One of the most important aspects to running a business is understanding taxes. With changed seemingly every other day, understanding what you need to do and what you should do is confusing at best. Marine Corps veteran Charles Read has made a career out of understanding the tax system and he joins the show to discuss some very important tax topics for vetrepreneurs.

Guest Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-j-read-cpa/

https://getpayroll.com/why-getpayroll/about-charles-read/

https://getpayroll.com/

thepayrollbook.com Use Code: BATTLE

Transcript from Episode 27 with Charles Read:

Keith McKeever 0:03

Buddy with Keith McKeever

are not a battle buddies. Welcome back to another episode of battle buddy podcast. I am joined by Charles Reed today from get payroll. And he is a Marine Corps veteran served in the Vietnam era Vietnam War. And we're going to talk about something today that's for business people, it's an unfortunate reality is you have to pay taxes. I don't know any other way to put it right is not the most glamorous thing in the world. But when you run a business, you got to pay the government, right? And they're gonna they're gonna make sure they get what they're, what they're what they think they're do sort of that way. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot of different things about it. I am by no means a tax expert at all. So this is I was really excited about this to learn a little bit more with some of these questions about taxes and different things you can do, because I think it's a whole different world out there. But without further ado, Charles, welcome to the podcast.

Charles Read 1:02

Keith. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Keith McKeever 1:06

I appreciate appreciate you being here. So tell us a little bit about yourself, you know, who was what was little Charles like, and how did you end up in the Marine Corps? And how did you end up doing what you're doing today?

Charles Read 1:16

Well, I'm a Midwestern boy, I grew up in Davenport, Iowa. I graduated from high school there at 16. Worked for a while, wasn't ready for college. My family has been citizen soldiers for over 200 years going back to the Revolutionary War. So it just was accepted that I would join the service at some point. I joined the Marine Corps and said go into college. Out of my three sisters, two of them were in the service. The third one used to fly Mac flights in and out of denying for a Pan American. So we all serve dad was Navy, Grandfather was Army, on and on and on.

Keith McKeever 1:56

Well, even every Coast Guard yet somewhere in a family.

Not that I know. But

the future family members SpaceForce in the future, maybe

Charles Read 2:07

I'm sure I thought about that. I spent four years was did my basic at MCRD San Diego ITR at Camp Pendleton, for that, which was my first duty station and I was to Oakland Isla for 16 months. Then I got myself transferred down to Red Beach and just north of denying for six months. Didn't want to be I was a computer programmer, systems engineer. I didn't want to do that in Vietnam. So I got myself transferred to the local infantry company that was doing introduction work around Red Beach. So I spent six months in combat limited, got my combat action ribbon and so on. But after that, I came back was stationed in Kansas City, met and married my wife while I was still in service. She had five kids when I married her, I claim insanity. But we were married for 45 years. It was a good marriage. Not perfect. Anybody that tells you that a perfect marriage lies about other things.

Keith McKeever 3:17

And we you told me the other day that I was I couldn't agree more with that.

Charles Read 3:23

And after service, found that my military experience was not valued by the business community. It was it was terrible. I mean, I the exact job I had just done in the Marine Corps, working on the Joint Unified military pay system. The employers of Texas didn't think was a was valid experience for their insurance company. It was just ridiculous. So I figured I'd have to get my credentials, went to college found out I liked accounting. Got my Bachelor's, my BBA, my MBA, sat for and passed my CPA exam while I was still in graduate school, went to work for Texas Instruments. spent 15 years in the corporate world, big corporations, little corporations, turnarounds as a bunch of great experience, realized in my early 40s, I was never going to run a major corporation. I did not have the political skills. I was unwilling to stab people in the back and toss them off the ladder. So I said if I was going to run a company, I'd have to start my own. So 30 years ago, Ruth and I started, my wife started our own company. And 30 years later, I'm still in business. Ruth is passed. She passed six years ago. So it's just me now but still in business still going strong.

Keith McKeever 4:43

still out there doing your thing. And yeah, that's a boy. There's a lot to unpack there about the, you know, the stabbing people in the back and yeah, there's, unfortunately there's plenty of examples of that. But it's a lot have awareness, you know, on your part to just realize you're never gonna, you know, knowing yourself and never knowing that you're morally not gonna ever be able to be in that position. So I feel you on that one. I feel like

Charles Read 5:15

I found I don't like working for other people.

Keith McKeever 5:19

That would be incredibly hard for me to do as well, you know, that, like

Charles Read 5:23

my livelihood depended on somebody else's whim.

Keith McKeever 5:31

There's, there's something to be said about having kind of control over your own destiny in some ways, right? If you if you mess it up, and the business goes under for some reason, well, it's your fault. Here is your company get started, versus somebody knocking on knocking on your office door saying, okay, Charles, it's time to pack your bags.

