Plan Ahead: Take Action Today to Reduce Your Tax Bill by Thousands Next Year with Matthew Dominic Sercely: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01John Lee Dumas:Light that spark fire nation, JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down how to plan ahead. Take action today to reduce your tax bill by thousands next year. To draw these value bombs, I brought to Matthew Dominic Sercely in the EO Fire studios. Matthew is an attorney and tax planner who helps you set up your business to save tens of thousands of dollars in future taxes. And today we talk about how you're always a work in progress. Success comes from embracing that. How if you're not making money yet, focus on earning, not taxes.

0:34John Lee Dumas:And how to start planning for taxes as soon as you earn enough. It takes time to save and prepare and oh so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode

0:41Matthew Dominic Sercely:goes to Matthew and our sponsors.

0:44John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software.

1:20John Lee Dumas:Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Matthew, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:41Matthew Dominic Sercely:What's up, Fire Nation? The thing I believe about success is that you never are a success. You're always working for it. You're never done. And only successful people understand that.

1:53John Lee Dumas:Well, something else successful people understand is planning ahead. And that's what we're talking about here today. Plan ahead. Take action today, Fire Nation, to reduce your tax bill by thousands a year. And I want to start with the obvious. What the heck, Matthew, is tax planning?

2:12Matthew Dominic Sercely:Tax planning is sitting down and doing things in your business, setting things up, whether that's how your company is set up, how you pay expenses, when you pay expenses, so that down the road, you owe us taxes. Some of tax planning may be just shifting taxes around, paying taxes in two years instead of in a year, or today instead of next year.

2:34John Lee Dumas:So Fire Nation, when you're thinking about Matthew's explanation of tax planning, are you part of that process? Are you spearheading that necessary evil in a lot of people's eyes. Now, isn't that something that our CPA should be helping us with, Matthew?

2:50Matthew Dominic Sercely:So if you have a CPA, your CPA might also be a tax planner. But most CPAs, well, they're accountants, they're numbers people. Tax planning, it's a lot harder. It takes thinking. It's not just math or calculations. You have to look at the whole piece. Because, you know, it's really easy to make a change that, oh, I'm going to save$1 ,000 here, but it's going to cost me$2 ,000 there.

3:12John Lee Dumas:So one thing that we love on these episodes, Matthew, is specific examples, our case studies that we can really connect the dots with. Now, I don't want to use people's names and businesses for obvious reasons, but give us some real life examples of the sort of things that you can help save people's taxes on, like real life scenarios where people have come to you and walked away for the better?

3:41Matthew Dominic Sercely:So one of my recent clients, he hired me last December, had both a day job as well as a consulting business on the side. And he was doing very well for himself, making over$400 ,000 a year. And we made a couple of changes. We actually had him create a second business legally. and that one change alone saved him about, or is going to save him about$23 ,000 in taxes this year alone.

4:11John Lee Dumas:So the more examples and case studies that we can hear, the better, because now my listeners can start to put themselves in the situations of these individuals that they resonate with, that they feel like, hey, I'm similar to this person, to that person for various reasons. So let's go through a couple more examples.

4:27Matthew Dominic Sercely:I have a client with a small construction company. He does most of the work himself. or hires independent contractors sometimes, but does a lot of work in houses and such. He's pulling in about$60 ,000 to$70 ,000 a year in net profits. We just actually did his tax plan a few weeks ago, and he's going to end up saving about$6 ,000 a year in taxes.

4:55John Lee Dumas:Now, if you could give Fire Nation a set of instructions of something that they can do as the year is going forward that can really help them, quote unquote, plan ahead? What would be some of those things, those strategies, those tips, those tactics that you would want the listeners to know?

5:13Matthew Dominic Sercely:The first most important thing is keep records of everything financial. Keep the records. If you can, use a bookkeeper or something, keep all the receipts. Because if you don't write down what you're spending, you can't expense it off. The next most important thing is actually sitting down and having a plan. Hope is not a plan. Thinking, oh, I think I know how this works is not a plan. Sit down regularly, ideally, every quarter and go, has my business changed? Do I need to change how I'm doing things because of that?

5:51John Lee Dumas:Are there any apps that you ever recommend for people to keep track of records? I've seen some where you take pictures of receipts and it kind of automatically files and does those things. Anything along those lines that you've used or you recommend your clients?

