Shauna Wekherlien is a CPA, a Master's in Tax, and a Certified Tax Strategist. Her firm, Tax Goddess, has saved clients over two billion dollars in taxes. She works mostly with executives and operators taking home a million-plus a year and paying $150,000-plus in federal tax, though the real estate provisions in this conversation matter to anyone in the asset class.

Recorded the week the One Big Beautiful Bill passed. Shauna walked through the four provisions that actually move the needle for real estate operators.

What landed in this conversation:

1. 100 percent bonus depreciation is back. Anything with a 15-year-or-less life can be written off in year one. For real estate that means cost segregation again does its full lift: buy a million-dollar building, run the seg study, write off six figures the first year. Combined with real estate professional status it can drive a tax bill to zero for years. One gotcha buried in the bill: the provision starts January 19th. The Hummer (or G-wagon) you bought January 18th does not qualify.
2. Business interest just got dramatically more deductible. Previously, business interest was capped at 30 percent of taxable income after depreciation. For real estate operators doing cost seg, taxable income was small and the cap chewed up the interest deduction. The new bill adds depreciation and amortization back into the calculation, which means operators get to deduct much more of their loan interest. For leveraged portfolios this is a quiet but material change.
3. SALT cap moved from $10K to $40K, with a trap. If your adjusted gross income as a married couple is under $500,000, you get the full $40,000 state and local tax deduction. Cross $500,000 and it phases back down to $10,000. So a well-designed tax strategy now has a bonus reason to keep AGI under the threshold. Pair that with the pass-through entity tax workaround that 39-plus states have implemented: your S-Corp or partnership can pay the state tax on your behalf, deduct it as a business expense, and you still get the personal credit. That is the legal double-dip.
4. The aggression scale. Shauna ranks tax strategies zero to ten. Zero is "the IRS never calls." Ten is "we are all going to jail." Her firm operates at six: strictly legal, every position fully documented, audit-ready. Eight is the same legal posture with thinner documentation. Nine is hoping you do not get caught. Real estate professionals get audited at roughly a 35 percent rate (versus 1 to 2 percent for typical filers), so the documentation discipline is not optional. Photo every receipt the second it hits your hand, drop it into Evernote, and use MileIQ for vehicle mileage.

The lesson Shauna ran back to in her own business: "Trust without inspection." Her fix was reporting and KPIs across her now-123-person firm.

Book on her counter right now: The Daily Stoic Journal by Ryan Holiday.

Reach Shauna at taxgoddess.com.

Real Estate Underground with Ed Mathews. Find us wherever you get your podcasts, at clarkst.com/podcast or elevista.com/podcast

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