February 25, 2025 • 10 mins
From W-2 earners to side hustlers... we cover quite a bit with George Sotrillis of GNSKP in this episode.
We discuss the rise of "ghost preparers", how to spot them and how to avoid them this tax season. Also, can you claim your pet as a dependent? This and so much more on this byte of a podcast.
Please make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button, and to leave a review.
We discuss the rise of "ghost preparers", how to spot them and how to avoid them this tax season. Also, can you claim your pet as a dependent? This and so much more on this byte of a podcast.
Please make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button, and to leave a review.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Life Bites with Wendy Wild, your bite sized podcast filled
with lifestyle stories, personal stories, and a roundup of stories
Wendy talks about on the radio. Here's Wendy. Oh Okay,
it's been a couple of days and we're back with
another episode of Life Bites. I'm Wendy Wild and today
joined by the one and only George Citrillis. George. Hi,
(00:23):
how are.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
You good, Wendy? How are you hope you're doing well?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Well? We should probably say who you are to me,
what our relationship is, and what you're going to offer
our listeners for today.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
First of all, on Wendy's account for Starters, I've known
Wendy for a while. We've been working together for quite
some time. We've been trying to help her out with
the financial stuff from taxes and whatever other financials we
can do for her.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
You've really gotten my head on straight as far as
finances go. I know that you've also gotten me into
some really good habits as far as being prepared for
when it is tax season and it's time to file.
I know not everyone uses an accountant in some people
you that software, but I thought that while you're with
us today, you could just offer our listeners some great
(01:05):
tips on you know, how they can be the best
prepared and ways to take advantage and maybe save a
little money this season.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Sure, I mean as far as saving money, it's always
a challenge depending what's going on in their life, especially
if you're a W two Werner's help. You know, you
got to be doing like a syyig or something. But
we'll leave that for another time. But just to be prepared,
just you know, first take a look at you last
year's return. See what's on there. Did you get married,
did you have kids, did you move to buy a house,
(01:31):
did you buy a house when you know, did you
win lotto? Did you get involved in stocks investments? You
kind of have to put all that together, whether you're
using the software or whether you are going to prepare.
He's going to want to know this stuff. Have a kid, anything,
even even deaths sometimes affects you. You know, God forbid
somebody pass away, you have an inheritance. It doesn't always mean.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Sustatistable capital gains.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Capital gains, so anything that's change in your life from
what's been happening in the past, school, student loans, all
that actually can affect you. To actually turn just take
a look at what's going on, what has been happened
in the past, and what's going on in the future,
and kind of project out.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Okay, So I have a couple of questions that I
feel like maybe someone who doesn't know a lot about
doing taxes and tax code and law how it all works.
So are you ready for me? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I wait for you, but I'll try one.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Can you claim your cat or dog as a dependent?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
No, but there is a change that's coming to the
law that's going to allow you possibly, and we're waiting
for that change before we say it's actually happening. Is
where you'll be able to take some of those medical
deductions as a cat or dog, a pet as a
medical deduction, but it has to be a service dog, cat,
or an animal for that matter.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So not an emotional support animal.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Possibly because it's considering you can if you go out
and actually register with emotional support, you might be able
to get that deduction.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, let me talk you think my cat he is
emotional support. You know that I've had a year and obviously, George,
this is not going to be the first time that
I have you on this podcast because the reason I
started it was because we had so much to talk about,
so I really want to get into all of it.
I wanted to also talk about Apparently there's this rise
in I guess they're ghost text preparers. Have you seen this?
(03:21):
I guess it's kind of a scam that people need
to watch out for. Do you know anything about this?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
What happens with ghost preparer is let's start with that
and we'll go to the other one. Ghost preparers are
usually prepares that show up once a year. They'll come
in and say, hey, I can get you all this money.
I'll take care of your return. They don't sign off
on the return. Professionals will sign off on the return,
and they will always give you back a copy and
this curnature would either be on the return or at
least something that represents their signature. These guys come in,
(03:47):
they say, I'll get you a ton of money. They'll
do whatever they can return. They work on a percentage.
Prepars do not work on a percentage.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You're just a flat fee.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
You're a flat or flat fee. That's it, depending on
the amount of work we need to do. When you
run into that, you have to be very careful because
when you try to go back to find these people,
they disappear, They take your money, and they're gone. They
will take the refund, give you some money upfront and
say once you receive the rest of refund, we'll refund
the money, we'll take our fee out of it, and
need disappear.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Wheel.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
These are things you need to watch you if it's
too good to be true, it might be.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's really scary. I fell for a scam before, and
it was so elaborate that I just I didn't know.
It was one of those tech support scams. I mean,
I'm embarrassed to even admit this, but it seems so legit.
People out there that are scamming. Scammers be scamming in
like the most elaborate way, and it's so believable that
they are the real deal. So how as a consumer,
(04:39):
how do we avoid running into a problem like this?