Charles Read 5:50

In my office at the end of the day? No, I will never take that from anybody. You want to talk talk? You want to see me later? Fuck you. Exactly. But um, you probably need to have that out.

Keith McKeever 6:04

But now it's all good. It's all good. I don't really care about some customers and stuff like that. I mean, things get different topics get a little bit more interesting than others. So a curse word doesn't hurt my feelings. I've heard them all.

Charles Read 6:19

Dad was navy. So

Keith McKeever 6:21

there's no saying I'm gonna cuss like a sailor as I was never sailor. But we all heard the same thing. So Exactly. Yeah. So so you're so you're a CPA, you've been in the SAS world for a little while. But let's give a nugget of information to to those veteran viewers out there that are looking to start a business and they're kind of like in it, exploration phase, like they got this crazy idea in their mind, they're going to start a business. What do you think the first couple of steps that they should take financially and tax wise to kind of set themselves up for success?

Charles Read 6:54

Well, one of the things when they do have their business plan, and if you start a business without a business plan, you're making a mistake, fail, get a book on it, read on it, and do a formal plan. Because it crystallizes your thinking, it forces you to be rational about what's going on. So without a business plan, it's just a dream. And it'll evaporate with with you getting up. So write out a business plan, plan it out, know what you're going to do, knowing how you're going to do it, know what your competition is, know what your market is, know all those good things. Rule of thumb, Charles's rule of thumb, when you figured out every possible dollar you need, every contingency you can think of, you've got the total amount of capital, you need to make this business work. Double it, and you might have enough. Because there'll be things you'll never think of, there'll be things that happen that you can't conceive of happening, and they will happen, and they will cost money. Does that make

Keith McKeever 8:03

sense? Yeah, I was thinking, as you're saying, I was like, where's he going with this, but yeah, make sense, double it.

Charles Read 8:10

Next thing to do is follow the law register, the government wants to know who you are, what you're doing, you got to have tax IDs, just do it. Now, I'm in the payroll business. Now, this is I've been in the payroll business heavily, almost exclusively for the last 1012 years, since I sold off the accounting practice to my partner at the time. And in payroll. You've got, you can't just pay people into the table, you just can't pay them cash and ignore it. That that's called tax evasion and tax fraud, and it's a felony. And you can't just pay people as independent contractors because you want to and they'll take the money. That's not legal either. And we'll get you into big problems with huge penalties and interest if you do it wrong. Now, there are some workers that are independent contractors, and you can pay him that way and file a 1099 at the end of the year. There are others that are going to be deemed employees, either by federal law, state law, or by statute. And if you don't pay them as employees, and withhold all the taxes, and do all the filings, the states and the Internal Revenue Service will come after you for all those taxes that you didn't pay in. Plus penalties plus interest. And if it is serious enough, it can be a criminal charge. So don't do it. It's not worth it. Just do it right. As far as payroll, you know, their higher payroll company like me, will take care of it for pitons you need for people in your life business wise You need an attorney to advise you of the law and the liabilities. You need an accountant to record what you're doing, explain where the money is going keep track of it and file your taxes. You need a banker, because you gotta have a bank account, and you may need to borrow money. And Eddie on the corner, the loan shark is not the place to borrow money now,

Keith McKeever 10:24

not have those interest rates, but you haven't had a

Charles Read 10:27

very bad, but your knees won't appreciate it when you miss a payment. And you need an insurance agent to make sure that your liabilities are covered where they're supposed to be. Those four people are integral to your business life. Now, don't let them particularly the attorney tell you how to run your business. They're all there as advisors, you have to make the decisions, it's your business, you know better than they do. So listen to them, listen to their advice, but you make the business decisions.

Keith McKeever 11:03

I couldn't agree with that more. And I think it's really important to, to look at them as advisors in in realize that you need to be transparent with them. And I guess I'm taking it from from my career as a realtor, I have a lot of people I consider myself an advisor to people on residential real estate transactions, because that's all natural, but sometimes you can tell people are quite telling you the truth. Especially when somebody goes to get a home loan and kind of skirt around exactly how they get paid to certain things like that. And you just know that, like, just be transparent, put it all on the table, because eventually the lender is going to make you do that, you know, in order to get the loan. So like, just put it out there build good relationships with them be transparent, and you know, take take their advice.

Charles Read 11:50

Yeah, yeah. One other thing that for your budding entrepreneurial clients, your listeners, I got asked this in a panel discussion here a couple years ago, and somebody said, Well, what about work life balance, and I cracked up, I just laughed my ass off. As a beginning entrepreneur, there is no such thing as work life balance, it's work. Okay, you're gonna put in 60 7080 hours a week, for years. Before you take a vacation, before you have time off before you can have a work life balance. And if you don't have a spouse that understands that you're going to have problems. And not everybody is cut out to be an entrepreneur. Some people like that 40 hours a week in a steady paycheck, and the ability to get a pink slip on a moment's notice. I don't entrepreneurs don't. The only way I would go to work for a company is if they gave me 51% of the stock. So I owned it. Other than that, I'm not interested.

