have been coming into this one. (08:32):
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Wesley Lyon: So I think something similar where it's probably just going to extend the current (08:33):
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Wesley Lyon: provisions, which I think on the upside, the tax rates went a little bit lower for everybody. (08:38):
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Wesley Lyon: On the downside, the downside or upside, depending how you look at it, (08:46):
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Wesley Lyon: the 20% qualified business income deduction could be here to stay. (08:50):
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Tyler Ott: And that's what I was going to say. What is the biggest impact to dentists probably? (08:54):
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Tyler Ott: It's going to be still having that option of maximizing it if you're in that income range. (08:58):
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Wesley Lyon: So for those of you who aren't as familiar, because CPAs tend to leave this (09:03):
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Wesley Lyon: one alone, it's pretty complex planning. (09:07):
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Wesley Lyon: But the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, you know, what was going on right there, (09:10):
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Wesley Lyon: if you kind of remove the emotions from it, was a bunch of corporations were (09:13):
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Wesley Lyon: fleeing, and the hot spot to go to was Ireland. (09:18):
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Wesley Lyon: And they weren't bringing their money back because, well, were we 35%, 40? (09:20):
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Wesley Lyon: I can't remember exactly what our corporate income tax rate was. (09:25):
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Wesley Lyon: But we had a very, very punitive corporate income tax rate, one of the highest in the world. (09:29):
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Wesley Lyon: And that's why corporations were fleeing was, you know, their mandate is to (09:35):
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Wesley Lyon: increase shareholder value and giving a high percentage of profits over to taxes. (09:39):
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Wesley Lyon: It goes against that mandate, you know. (09:43):
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Wesley Lyon: So Trump's idea, his team was they want to encourage these corporations to come back. (09:46):
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Wesley Lyon: And in order to do that, they lowered the tax rate. (09:51):
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Wesley Lyon: We were 21 or 17. We don't really deal with corporate income tax here, (09:55):
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Wesley Lyon: so we're not as familiar. We know our stuff like the back of our hand. (09:59):
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Wesley Lyon: But they lowered that rate to get the corporations to stay. (10:02):
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Wesley Lyon: That was always permanent. So when we look at this end of 2025, (10:07):
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Wesley Lyon: this tax law expiring, provisions were expiring, and it was the individual provisions. (10:10):
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Wesley Lyon: The corporate provisions were not expiring. (10:16):
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Wesley Lyon: So that brought the tax rate down for corporations. (10:19):
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Wesley Lyon: Big problem they ran into was when they looked in and dove into the data, (10:23):
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Wesley Lyon: they realized that some of these big corporations, when you actually look at (10:26):
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Wesley Lyon: the shareholder level between the corporate income tax and the tax rate they (10:31):
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Wesley Lyon: were going to pay as individuals, (10:35):
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Wesley Lyon: you were actually going to pay less in certain scenarios as a C corporation (10:37):
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Wesley Lyon: than you were a subchapter S corporation. (10:41):
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Wesley Lyon: Now, given that most small businesses in America operate as a subchapter or (10:43):
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Wesley Lyon: S corporation or a sole proprietor or something else. (10:47):
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Wesley Lyon: Most small businesses are no longer C corporations because the small businesses (10:51):
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Wesley Lyon: were gonna pay more in certain situations than the large businesses. (10:56):
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Wesley Lyon: Obviously, we had a problem here politically. (11:00):
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Wesley Lyon: And, you know, again, not not really. I want small business owners to pay less (11:04):
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Wesley Lyon: because I am one and we deal with them every day. That's what we do for a living. (11:08):
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Wesley Lyon: However, just removing that emotion from it and saying, you know, (11:11):
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Wesley Lyon: hey, OK, maybe you don't think that's a bad idea or whatever it is, (11:14):
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Wesley Lyon: you know, politically, obviously, they don't want to be out there, (11:18):
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Wesley Lyon: you know, having somebody on the campaign trail going. (11:21):
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Wesley Lyon: And they're taxing you more than they're taxing Apple. (11:24):