How do we know that our tax professional is the
real deal?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well, first of all, a lot of these tax professionals
will either have a website, not all of them, but
some do. They would have a good reputation. You could
actually in my particular case, I'm in enrolled agents, so
you could actually look me up on the IRIS website,
you can lug up and see who this person is,
see if they have any credentials. You just got to
be careful who you talk to. Referrals are usually most
of our clarms come through referrals. Sometimes we get phone calls.
(05:08):
We do do some advertising, so you know, it's a
little difficult, especially when someone's advertising. Like I said, when
you feel something's too good to be true, I would
be very skeptical. If somebody's promised you the moon, it's
not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
How does being a homeowner benefits you? Are there any
benefits to being a homeowner versus renter? I guess is
what I'm asking.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Let's take a little bit of the myth out of that.
It used to be a lot more, but it's changed now.
Saying that it depends. In most cases, it beats renting.
If you could deal with it, and you've been through
plenty of that, I'm sure you could talk about that.
The repairs.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
It will be what I call you crying about the repairs.
And that's the thing I think a lot of people
don't realize. I mean, I don't want to talk anybody
out of home owning, but I was not prepared for
all of the things and the troubleshooting. It's mostly the
troubleshooting and knowing who to call when you need something.
It's like, I don't know what these things are called.
The high doufilader is broken? Where's my high do filider
(06:04):
repair man? Like I it's it is a lot, it's
very overwhelming. But I do know that some of the
repairs that you do make can be tax free because
they're considered capital improvements.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
No no, no no. No repairs technically unless you're renting
out that unit, if they're for your primary residents, not
tax free, but there can be credits depending Like we
discussed the hot water heat around poet time. Yeah, basically
instead of getting a conventional hot water heater, if you
put in one of these new ones, go basically on
the wall, the douglass electric. There is a credit for that.
(06:38):
Let's talk about charble the deductions for a minute. Don't
do it because you want to do terrible contribution. Do
it because you're giving, and then if you get the benefit,
that's a different story. Same thing with the house. You
got to be prepared to be an owner. You got
to be prepared to be a little bit of a maguiver.
Let's say once in a while, you got to fix
things you're on your own, or you got to be
prepared to find somebody that can fix it for you benefit.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I call it the team of Avengers. You live and
you learn, you make mistakes, You find these people that
are willing to work for cheap. It doesn't necessarily mean
that it's better because you may down the line have
to have someone else come in to fix their work,
which I learned.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Unfortunately, it is on your side. Basically discussing what we're
saying about you is you got away from renting to
owning a house, and it's literally if you look at
the numbers, it's not really much more in owning that
house post to renting, and now at least you have
something that can build on equity.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Equity right, And that's the thing that everyone keeps reminding
me of every time I'm like, why did I do this?
I mean, it's been an adventure, I will say, getting
back to the taxes, The way that we have done
things throughout the years is we have a dropbox situation
and what I do to make it less overwhelming, and
this is just what works for me is anytime I
(07:48):
have a receipt that is like I know that I'm
going to need at some point when it's tax season,
I will upload the receipt into the folder as I go.
So back in like June, when I place the water heater,
I took the receipt for that, and just in case
we needed it for whatever reason, I put that in
the folder tax receipts, all sorts of stuff, business equipment,
(08:10):
ill these as I go, So the only thing I
really need to wait on is the W two and
the ten ninety nine from the bank. So that way
when it's time to hand things off to you, it's
pretty much all ready to go. I'm not really searching
too much for what I need to submit to you.
I also actually use Wave invoices as well. If you're
(08:31):
a small business owner. They have all these invoicing softwares
that you can use. This one's free. I just use
the free version because all I need are invoices that
I can upload just to show what I'm pulling in
versus when I'm spending.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Here you go and you do a great job I doingday.
It's your a little shoe box, but it's least organized.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
It's an online. It's a digital shoe box.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
If you there, you go, because I've gotten shoe boxes
and I've looked at them say that's not my size.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, I know. You were the one that actually started
me on the dropbox journeys, so thank you for that.