Keith McKeever 13:00

That's a good way of looking at it. But yeah, some people are aren't willing to, to take on the risk and be the owner. And that's fine. Because when you're the business owner, you need people that want to work for you. Absolutely no desire to go do that stuff.

Charles Read 13:12

I have a great staff. Okay. These these are great people that work for me. I couldn't do the work without them, believe me. There's no way I could do what they they all do. I mean, some of them, in fact, have gotten where I couldn't do what they do individually, let alone in total. I mean, Michaels, my videographer, nauseous my marketing manager. And I realized a few years ago, when I hired my first marketing manager, that I can't market my way out of a paper bag. If I had a nosh 30 years ago, I'd be a very rich man today, but didn't so we're still growing and scraping and getting by. So your staff is extraordinarily important. And you need to treat them that way. Because they are your business. Yeah, your clients are important. Absolutely. Sorry, your people, if you don't take care of them, they won't take care of you.

Keith McKeever 14:06

I couldn't agree more. You know, and it's important to surround yourself you know, on that time because surround yourself with people who have the skills that you don't have and it takes a lot of self awareness to realize what what you can't do. And speaking of I mean accounting and payroll stuff for my business I'm it's just me, so I don't have people to for payroll but if I did that's one of those things I look at like I I don't know if I have the time energy to to sit there think about how am I going to do it, you know, it would make sense to go find somebody that can take on that for me. You know,

Charles Read 14:42

the analogy I use for that is when I grew up Pele was the world's best soccer player. It may well be the best soccer player of all time. Okay, great athlete. But if you take and put them in a New York Yankees uniform at second base, he'd be lost doesn't know the equipment doesn't know the rules, doesn't know the game doesn't know the field doesn't know the players, he be totally lost, he'd still be a great athlete talented. So if you take a businessman, a realtor, a chef, a mechanic, a manufacturer, a dog, groomer, whatever. And you tell him now you got to deal with the IRS about employment tax issues. Take care of it. Guys, I'm a real estate agent i What the hell do I know about taxes and payroll and so on? You know, I was one I know how to write a check. But you know, beyond that, I'm,

Keith McKeever 15:42

I'm always one, you know, took up a fight somewhere where a fight needs to be taken, you know, but sometimes you're just, you're in a way over your head. And that would that would, that would be me. Yeah, just definitely great analogy, just like you wouldn't want me working on your car.

Charles Read 16:02

I don't make my own clothes. I don't build my own cars. I don't build my own house, I don't mow my own lawn anymore. Okay. So I outsource all those things. And payroll is one of those things. You should outsource it's it costs a pittance to outsource it. And you get very, very talented professionals. If you pick the right firm that can handle it. We're compliance experts, that's our unique selling proposition. I'm a CPA, a US Tax Court practitioner, which means if the IRS screws up, I can take them to US Tax Court for no additional professional fees. And I do and I when we get things that happen all the time, the IRS makes millions of mistakes, millions of mistakes,

Keith McKeever 16:48

all the stuff that comes in is bound to happen.

Charles Read 16:51

We had one today came in, we'd filed a 941 for the client made the deposits, it was 470. It was $25,000. They put it in as $95,000. And said we owe $70,000. It's it's a flat entry error on their part. And we have to fix that we know how to. And if they don't fix it, we know who to go to. We solve those problems. Because we're experts at it. In many cases, we know more than the IRS does about problems and penalties and interest. And situations. That's what we live with, they get moved around from job to job within the service. And they may not be an expert in employment tax issues. We are and having been on the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council for three years. I know a lot of people in DC, I know who to call, I have the phone numbers. We had one situation that took nine years to solve. I had bumped up against through all the levels of appeals through the Director of Field Operations and was trying to talk to his boss who oversees a region of the country never could get them to return the call. So I called the deputy chief of appeals in DC, who he works for, and said, I can't get this guy to call me. She said I'll have him call you. He called me that afternoon. We talked, we got the thing really lucked out. Three months later, instead of a $95,000 penalty, my client had a $400 refund.