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Wesley Lyon: I mean, that's my one thing on politics. I say I'm pretty certain that would (11:27):
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Wesley Lyon: have been devastating for any candidate. (11:31):
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Wesley Lyon: So what they did was they came up with a patch. I call it a patch. (11:33):
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Wesley Lyon: A true fix would have been to make sure that the individual rates probably go (11:38):
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Wesley Lyon: down lower, but that wasn't what they wanted to put onto it. (11:42):
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Wesley Lyon: So what they did was created this 20% Qualified Business Income Deduction, or QBI. (11:46):
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Wesley Lyon: The QBI is an extra 20% deduction on your individual tax return that relates (11:54):
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Wesley Lyon: to your business profits. (12:00):
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Wesley Lyon: Only the profits, not your salary, not what goes into your retirement plan, only your profits. (12:02):
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Wesley Lyon: However, there is a phase-out range, so not everybody qualifies for this. (12:06):
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Wesley Lyon: If you make a million dollars as a dentist in profit, you make too much to qualify. (12:11):
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Wesley Lyon: So, a lot of our complex planning actually happens around, okay, (12:16):
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Wesley Lyon: how do we set up the retirement plan, the salary, everything perfect so that we maximize this QBI. (12:20):
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Wesley Lyon: And Tyler, what are the, I mean, I feel like you've been doing it long enough now. (12:26):
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Wesley Lyon: It doesn't take as much time, but the first few times you do this calculation, (12:30):
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Wesley Lyon: it takes you like 10 hours to figure everything out because it's pretty complex. (12:33):
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Wesley Lyon: So what all is going into this calculation that makes it so complex? (12:37):
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Tyler Ott: Yeah, so you got the salary. So obviously lower the salary, you're going to (12:41):
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Tyler Ott: have higher profit, higher income. So you got to balance that in there. (12:45):
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Tyler Ott: Also comes the retirement plan contribution. So you lower the salary, (12:48):
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Tyler Ott: you might get a lower retirement plan contribution versus you might raise the (12:51):
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Tyler Ott: salary, get a higher retirement plan contribution, but then that decreases the (12:57):
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Tyler Ott: profit, so then you get a lower QBI. (13:00):
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Tyler Ott: But also, there's some instances where we can get a large retirement plan contribution (13:02):
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Tyler Ott: where we're able to bring the income down so that someone who was above the (13:07):
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Tyler Ott: threshold now becomes eligible for the threshold. (13:11):
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Tyler Ott: Now, the other part that we also need to account for is payroll taxes, (13:14):
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Tyler Ott: you know, the impact of increasing the salary versus getting a little more in (13:18):
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Tyler Ott: the QBI deduction, you can kind of see how... (13:22):
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Tyler Ott: You may not follow along with what I'm saying, how confusing that can get. (13:25):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, the one last thing in there is staff cost of the retirement plan, too. (13:29):
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Wesley Lyon: So even if you can keep the benefit level the same, as you lower the salary, (13:33):
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Wesley Lyon: you lower the payroll taxes, but you might increase the staff cost. (13:37):
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Wesley Lyon: So you've got to get in there. (13:41):
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Wesley Lyon: And, I mean, we tried to build about eight different calculators to do this. (13:43):
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Wesley Lyon: And eventually we just came to the conclusion that you just have to run it both ways with the facts. (13:48):
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Wesley Lyon: And eventually, you know, you do a few hundred of them and you get used to it (13:53):
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Wesley Lyon: and you go, okay, now I get this retirement plan thing enough. (13:57):
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Wesley Lyon: I'm going to ballpark it and I'm going to bet I'm going to be right. (14:00):
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Tyler Ott: But yeah, we would, we would do multiple retirement plan proposals, (14:03):
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Tyler Ott: multiple tax scenarios just to see, and then run it through our cashflow. (14:06):
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Tyler Ott: It's, it was a lot, but yes, as we got into it, as our, my experience grew, (14:11):
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Tyler Ott: knowledge grew, it's, it's much easier. (14:16):