I want you to leave our listeners with some words
of wisdom.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Well words of wisdom. Being on the other side is
not always better. So if you want to do a
side gig, fine, If you want to buy a house
because you're doing it because you want to live there,
that's fine, but don't do it to look for the
inductions on the write hoots. You've got to be prepared
for it. And just to be prepared for tax season,
just make sure you have everything together. One more thing
I just want to throw out there. It's very important
(09:25):
because there's a lot of what's going on. We do
suggest at our clients at least sign up with the
IRS and get identity pit.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Thank you so much, George, and if anybody needs to
reach George for any reason, you can just reach out
to me. And also you have a website tea right, yes.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
We do, GNSKP dot com.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Gee amazing. I'd love to have you back. Because we
got to talk about crypto, we got to talk about
like specifics onside hustling. We have so much to talk about,
investing four oh one K's versus roth Iras, Like, we
could go on and on, but my music's about to
run out. So guys, another episode of Life Bits with
Wendy will Thanks George, Thanks Wendy,
Life Bites with Wendy Wild, your bite sized podcast filled
with lifestyle stories, personal stories, and a roundup of stories
Wendy talks about on the radio. Here's Wendy. Oh Okay,
it's been a couple of days and we're back with
another episode of Life Bites. I'm Wendy Wild and today
joined by the one and only George Citrillis. George. Hi,
(00:23):
how are.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
You good, Wendy? How are you hope you're doing well?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Well? We should probably say who you are to me,
what our relationship is, and what you're going to offer
our listeners for today.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
First of all, on Wendy's account for Starters, I've known
Wendy for a while. We've been working together for quite
some time. We've been trying to help her out with
the financial stuff from taxes and whatever other financials we
can do for her.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
You've really gotten my head on straight as far as
finances go. I know that you've also gotten me into
some really good habits as far as being prepared for
when it is tax season and it's time to file.
I know not everyone uses an accountant in some people
you that software, but I thought that while you're with
us today, you could just offer our listeners some great
(01:05):
tips on you know, how they can be the best
prepared and ways to take advantage and maybe save a
little money this season.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Sure, I mean as far as saving money, it's always
a challenge depending what's going on in their life, especially
if you're a W two Werner's help. You know, you
got to be doing like a syyig or something. But
we'll leave that for another time. But just to be prepared,
just you know, first take a look at you last
year's return. See what's on there. Did you get married,
did you have kids, did you move to buy a house,
(01:31):
did you buy a house when you know, did you
win lotto? Did you get involved in stocks investments? You
kind of have to put all that together, whether you're
using the software or whether you are going to prepare.
He's going to want to know this stuff. Have a kid, anything,
even even deaths sometimes affects you. You know, God forbid
somebody pass away, you have an inheritance. It doesn't always mean.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Sustatistable capital gains.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Capital gains, so anything that's change in your life from
what's been happening in the past, school, student loans, all
that actually can affect you. To actually turn just take
a look at what's going on, what has been happened
in the past, and what's going on in the future,
and kind of project out.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Okay, So I have a couple of questions that I
feel like maybe someone who doesn't know a lot about
doing taxes and tax code and law how it all works.
So are you ready for me? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I wait for you, but I'll try one.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Can you claim your cat or dog as a dependent?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
No, but there is a change that's coming to the
law that's going to allow you possibly, and we're waiting
for that change before we say it's actually happening. Is
where you'll be able to take some of those medical
deductions as a cat or dog, a pet as a
medical deduction, but it has to be a service dog, cat,
or an animal for that matter.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So not an emotional support animal.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Possibly because it's considering you can if you go out
and actually register with emotional support, you might be able
to get that deduction.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, let me talk you think my cat he is
emotional support. You know that I've had a year and obviously, George,
this is not going to be the first time that
I have you on this podcast because the reason I
started it was because we had so much to talk about,
so I really want to get into all of it.
I wanted to also talk about Apparently there's this rise
in I guess they're ghost text preparers. Have you seen this?
(03:21):
I guess it's kind of a scam that people need
to watch out for. Do you know anything about this?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
What happens with ghost preparer is let's start with that
and we'll go to the other one. Ghost preparers are
usually prepares that show up once a year. They'll come
in and say, hey, I can get you all this money.
I'll take care of your return. They don't sign off
on the return. Professionals will sign off on the return,
and they will always give you back a copy and
this curnature would either be on the return or at
least something that represents their signature. These guys come in,
(03:47):
they say, I'll get you a ton of money. They'll
do whatever they can return. They work on a percentage.
Prepars do not work on a percentage.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You're just a flat fee.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
You're a flat or flat fee. That's it, depending on
the amount of work we need to do. When you
run into that, you have to be very careful because
when you try to go back to find these people,
they disappear, They take your money, and they're gone. They
will take the refund, give you some money upfront and
say once you receive the rest of refund, we'll refund
the money, we'll take our fee out of it, and
need disappear.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Wheel.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
These are things you need to watch you if it's
too good to be true, it might be.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's really scary. I fell for a scam before, and
it was so elaborate that I just I didn't know.
It was one of those tech support scams. I mean,
I'm embarrassed to even admit this, but it seems so legit.
People out there that are scamming. Scammers be scamming in
like the most elaborate way, and it's so believable that
they are the real deal. So how as a consumer,
(04:39):
how do we avoid running into a problem like this?