Keith McKeever 18:27

So long time we have something kind of hanging over your head trying to fight it. You know, I think just about any time you go up against the government in any kind of capacity, you feel like you're just banging your head against a brick wall, hoping that you get somewhere or something. That'd be nerve racking, as you know,

Charles Read 18:43

you're you know, if you're paleo at second base, the only thing you can do is write the check. You don't have to find it, you don't have anybody that can fight it for you. You either have to pay big bucks to a tax attorney, or you have to write the check. And with checks, if the checks $500 tax attorneys gonna cost you 10 times that. So you just write the check and go on and let the government basically teach you because you don't know, the rules, the regulations, the Internal Revenue Service Manual, how to appeal it, how to file 12 153 to stop collection efforts, how to go to tax court for $60 in filing fees, you don't know any of that. And I understand that, okay. My daughter's a real estate broker. She talks about things and I'm just goes right over my head. I have she talks about all kinds of things and housing and laws and, and and regulations and I'm going very that's interesting. Okay, thank you. Yeah, that's interesting. Really, you got to put up with that. Okay, and just go over my head. I have no idea what you're talking about half the time, because that's her business. But what I have what I have up Real Estate question I call her

Keith McKeever 20:03

absolutely pure daddy. It's all about having those advisors, you know, people that, you know, I can trust that can give information. But, you know, back to your example of how 95 to 25. Like, that's a lot of money. And I would, and I can see where a lot of small businesses get into that, where maybe the the amounts are a lot smaller, you know, maybe the, I don't know, $500 difference, or 1000 or 5000. And I guess, you know, thinking is an entrepreneur, business owner, you sit there think, Well, maybe it's gonna cost me more to find it. So I might as well just pay it. You know, but if you

Charles Read 20:43

don't know how to fight it, you're not going to win. The collections department of the IRS, their collection agents, they don't care whether you owe the money or not. They have no interest. It's been brought to them that you owe the money. They're like any other debt collector, they don't care whether you owe it really or not. They're out to collect it. That's their job. So fighting with the collection side of the IRS is a total waste of time. They don't care. That's not their job. You got to go back to exam or appeals or whatever. If you get a collection letter and you try to respond to that.

Keith McKeever 21:22

You're wasting your breath. Yeah,

Charles Read 21:24

yeah, you've got to go to a different area and go after it the correct way, and get it fixed, then it'll go to collection site. Nevermind. Okay, that makes

Keith McKeever 21:34

sense. How many do you have to them, you're just a number, name and a number on a screen. And their job is to call you mail you whatever, like,

Charles Read 21:45

and harass you until you pay, unfortunately, your bank accounts or your business, or your assets, your house. Whatever, I've seen them I've look, I was in the office one time on a different matter. The guy next to me in the next cubicle. They were telling him to take his gold tooth out and go pawn it. Literally, to pay that. I've seen houses seized bank accounts seized, businesses seized that they they have no they're like any other debt collector, they have no compassion. I don't think anybody with any compassion can work as a debt collector, I think you have to sociopath. Oh, yeah. Debt Collector.

Keith McKeever 22:32

Yeah, that'll be deadly tough to know that. It'd be hard. I don't know how you could ever say, Go pawn your gold tooth? You know, I mean, at that point, what do you got left? You got nothing left. If you're going to go pop a gold tooth out and bought it. That's

Charles Read 22:50

that's a car that's collections.

Keith McKeever 22:53

That it is you know, and it goes to other collections, too. I mean, medical collections is that way they just don't care. You know, things pop up on people's credit reports all the time. And it's it's faking it and then you got to fight to go prove

Charles Read 23:06

it. That's really it. If they had any empathy, they couldn't do debt collections. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. One of my attorneys his first wife was in the collections industry as a debt collector that motors didn't last long.

Keith McKeever 23:23

interesting dynamics at dinner tables so yeah, I really hate it when those collectors do this and

Charles Read 23:33

a lot of a man I took his bank account and man i i got his retirement fund and his kids college fund I got to

Keith McKeever 23:42

what was the guy's name I think we think there's some money we can make your that's probably not even Sir You know, the guy worked for the government take people's money and and you know, the attorney can go charge people to try and get it back anyway.

Charles Read 23:55

But not much difference between an IRS debt collector and and the crook with with a gun. Really, I mean, you know, the IRS will put you in jail the crypto just shoot you.

Keith McKeever 24:09

That's, that's darn true. Yeah. Health. Both of them will, you know, leave their leave their mark.

Charles Read 24:18

Yeah. But when you leave your wallet, he'll leave. You give you a wallet to the IRF. It's to the IRS. If it's not enough, they won't leave. Just keep swiping. They'll follow you home.

Keith McKeever 24:30

And take your home. And your car is

Charles Read 24:34

cheese. Anyway.

Keith McKeever 24:36

Yeah. Uh, yeah, we keep ragging on the IRS all day long. But we'll back to the small business owners. You know, since you were CPA on some of the financial reports, you kind of kind of take it that direction a little bit. Where do you think like some people are? Maybe the top two or three things people are just not understanding as business owners when it comes to financial reform And like what are the big things are not understanding or not getting right?