6:05Matthew Dominic Sercely:You definitely want to use some sort of an accounting program. QuickBooks is the most popular. But in terms of apps on the phone, all I do for my own business is I use my camera and my email. And I just take a picture of any receipts and then I email myself that email. And then in my email, I mark it as a business expense. I mark it as the type of business expense and I mark the year it was. And then once a month, I just go through that and save that all on my computer and I've got everything saved.

6:37John Lee Dumas:You said the phrase, hope is not a plan. Can you expound upon that?

6:42Matthew Dominic Sercely:Sure. A lot of people, when it comes to tax planning, well, first of all, when it comes to taxes, some people just don't do their taxes and hope they won't get caught, which is obviously a terrible idea. But when I say hope is not a plan, so many people, especially like their business is just getting going they're just becoming profitable and they just kind of say well i'll figure out the tax stuff eventually not understanding how to forecast their taxes not understanding you should be setting money aside to pay your taxes so you don't have to come up with 10 or 20 or 30 grand next april a lot of people are terrified

7:21John Lee Dumas:by those three letters, IRS? Should they be?

7:26Matthew Dominic Sercely:If you're cheating on your taxes or not paying, you probably should be. If you're acting in good faith, you really don't need to be scared of the IRS. The IRS, it's actually relatively unique among the tax collection authorities in the world. Their mandate is not to collect as much as possible. Their mandate is to collect what is legally owed. And so they're one of the few agencies in the world that if you overpay your taxes and they realize you did it, they'll just send you the refund.

7:56John Lee Dumas:So how often do you personally deal with the IRS?

7:59Matthew Dominic Sercely:I almost never deal with the IRS. In fact, as a tax advisor, thankfully, none of my clients have ever been audited by the IRS, knock on wood.

8:12Matthew Dominic Sercely:I did have one client last year who did get a a letter from the IRS regarding something, and I sent a letter to them, and they basically said, oh, okay, that makes sense. And I've done that on my own personal life. Three or four times in my life, I've filed my taxes, and then a year later or two years or three years later, oh, you owe this or oh, you owe that. And as long as you pay attention to it, respond to it, explain what happened. It's usually not too big of a deal. Ignoring it, on the other hand, which again, a lot of people do, that's a big mistake.

8:49John Lee Dumas:So you're basically saying that the IRS is reasonable. And if you're doing the right thing, or even at least trying to do the right thing, that you have a chance on getting a fair shake in the deal. Exactly.

9:02Matthew Dominic Sercely:Now, that said, the IRS is not about being just. If the rules say you're in the wrong, even if they're stupid, they're still going to enforce those rules. They don't have to be logical. They're going to follow their rules. But when the rules are ambiguous or when they can, again, they don't want to ruin your life. It's human beings doing the job. Most people in the IRS, they don't want to ruin their life. They just have a nine to five job that they wanted.

9:29John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, we're talking more about this and all that jazz when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? Are you looking to learn the proven processes and success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories? See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you, who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month, and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Yes, it's month to month, and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee.

10:07John Lee Dumas:Schedule your free personal 13-point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire. Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference, you will interact with Clay directly, see thousands of real success stories, and learn about attending the Thrive Time Show two-day in-person workshop featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire. Become the next success story, schedule a free consultation, and request tickets to join football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, at Clay Clark's next business conference, today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire.

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12:07John Lee Dumas:So Matthew, we're back and you did mention the word logical and illogical right before the break. in your opinion what's something that's illogical about the irs oh that's a good question i think one of the really hard well their whole uh current classification of how they're dealing with cryptocurrency is totally illogical and really doesn't fit with what other agencies are doing

12:33Matthew Dominic Sercely:so if you're buying and selling and investing a lot in crypto like don't don't trust the logic for what is and is not the tax consequences for that. Just read what they say and do what they say.

12:45John Lee Dumas:Or just move to Puerto Rico and have 0 % capital gains.

12:48Matthew Dominic Sercely:Yes, if possible, that's also another good opportunity.

12:53John Lee Dumas:Let's talk about ROI. Let's talk about return on investments. So what kind of ROI are we talking about if we do, in fact, take our tax planning seriously?

13:05Matthew Dominic Sercely:Even after somebody hires me, even after they pay for things like if they need to set up an LLC or get a bookkeeper or whatever, I have yet to take on a client that did not end up saving more in taxes in the first year than that cost. And in future years, even if you have me still working with you, it's way more affordable. So you can very easily in three years have a 100 to 200 % return on investments.

13:33John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, that's a fantastic use of your time. That's a fantastic ROI on your energy, your bandwidth, and then again, on your finances. So who should not be thinking about tax planning yet?