How do we know that our tax professional is the
real deal?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well, first of all, a lot of these tax professionals
will either have a website, not all of them, but
some do. They would have a good reputation. You could
actually in my particular case, I'm in enrolled agents, so
you could actually look me up on the IRIS website,
you can lug up and see who this person is,
see if they have any credentials. You just got to
be careful who you talk to. Referrals are usually most
of our clarms come through referrals. Sometimes we get phone calls.
(05:08):
We do do some advertising, so you know, it's a
little difficult, especially when someone's advertising. Like I said, when
you feel something's too good to be true, I would
be very skeptical. If somebody's promised you the moon, it's
not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
How does being a homeowner benefits you? Are there any
benefits to being a homeowner versus renter? I guess is
what I'm asking.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Let's take a little bit of the myth out of that.
It used to be a lot more, but it's changed now.
Saying that it depends. In most cases, it beats renting.
If you could deal with it, and you've been through
plenty of that, I'm sure you could talk about that.
The repairs.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
It will be what I call you crying about the repairs.
And that's the thing I think a lot of people
don't realize. I mean, I don't want to talk anybody
out of home owning, but I was not prepared for
all of the things and the troubleshooting. It's mostly the
troubleshooting and knowing who to call when you need something.
It's like, I don't know what these things are called.
The high doufilader is broken? Where's my high do filider
(06:04):
repair man? Like I it's it is a lot, it's
very overwhelming. But I do know that some of the
repairs that you do make can be tax free because
they're considered capital improvements.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
No no, no no. No repairs technically unless you're renting
out that unit, if they're for your primary residents, not
tax free, but there can be credits depending Like we
discussed the hot water heat around poet time. Yeah, basically
instead of getting a conventional hot water heater, if you
put in one of these new ones, go basically on
the wall, the douglass electric. There is a credit for that.
(06:38):
Let's talk about charble the deductions for a minute. Don't
do it because you want to do terrible contribution. Do
it because you're giving, and then if you get the benefit,
that's a different story. Same thing with the house. You
got to be prepared to be an owner. You got
to be prepared to be a little bit of a maguiver.
Let's say once in a while, you got to fix
things you're on your own, or you got to be
prepared to find somebody that can fix it for you benefit.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I call it the team of Avengers. You live and
you learn, you make mistakes, You find these people that
are willing to work for cheap. It doesn't necessarily mean
that it's better because you may down the line have
to have someone else come in to fix their work,
which I learned.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Unfortunately, it is on your side. Basically discussing what we're
saying about you is you got away from renting to
owning a house, and it's literally if you look at
the numbers, it's not really much more in owning that
house post to renting, and now at least you have
something that can build on equity.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Equity right, And that's the thing that everyone keeps reminding
me of every time I'm like, why did I do this?
I mean, it's been an adventure, I will say, getting
back to the taxes, The way that we have done
things throughout the years is we have a dropbox situation
and what I do to make it less overwhelming, and
this is just what works for me is anytime I
(07:48):
have a receipt that is like I know that I'm
going to need at some point when it's tax season,
I will upload the receipt into the folder as I go.
So back in like June, when I place the water heater,
I took the receipt for that, and just in case
we needed it for whatever reason, I put that in
the folder tax receipts, all sorts of stuff, business equipment,
(08:10):
ill these as I go, So the only thing I
really need to wait on is the W two and
the ten ninety nine from the bank. So that way
when it's time to hand things off to you, it's
pretty much all ready to go. I'm not really searching
too much for what I need to submit to you.
I also actually use Wave invoices as well. If you're
(08:31):
a small business owner. They have all these invoicing softwares
that you can use. This one's free. I just use
the free version because all I need are invoices that
I can upload just to show what I'm pulling in
versus when I'm spending.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Here you go and you do a great job I doingday.
It's your a little shoe box, but it's least organized.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
It's an online. It's a digital shoe box.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
If you there, you go, because I've gotten shoe boxes
and I've looked at them say that's not my size.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, I know. You were the one that actually started
me on the dropbox journeys, so thank you for that.
I want you to leave our listeners with some words
of wisdom.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Well words of wisdom. Being on the other side is
not always better. So if you want to do a
side gig, fine, If you want to buy a house
because you're doing it because you want to live there,
that's fine, but don't do it to look for the
inductions on the write hoots. You've got to be prepared
for it. And just to be prepared for tax season,
just make sure you have everything together. One more thing
I just want to throw out there. It's very important
(09:25):
because there's a lot of what's going on. We do
suggest at our clients at least sign up with the
IRS and get identity pit.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Thank you so much, George, and if anybody needs to
reach George for any reason, you can just reach out
to me. And also you have a website tea right, yes.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
We do, GNSKP dot com.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Gee amazing. I'd love to have you back. Because we
got to talk about crypto, we got to talk about
like specifics onside hustling. We have so much to talk about,
investing four oh one K's versus roth Iras, Like, we
could go on and on, but my music's about to
run out. So guys, another episode of Life Bits with
Wendy will Thanks George, Thanks Wendy,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com