Charles Read 25:04

Well, the, if they don't have a CPA that's advising them, they don't understand what their financial reports are showing them. A financial report should give you a clue where you're making money where you're losing money, what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. Okay? Financially now, not marketing, that's a whole different ballgame. Your balance sheet is just a picture of your assets, and liabilities as a single point in time. That's all it is. It, it's for that moment, it doesn't mean anything, necessarily many thing, a week or a month or a year later. Your Income Statement, again, is a picture of the past of what happened. This is a problem with accounting, it is all record keeping, it is all historical. But if you look at those, you can use those as a basis for future planning. You can see where you're making money, and expand that area in the marketing, you can see where you're losing money and shut it down. These are the things that good CPA can help explain to you what's happened. He's not the guy to run your business. He's not the guy to plan out for what is what's going forward. But he can help you understand what has happened. So you really know where the revenue came from, where the expenses were, how they matched up. Plus, he can help you with things like, should I lease or buy an asset? What what are the, the reasons why I want to consider this? For my situation? If you just go on the web? And they say, well, always lease a car. That's not always right. Many times it is. Sometimes it's not. So these the financial statements, give a trained person, the ability to help you analyze your business, and what's happened to allow you to plan for your next steps.

Keith McKeever 27:08

I couldn't agree more. Because I've been on a couple of boards. And that's why I kind of wanted to ask that question, because you took it right where I was hoping you would. Before I took any accounting in college, sitting on those boards, I could kind of follow the financial statements, I kind of understood what they were, I understood what those line items were and all that stuff. But after I took accounting, I had a better understanding of kind of how those shaped up. And on those some of those boards when the CPA comes to town, and we have a question about something, or we want to, you know, deep dive into something is great to have that person there that can educate you on that. On the one thing you might not know, or maybe you just don't remember, or something like that. And they can say, well, you know, this is what this item is, this is what this means, here's how we got to these numbers. And then, you know, you can help you implement your strategic plan, and, and all those things based on what direction you're going. So I think I think there's a lot of business owners that just don't understand that. And they probably just pay somebody, you know, pay their CPA to do their stuff. And maybe they just don't understand any of it and yeah, looks good, you know,

Charles Read 28:13

the pay a CPA to do it. So you can create the tax return. So he can stay compliant with the IRS. And you got to do that.

Keith McKeever 28:23

Yeah, that's ordinary. But the second step is to analyze it and utilize,

Charles Read 28:27

you don't understand what they what they really mean. You need an advisor that can explain those to you, in detail. answer your questions. So you know what's going on. It's very, very valuable information. If you use it, if you don't use it. It's just wasted money. You still have to have it for tax purposes. But if you'll analyze it, you'll be amazed what you'll be able to figure out about your business and where it may get better.

Keith McKeever 29:02

Absolutely. Well, that should be everybody's goal. But I think that's some people's downfall is not, you know, kind of taking that next step and utilizing the information that they've got. So we're expanding on that. How about payroll, since that's what you're in now, we're Where do you think some of the biggest misinformation is are for business owners about payroll, or where they where they goof up the most

Charles Read 29:26

70% of all US businesses according to the Department of Labor, misclassify workers, either as independent contractors versus employees, or as eligible for overtime or not eligible for overtime. 70% of all US businesses screw that up. And it can be expensive to fix. You can't just decide, well, I'm going to put everybody on salary. It's simple, it's easy, but it's not legal. You got to pay overtime, and there's rules. It's a lot Rules. It's all in the book. You know, my newest book, The payroll book, A Guide for small businesses and startups. It's all in there. And it shows you who you can pay salary and who you can't pay salary to. And there's lots of lots of reasons, lots of lots of laws, who may who isn't an independent contractor and who is not. And the law also changes. The Trump administration had proposed new rules that which were supposed to go into effect March 8 of this year, on March 8, the Biden administration pulled them and did not let them go into effect. And the Labor Department is working on different rules for the Biden administration, which will go into effect next year, probably. So things change. And if you don't keep up on the changes, the tax law changes every year, they pass new stuff all the time. Oh, yeah. For instance, a 45 S is a law they passed here about for you, as part of the 97 tax act, or the two fat I'm sorry, the 17 Tax Act, which allows you to get a tax credit. If you pay time off, for certain reasons, you can get up to 25% of what you pay your people back as a credit. If you don't know about that, you're just throwing money away. These laws change all the time. So you know, that's basically what Congress has to sell us tax breaks. So you know, you make a big enough campaign contribution, you may be able to get the tax break you want.

Keith McKeever 31:34

Yeah, unfortunate reality. Yeah.