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Wesley Lyon: It becomes like doing something like the back of your hand, but it's kind of (14:18):
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Wesley Lyon: like, you know, If you're a dentist and the first time you're doing an endo (14:21):
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Wesley Lyon: procedure or something. (14:25):
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Tyler Ott: You're going to be a little shaky. (14:26):
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Wesley Lyon: Eventually, you get good. But a lot of the CPAs, because it's not really their (14:27):
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Wesley Lyon: job to understand the retirement plans, and that's a big portion of it, (14:31):
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Wesley Lyon: is what impact does moving this salary have on my retirement plan? (14:35):
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Wesley Lyon: And am I going to do something? You know, a CPA doesn't want to come in there, (14:39):
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Wesley Lyon: and the maximum salary you can pay for a retirement plan is like $345. (14:43):
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Wesley Lyon: And that's pretty darn close to that taxable income threshold to phase out of QBI. (14:48):
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Wesley Lyon: So as you go down, let's say, hey, I'm going to go down from $345 to $200, (14:54):
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Wesley Lyon: your retirement plan, how much you give the staff. (14:59):
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Wesley Lyon: In order to put extra money in for you, you always have to pass testing and (15:03):
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Wesley Lyon: you have to give the staff. (15:06):
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Wesley Lyon: Problem is those aren't done on dollar amounts. They're done on percentage of compensation. (15:08):
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Wesley Lyon: So if your benefit's the same and your W-2 is lower and that's what your retirement (15:13):
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Wesley Lyon: plan is based off of, you have a higher percentage, which means your staff are (15:18):
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Wesley Lyon: going to have a higher percentage. (15:22):
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Wesley Lyon: So now all of a sudden, you know, I'm not here to dog the CPAs. (15:23):
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Wesley Lyon: It's just, they don't know that. They've never needed to know that. (15:27):
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Wesley Lyon: Understanding retirement plans like the back of their hand and what moving salaries (15:31):
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Wesley Lyon: changes on staff costs is not something they're going to be able to learn very quickly. (15:35):
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Wesley Lyon: So for that reason, a lot of people have ignored this planning. (15:40):
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Wesley Lyon: And, you know, I think from a CPA standpoint, some of us were probably going, (15:43):
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Wesley Lyon: oh, if the QBI went away, our lives would get a lot easier. (15:48):
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Wesley Lyon: So good news and bad news. I mean, good news is the, you know, (15:52):
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Wesley Lyon: we're not going to have major tax changes for everybody. (15:56):
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Wesley Lyon: Bad news is we still have the complex planning. But there's, (15:58):
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Wesley Lyon: something interesting in here and pursue additional tax cuts. (16:03):
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Tyler Ott: Yeah, there's that's what that's where it's, you know, what you've heard on TV. (16:09):
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Tyler Ott: He said, she said, who knows? There's it's not in writing. So there's a lot (16:13):
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Tyler Ott: that can be changed and up in the air. (16:18):
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Wesley Lyon: So so I'm only going to go over one on the he said, she said. (16:20):
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Wesley Lyon: But the reason I want to go over this one is because I've heard it and it might (16:24):
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Wesley Lyon: have even I can't remember. (16:29):
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Wesley Lyon: I looked at the green book, which is the president's proposal. It's been a while. (16:30):
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Wesley Lyon: It's funny, we had this webinar ready to go. (16:35):
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Wesley Lyon: We're leaving California from our Napa seminar, and John looks at me and goes, (16:39):
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Wesley Lyon: you better hold off on that. Biden's not going to be the candidate. (16:43):
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Wesley Lyon: And I'm going, well, how do you know that? And I won't say it publicly, (16:46):
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Wesley Lyon: but John had some insider information. (16:51):
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Wesley Lyon: Sure enough, about three or four days later, Biden's no longer the candidate. (16:53):
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Wesley Lyon: So we waited to see if something else would come out. (16:58):
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Wesley Lyon: Then we actually did record the webinar of the great tax war. (17:02):
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Wesley Lyon: And, you know, it just, it became less and less factual there. (17:08):