Charles Read 31:36

You know, I hate to say this, but, you know, Nancy Pelosi didn't get to be worth $300 million from just being Speaker of the House, I promise you. So there's a lot of things. And then you have to learn how to avoid penalties. If you can avoid them, that's best. And the biggest penalty is from mathematical errors. Not adding things up right, not multiplying them right. In payroll, that's that's the biggest Singler not only in payroll taxes, but in taxes, period, is just arithmetic errors, which anybody that got out of grade school shouldn't be making. But

Keith McKeever 32:19

I mean,

Charles Read 32:20

calculator right here on my dad's, Microsoft Excel, you got programs that do things for you. But if you're busy, and the taxes are just an annoyance that you have to get done, and you just did it and send them off. Well, when the IRS gets them, they're gonna do send back a notice. But the IRS also makes millions of mistakes. I spoke about one earlier, there was a a mis entry for $70,000. These are things you need to learn to, if you're not going to hire somebody you need to learn to solve. And there's ways to do it. It's easy to use somebody like me, particularly for employment tax, because we understand the law and IRS regulations and the IRS manuals, and what we can and can't do and how to appeal it, and what levels of appeals to use and how to get it the tax court and all these things that we're experts at that if you do yourself, well, you're not going to be able to accomplish very well, I'm sorry, it's an engineer one time over a tax return. So Charles, I can do exactly what you do. And I said, David, you're right. Go back to college for two years, then spend 20 years in the field. And you can do exactly what I do. And if I go back to college for two years, and work in your field for 20 years, I can do exactly what you do. So he said, I guess you're right. Yeah, that's engineers for you. But you know, it's a matter of experience and training and knowledge and attitude and desire. And, you know, I like I like this field, I, I like coming to work, I get a kick out of it. And I should have retired, my staff says, Charles, where are you going to retire? I say, one of these days, you're gonna come in and find me dead at my desk. I've retired.

Keith McKeever 34:17

So I looking at it, you know, my dad always said, Well, he's been gone 20 years, but he worked 25 years in the coal mine. And he was also a real estate agent for a little while, until till he passed, I don't know. 1213 years, something like that. He had his license. But he always told me as a kid told my sister is a kid. Do a job you love. Because if you love it, it's not really work. You'll you'll never work a day in your life. He worked his 25 years at a coal mine. And he hated it. But he did it because it paid the bills and it provided insurance and all that stuff, you know? And so that's uh, that's always stuck with me. So every time I hear somebody say something along those lines, I'm like, yeah, absolutely. Like Do what you love

Charles Read 35:02

it Life's too short not. And I feel sorry for your father, life's too short to do something you don't enjoy?

Keith McKeever 35:09

Absolutely, yeah, you gotta you got to do something because, well, you never know, when when your time on this earth is up, and you got to make the best of it, you said you kind of hit earlier on like, like the work life balance and definitely right. That there's not much of a balance in the beginning years. But if you if you work it right, you have the right advisors, you have the right team behind you, you can get to that point where you can build in that, that balance for you, because you're balancing my mouse is gonna look totally different

Charles Read 35:40

to different things. And, and, you know, I say, you know, don't don't work at something you don't like there's, there's parts of every job that aren't the most pleasant. And I've taken jobs when I was younger, to feed my family. And all I did was take it to feed my family look for something better. So you're not trapped in anything. There are better jobs, better careers, better situations, look for them be open. One of the things that always struck me was and you're talking about coal miners, in some parts of Appalachian, that have declined in economic capacity, because of coal running out or the non use of coal and so on. And these people they're unwilling to move they come down to and I was thinking this was probably 20 years ago, 30 years ago, Dallas was just screaming for people. They could have packed up, drove down to Dallas and had a job that day. When we moved down here in 1972, my wife and I had both worked at Denny's. This was before I I went to college, we stopped in a Denny's for lunch and boss got job offers. Her was a waitress with me as a cook. I mean, you know, we, we haven't been in town, but 30 minutes, and we had job offers holy cow. We're not just going to every table and be like,

Keith McKeever 37:03

are you looking for a job or like,

Charles Read 37:06

we talked to the manager, because she'd worked for him was talking about having been with him in Kansas City and I had been to, and the manager came over and found out she was an experienced waitress did you want to go to? So, you know, it's amazing. What's out there. If you only look forward, if you ask about it. For every closed door, there's, there's 1000 open windows, just hop through one.

Keith McKeever 37:34

Absolutely you don't.

Charles Read 37:36

There's there's no end to possibilities. I find ways to make money every day. Just today, I found out what you can make on YouTube. It's you know, it's incredible. If you have the right, the right content. One of my my right hand girl follows some lady that making $6,000 a month. And she started out as how to live on a budget on Social Security. And she's had to change the name of her blog, because there's so much money

Keith McKeever 38:11

Hey, you know, like, is your new content to go after? I guess at that point. Wow. But yeah, that's true. And, you know, nugget for all the current business owners that, you know, whenever you're listening to this or watching it like, as of right now, in the fall of 2021, there's still a lot of employment issues a lot, a lot of people that have jobs and businesses are having a hard time getting people. So why would I ask your customers, you know, put it out there everywhere in your store? Or, you know, hey, you're looking for a gentleman, you know, got all of these, you know,

Charles Read 38:47

available, one of the air conditioning heating places advertised on the radio station and listened to now his employment ads, instead of trying to sell America conditioners, they're trying to find people that can do work for him with radio. Yeah, I mean, it's still out there. But that's trying to say we're looking for great people who can do the job and you know, take care of clients and don't lie.

Keith McKeever 39:17

Absolutely, yes. It's It's kind of crazy. There's been a few few places I can remember where it was. I was someplace a couple of days ago. And, you know, whole sections of the store were closed off. Like Sorry, we don't we don't have the staff to be in this department. Like, who's like what? That's crazy. But I mean, if you don't have the people to run it, decisions got to be made.

Charles Read 39:42

There was a there was a I saw a picture of the in and out in San Francisco that they're having problems with because of COVID and on the sign there's a sign on the window. So starting pay 20 bucks an hour to work in a hamburger joint. She's 42 grand a year to flip hamburgers No, it's San Francisco and cost of living is high. But you can borrow it out to the, to the suburbs. But, you know, there's jobs everywhere people. Yeah, that that there is, yeah, that's why. But beyond that a lot of these people that got knocked out of jobs are starting their own businesses, because they're tired of working for other people. So they've got their 401k, or they've got some savings Or their wife's working, and they don't have to work, you know, they can start a business. And, you know, several million people quit last month, quit their jobs, and a lot of them are starting businesses. The gig economy is a real thing, people. And there's a lot of people out there, which is great for me, because we do one of these. I mean, if you're just You're your own person, you set up a corporation, you need to do payroll, because if you have a corporation or an LLC, you're probably an employee, and you need to file your 941 W twos for just you. Well, we'll do it. We do one Zs, we love. So, you know, that's great for us. And it's great for people who have been laid off or quit, or who, you know, don't have aren't a police officer getting $5,000 to move to Florida. So, you know, there's a lot of things out there don't don't ever think there aren't, there's just at the moment, there's millions of jobs, turns with millions of jobs.

Keith McKeever 41:22

There's there's timing even hit on police officers, I, you know, one of the cities nearby here, I was in some discussions with some colleagues in mind today about the city. And they've already approved the funding to hire 30 new officers and they can't hire. There's just you don't know. And now they're talking about 100 firefighters too. And it's like,

Charles Read 41:43

well, the Marine Corps about to dismiss, you know, several 1000 Marines that won't get the vaccine. So there's a whole bunch of potential police officers

Keith McKeever 41:54

to go down that route. But, man, I had another good, good question here for you speaking of taxes. If somebody has a tax issue, and they need to get more time to fight it, for whatever reason, like how do they go about doing that?

Charles Read 42:16

It depends on where they're at. In the process. There's a number of things you can do. For instance, a 12 153. A form 12 153 is a collection due process hearing request. And if you file that, that stops all collection efforts, until you have the hearing. And at these points, at this point, they're taking six months to a year to have a hearing. Another thing you can do is file a US Tax Court petition, which stops all collection efforts immediately. Now, if you're fairly early in the process, many times you can ask for a month or two months to get things together so you can file things properly, and so on. Once it gets to collection, it's a little different ballgame. But before collections of it's an exam or appeals, lots of times you can ask for some time. And and get a month or two. A 12 153 may get you six months to a year. US tax court filing, again six months to up to two years, depending on what's going on COVID Is is LinkedIn these things because things aren't getting filed, things aren't getting opened, things aren't getting processed. The the penalty we got today, the filing we made in April. They processed it in October.

Keith McKeever 43:38

courts had kind of slowed down because their stuff.

Charles Read 43:43

The last time I talked to Santa Anita Lo deputy commissioner of the IRS, there were still millions of pieces of unopened mail that they just hadn't gotten to some over a year old. We filed a amended return January of last year still hasn't been processed. They haven't Wow. They say they got it. So they opened it. But since it's an amended return, somebody has to look at it.

Keith McKeever 44:12

Maybe someone's got to open it, they got stuck it on the desk and then it's got to move on through the pile.

Charles Read 44:18

Last year, they were offering bonuses to people that they were painful salary to, to stay at home to come in and open mail. And they wouldn't do it because they were getting full showers at home and probably had a side job that was paying more in the bonus. So

Keith McKeever 44:35

the IRS is gonna have to come in and be exposed to COVID and all that at that time, you know, like

Charles Read 44:40

exactly. So the IRS is in total disarray, has been now for almost two years. And I don't see them getting out of it anytime soon at all, particularly with the increased mandates that the IRS has that has been forced on the IRS with advance childcare with advice, child credits, and the COVID. And the the tax deferrals. And everything else is going on. A lot of them are still working from home because it COVID. And they're not very productive. And a lot of them are just being paid not to work, because they can't put them in the office, and they can't get them tools to work out in the house, and all kinds of problems. So it's it's a disaster. How did the government get better anytime soon?

Keith McKeever 45:30

We should unfortunately expected because the government be they took a couple of years for them to kind of work through that backlog yet.