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Wesley Lyon: And the less and less factual we got, the less comfortable we felt with putting it out there. (17:13):
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Wesley Lyon: So we decided to wait and see if we get as factual as we can. (17:19):
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Wesley Lyon: But the one thing commonly I kind of saw as I was doing all this research between (17:23):
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Wesley Lyon: both was expanding the child tax credit. (17:27):
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Wesley Lyon: So, that is one where I could see the child tax credit being expanded for. (17:30):
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Wesley Lyon: Everybody. So whether or not there's income limits on there, (17:35):
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Wesley Lyon: how it actually shakes out, I don't know. (17:39):
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Wesley Lyon: But it seemed like it was something that the Democrats wanted. (17:42):
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Wesley Lyon: It seemed like something the (17:45):
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Wesley Lyon: Republicans, I don't know if the Republicans came out as strongly for it. (17:47):
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Wesley Lyon: But, you know, I would assume, given the Republican stance on things, (17:51):
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Wesley Lyon: that the Democrats came and said, we're willing to extend your law, (17:56):
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Wesley Lyon: but we want to expand the child tax credit. (17:59):
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Wesley Lyon: I don't think you'd get a lot of pushback. (18:02):
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Wesley Lyon: So, that's one I could see going through. (18:05):
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Wesley Lyon: Otherwise, when it comes to additional tax cuts, start calling your lobbyist (18:09):
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Wesley Lyon: if you want something. I don't know. (18:14):
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Wesley Lyon: My guess would be as good as anyone else. I mean, from the he said, (18:16):
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Wesley Lyon: she said, we've heard the no tax on overtime issue. (18:19):
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Wesley Lyon: I don't know about that one. I always think through things. You know, (18:23):
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Wesley Lyon: hey, what do they want to do and what can feasibly be done? (18:27):
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Wesley Lyon: Like the, But for example, the Democrats in their proposal wanted to tax unrealized gains. (18:29):
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Wesley Lyon: Whether or not you want to tax that as somebody that works in the tax industry, (18:36):
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Wesley Lyon: that is a nightmare and is going to cost so much money to enforce. (18:39):
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Wesley Lyon: There's going to be so many legal battles over what something is worth or not worth. (18:44):
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Wesley Lyon: I mean, that's just if you want to do it, it's just not feasible to do it. (18:49):
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Wesley Lyon: But the no overtime thing, I was thinking through this, I might have the same (18:55):
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Wesley Lyon: opinion on the no overtime. (19:01):
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Wesley Lyon: And I was like, well, what if they did that? You know, would we want to move everybody hourly here? (19:03):
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Wesley Lyon: I mean, wouldn't you want some of your paying overtime if you're not getting (19:07):
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Wesley Lyon: taxed on it? So I don't know how feasible that one is either. (19:11):
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Wesley Lyon: Even the no tax on tips, I don't know exactly how feasible that is and what (19:15):
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Wesley Lyon: people do on it. So kind of wait to be seen. (19:23):
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Wesley Lyon: But overall, I think we're likely to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. (19:27):
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Tyler Ott: Pretty simply, yeah. (19:31):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, so those of you out there, hopefully the world will return to sanity next (19:32):
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Wesley Lyon: week and we'll stop having to get all the election ads or eight phone calls a day. (19:38):
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Tyler Ott: That's the best. Commercials, don't have to have those anymore. (19:42):
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Tyler Ott: Don't have to have any text messages, phone calls. That's gonna be incredible. (19:45):
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Wesley Lyon: I know, you should have been able to go to the early voting and check a box (19:48):
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Wesley Lyon: where it goes, look, I voted, stop. (19:52):
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Wesley Lyon: I don't need to hear from you. And gosh, I don't know about you, (19:55):
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Wesley Lyon: but I still get it from Virginia. (19:59):
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Wesley Lyon: I have my mom's old cell phone number. So Georgia contacts me and somehow they (20:00):
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Wesley Lyon: think I'm my dad and he owns property in South Carolina. (20:06):
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Wesley Lyon: So I get four dang states where I'm like, you guys know I only vote in the state I'm registered. (20:09):
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Tyler Ott: Yeah, I just definitely get in some Virginia ones, but it's always hard to tell (20:14):
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Tyler Ott: if it's a, because I don't pick them up if it's truly an election or if it's (20:17):
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Tyler Ott: just another robocaller. (20:21):
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Wesley Lyon: Oh, you know, they have all those data centers out in Ashburn. (20:22):
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Wesley Lyon: So a lot of the robocallers have Northern Virginia phone numbers. (20:25):
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Wesley Lyon: Makes it really tough if you're in Northern Virginia to know who's actually (20:28):
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Wesley Lyon: calling and what's, I mean, they're calling me all the time for, (20:32):
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Wesley Lyon: you need to apply for Medicare. I'm like, you got the wrong West line. (20:35):
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Wesley Lyon: I'm not the one that's applying for Medicare. (20:39):
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Wesley Lyon: Overall, though, not a whole lot of change here coming. We're likely to see it made permanent. (20:42):
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Wesley Lyon: It will be interesting. The last thing I'm going to say is what they do if they (20:48):
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Wesley Lyon: fully extend the estate tax limits. (20:52):
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Wesley Lyon: But otherwise, you know, I don't think we're going to get a humongous change (20:55):
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Wesley Lyon: that really changes how we plan. (20:59):
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Wesley Lyon: So, now is a really, really good time if you've kind of been putting it off, waiting and seeing. (21:01):
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Wesley Lyon: Now's a really good time to get back in the saddle, get everything planned out. (21:05):
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Wesley Lyon: We feel pretty good about what's going to move forward. (21:09):
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Tyler Ott: Absolutely. (21:12):
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Wesley Lyon: Otherwise, thanks for tuning in, and we'll be with you next time. (21:13):
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Wesley Lyon: And for those of you who like the entertainment, sorry it wasn't more entertaining. (21:17):
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Wesley Lyon: I was kind of looking forward to this one, The Great Tax War, (21:20):
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Wesley Lyon: but The Great Tax War is no more. (21:23):
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Tyler Ott: Yeah, it was a landslide. (21:25):
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Wesley Lyon: So, hey, fortunately, I was really looking forward to having all you guys who (21:27):
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Wesley Lyon: have never had to stay up till four in the morning reading a 10,000-page tax law. (21:32):
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Wesley Lyon: I was really looking forward to that. (21:36):
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Tyler Ott: And we got four years. There could be changes. (21:39):
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Wesley Lyon: At some point, we'll get a new one, but no big changes. (21:42):
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Wesley Lyon: So everyone, make sure, big takeaways, make sure you have a written tax plan. (21:46):
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Wesley Lyon: If you don't have a written tax plan, highly recommend that you either come (21:51):
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Wesley Lyon: to one of our seminars, give us a call. (21:54):
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Wesley Lyon: McGill and Lyon Dental Advisors, 704-424-9780. Make sure you have a plan, (21:57):
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Wesley Lyon: especially now that this stuff is permanent. (22:04):
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Wesley Lyon: I think people tend to put things off as they think there's going to be a lot (22:06):
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Wesley Lyon: of change right around the corner. or I don't want to do it now, (22:09):
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Wesley Lyon: and then I come in, and, you know, all right, great. We're past that. (22:11):
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Wesley Lyon: Everybody needs to get their lives in good financial standing and move forward, (22:14):
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Wesley Lyon: and hopefully everyone will be nice to each other again. At least I find it funny. (22:18):
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Wesley Lyon: On the TV, they're not nice to each other, but I've never seen anyone in person (22:22):
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Wesley Lyon: not be nice to each other. (22:25):
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Wesley Lyon: But hopefully people on the TV won't be projecting their anger at everybody else. (22:27):
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Wesley Lyon: They can just go in a back room. (22:32):
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Tyler Ott: Go back to the news. (22:34):
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Wesley Lyon: Yeah, get back to the news. With that, thank you, everyone, for tuning in, (22:35):
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Wesley Lyon: and we'll be with you next time. (22:39):
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Tyler Ott: Thanks for having me. (22:40):
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