Charles Read 45:37

Yeah, I don't think they'll get through it in 2022. I think it'll be 2023 before they even begin to get back to normal. And it depends on how long the COVID pandemic last. Gratefully, I look at the cases and the cases are falling, deaths are falling. Hopefully, that sometime by spring, they'll declare the pandemic over. And we all get back to life. But you've got a lot of people out there that don't want it to be over. Big Pharma is one of them, because they're making trillions of dollars. Oh, goodness, free COVID shots. They're getting paid for, of course, the government paid for it. Right. And all the hospitals that are treating COVID patients, instead of flu patients, because COVID pays extra dollars and flu doesn't. That's why we didn't have a flu season. Just last year. I think there were 186 cases of reported flu for 2021. Winner as opposed to 20 to 30,000. Normally 186. Weird. I think they're all reported as COVID cases.

Keith McKeever 46:41

Probably yeah. Well, you know, you look at some of those things like the symptoms anyway. I mean, they're the ton of different symptoms. So obviously, we're, you know, be misdiagnosed. But I'm not a medical person either.

Charles Read 47:00

I'm an accountant. Yeah, yeah,

Keith McKeever 47:02

I'm better. I'm not an accountant. But I'm better with numbers that I have medical stuff. So speak speaking of accounting stuff. For the small businesses out there, how often do you think they should have their books and everything audit? How often should they have some all their stuff looked at either audited or a comprehensive review or whatever the industry calls them?

Charles Read 47:24

You view some terms here that that mean different things to different people? They should, I recommend that if they do any amount of business that they consider quarterly compilations, which is where the accountant takes all the things together and produces formal financial statements. Once they have four or five people and are doing a few $100,000 A business, they need to do it monthly. Okay, if they're under $10,000, in revenue, probably just having it done annually is adequate. Okay, if you're just doing it on a side gig, and you just need it for your taxes, do it once a year with your accountant, he'll do it up, do your financial statements, do your tax return gpz you're not you're not growing your business wildly. You're not needed to see trends as much. But once the revenue creeps up, you need to have more information on a more timely basis.

Keith McKeever 48:26

Makes sense? I think that's that's all I had for questions. I think we covered about as many bases as we could got to give you know all the veteran listeners out there viewers to you know, to get a better idea of taxes because it's a

Charles Read 48:42

well for confusing world. So for all for all your listeners, all your veterans, I'm obviously I'm a veteran, I'd like to make an offer for them to give them some of the things we've talked about, particularly in payroll are critical. And I'd like to offer them a reference book, you know, the payroll book, A Guide for small businesses and startups to have them so they have an important reference guide for them on their desk. When these questions arise. They can call me of course, but if they have the book, please look it up and and see what it can do for you. And I'd like to offer to them for your charge for your listeners. If they'll go to the website, the payroll book, the payroll book.com and enter the discount code battle. Okay, battle brothers. If they'll enter the discount code battle, we will send them a free book. All shipping no handling a free book. So they'll have this reference this this important reference guide on their bookshelf if and when they need it.

Keith McKeever 49:49

That's awesome. Charles, I appreciate you on behalf of all the listeners who who who can't fit it right now. Anyway, I appreciate you offer an F for everybody because y'all no excuse if you got the information at your fingertips. I like to tell you might tell you the direction that you need to go and may give you the answer may tell you the direction you go, which, which could be called Charles. And, you know, hopefully it's to ask some simple questions, not, not try and recover $70,000. And because that's just that's unbelievable. I mean, it's believable, but it's it's an amount of money that I couldn't imagine I wouldn't, I would lose my freakin mind thinking about that. So believe my client was

Charles Read 50:29

not happy when they got

Keith McKeever 50:34

to where my mind would go if I got, oh, jeez, I'd be like, What on earth did they do? Jews. So anyway, well, I'll have that in the show notes. It'll be on the YouTube notes as well. There'll be a link on there so they can go get it. The Kota we battle. It should be easy for everybody to remember for the battle buddy podcast, just put in the code battle. And get yourself a copy of Charles's book and Educate yourself. Learn more about taxes. So let's get Charles, I appreciate you being here. Any last words of wisdom?

Charles Read 51:04

Well, Kevin, one of the ones I like very much as a word of wisdom is something I stole from Bill Gates. And this is very, very important entrepreneurs. People will overestimate what they can accomplish in a year. And underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade. It's a marathon guys, it's not a sprint. Keep at it, keep at it, keep at it, you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish over a period of years. Absolutely amazed.

Keith McKeever 51:34

Absolutely. It's like putting pennies in and in a change jar. You know, it doesn't fill up quick, but it does fill up and adds up. So that's awesome. Good stuff, Charles. I appreciate it. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate you dropping all the tax knowledge and being a resource for everybody. So we'll finish off this episode here with my little ending video. We got some else there.

Charles Read 52:00

So just my pleasure to be here, Keith anytime. Awesome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai