Unlocking Tax Strategies for Physicians: Advanced Insight With Amanda Han

🎙️ 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗵𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗗𝗿. 𝗔𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗹𝗼𝗲.

 🔁 𝗧𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝘄𝗲’𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮 𝗛𝗮𝗻. 

💡 What if the problem isn’t that physicians pay too much in taxes……but that most of us don’t understand the rules well enough to use real estate the way the wealthy do?

In this replay episode, I’m joined by Amanda Han—CPA, real estate investor, educator, and one of the clearest voices in the tax strategy world.

Amanda was one of the most popular guests we’ve had on the podcast, and for good reason.

This conversation is packed with practical, advanced insights for physicians who want to think more strategically about taxes, real estate, retirement accounts, and long-term wealth building.

We cover:
 ✅ bonus depreciation and cost seg strategy
 ✅ when a 1031 exchange actually makes sense
 ✅ self-directed IRA vs solo 401k
 ✅ UBIT / UDFI and the hidden tax issue many investors miss
 ✅ how passive losses really work for physicians
 ✅ when to use retirement money vs cash for deals

This is one of those episodes worth revisiting because the lessons are that valuable.

🔥 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗹𝗹 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻:
 ✔️ Why bonus depreciation and cost segregation are powerful—but not always the right move
 ✔️ The biggest 1031 exchange mistakes physicians need to avoid
 ✔️ Why Amanda often prefers a solo 401k over a self-directed IRA when possible
 ✔️ The hidden UBIT / UDFI issue that can create taxes inside retirement-account investments
 ✔️ Why not all real estate investments get the same tax treatment
 ✔️ How passive losses can still create real tax value for physicians
 ✔️ When to use retirement account money vs non-retirement cash for different types of deals

If you’re a physician investor who wants to stop guessing and start making smarter tax decisions, this replay is for you.

Listen to Amanda Han's First Episode Here

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Transcript

Amanda Han:  People are concerned, like, if I'm using my IRA to invest in syndication, am I going to pay UDFI taxes?   One of the strategies is, you can still invest now if you want to fund it today, but in the next year or two, before there's taxable income from that asset in the fund. If you can get some sort of 1099 income from locum income , then you can open a solo 401k at that point in time. You can always roll over that asset,  you can call the syndicator and say, Hey, I would like to retitle this asset for my IRA into my 401k. And then now in the future, you avoid that hidden tax issue.

 Dr. Alex Schloe: Welcome to the Physicians and Properties Podcast.  The show where we teach you how investing in real estate can give you the freedom to practice medicine and live life how you want.  Doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor. Now here's your host, Dr. Alex Schloe. 

 Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the physicians and properties podcast. I am so excited tonight that we get to have an incredible repeat guest on the podcast. Amanda Han and she actually had one of the most popular episodes last year talking about tax strategies.

If you have not listened to our first episode, go back, take a listen, cause it's incredible. We talk a lot about more basic tax strategy concepts. In this episode, we talk about some common questions that I was getting after folks heard the Amanda Han episode or some general physician tax strategy questions that were coming up, and then we hit on tax strategies for real estate investors in terms of using retirement accounts. Should you use a self directed IRA? Should you use a solo 401k? What are the benefits to those? What are the benefits to using retirement accounts in general to invest ? It was an absolutely incredible podcast.

Amanda is just incredible and has such a gift at taking complicated tax strategy and simplifying it to a level where even I can understand it. This was an incredible podcast. If you learned something, please leave us a five star rating and a review and subscribe to the podcast.

That's how more docs can  the good news of real estate investing and how that can lead to to a life where they can live the life that they want, practice medicine how they want. So, let's get started with today's episode with Amanda Han. 

 Amanda Han, welcome to another episode of the physicians and properties podcast. You are just the second guest we've ever had that's come for a repeat episode. So honored to have you back on the podcast. I forgot to mention this as we were talking beforehand you do have one of the most popular episodes on the physicians and properties podcast, which is awesome.  Very happy to have you back on the podcast. How are things.

Amanda Han: Thank you so much for having me. I know physicians typically pay a lot in taxes, so I'm not surprised. It's one of the more popular episodes, just by the nature. It's a big problem that physicians have and good thing we're talking about real estate because that is one of the preferred investment vehicles for all types of high income earners. 

Dr. Alex Schloe: Absolutely. For folks who haven't heard your first episode, I would encourage them to go back. It was an amazing episode. We talked a lot about short term rentals and the short term rental loophole, accelerated depreciation on that podcast and some general tax strategies.

But for folks who didn't hear that episode and they're listening for the first time, do you mind sharing a little bit about yourself?

Amanda Han: Yeah, sure. My name is Amanda Han and what I tell people is I'm a CPA by day and real estate investor by night. So like many of you I still love my profession. Our firm is called Keystone CPA and our passion is really in helping to educate real estate investors nationwide on how to use real estate to offset taxes rental income or Income from a W 2 job and also income from a business that you might be operating.

My husband Matt and I wrote two books published by BiggerPockets. You can find them on Amazon Barnes and Nobles, basically anywhere books are sold. Our first book is called Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor. And our second one is the advanced version. So for those of you who, this is the second podcast, you can go and read the advanced version of it.

Dr. Alex Schloe: The first one's great. I have it. It's actually in my bedroom. But it's a fun book too for taxes.  Honestly taxes are not typically a subject that someone is that interested in typically, except for physicians . And your book was really fun. It was a great way to learn about tax strategy. I'm not at the advanced level yet. I need to get there.  Maybe after this podcast, I'll buy the second one and go from there. It's a great book. Thanks for writing it. And thanks for all you do to educate folks and folks who don't know Amanda is a legend in the tech space.

And recently was on the better life podcast with Brennan Turner and has been on bigger pockets. You're just all over the place speaking and doing amazing podcasts and amazing things.  I encourage folks to just type Amanda Hahn in apple podcasts and you'll get some, some amazing episodes.

Like speaking of that, I've had some patients now who have come to the clinic and they're like, Hey, Dr. Schloe like I heard you just bought a new assisted living home. And I'm like, Oh, this is kind of interesting. They're definitely like Googling my name and finding out. It's led to some cool conversations actually.  I'm an air force doc, of course. And so it's been really cool to talk to like some younger airmen who, Have just gotten into the Air Force and talked about house hacking and using their VA loan and those sorts of things, but appointment times aren't long enough to just keep chatting about it.

It's been fun, but, really grateful to have you on the podcast. We've had folks reach out with a lot of questions and I tried to categorize them or try to like pick out the ones that we seem to get most frequently in terms of taxes.  I hate to put you on the spot, but figured if, you don't mind, we'd hit some of these cause they seem to be some tax questions that okay with you.

Amanda Han: So like rapid fire tax questions, right?

Dr. Alex Schloe: Yeah. I need to come up with something catchy like Brandon Turner for this segment of the podcast, but we'll just  go from . First question what are some things that investors or physician investors should be aware of when it comes to bonus depreciation in terms of their tax returns or future implications of taking that accelerated depreciation?

Amanda Han: Accelerated depreciation, bonus depreciation, those are just kind of some of  the pillar tax benefits of investing in real estate. The government allows us generally to write off rental property. If it's residential, we have to write it off over 27 and a half years, which is great in itself, where we can take the purchase price of the building and write it off over multiple years irrespective of how much down payment we have versus how much of the loan we're getting. So I love that about real estate is because that's sort of the epitome of how the law allows us to use leverage like other people's money, the bank's money to be able to take a tax deduction on a paper loss. The property is not losing money. I'm just writing off part of that purchase price. What's even better about regular depreciation is that we are actually allowed to take accelerated depreciation. That process typically is called cost segregation, and that's where you can hire a firm to come and take a look at the building that you bought and really break out the building into different components. And within those components, then we can take faster depreciation. So instead of waiting 27 and a half years, 39 years, we can write off more of them upfront, five years, seven years, 15 years. And some of the other ones we can even take bonus to write off.

Even more upfront.  It's kind of a crazy thing about just how we can take these paper losses and really manipulate it for lack of a better term to get more write offs sooner.  Really helpful for taxpayers who can actually utilize that benefit to offset taxes from their rental income or passive income.

We have doctors who invest in other businesses that are generally passive incomes of really, really helpful there. One of the inevitable things that we need to talk about is, well, what happens eventually when you sell the property? I'm taking all these write offs, so eventually when the property is sold, doesn't that mean I have to pay more in taxes? Because now I have nothing else to write off against it, or I have less to write off against it. And so for that reason, cost segregation, as amazing as it sounds, is not really for everyone. Part of the analysis that we do with investor clients is to say, what is your plan with respect to this property?

If my plan was to sell it next year or two years later, Then maybe we don't do cost segregation, cause we have to look at what is the cost and benefit. If I'm going to save taxes today just to pay more taxes six months from now, maybe it's not worth all the trouble. But if I'm going to keep my property for another three to five years, It could still make sense because I would rather pay less taxes now.

And then even if I have to pay back some of that savings three years from now, I've got three years to spend time with my money and have it grow. One of the things we'd look at is just more generational planning.  If you're like, Hey, out of my net worth, I want, 20 percent to be real estate.

Even if I were to sell this property, maybe I'll 1031 exchange into another property or an apartment building, then I have the potential to not even pay taxes on the sale, even though I've taken bonus depreciation or accelerated depreciation. That's sort of part of the game that wealthy people play, and I always want to tell clients these strategies are not just for the wealthy, it's actually for everybody too. There's nothing that says you have to make X million to use this. If you make 200, 000, you can use the same strategy.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Kind of the biggest pitfalls would be timeline or time horizon from cost seg it to selling the home.  In terms of writing it off.  I guess another question I would have would be, say, for example, you have a deal where you're getting for simplicity's sake, say a 10 percent equity stake in a property, but you're also getting a 10 percent promissory note. Could you write off the income from that promissory note with the depreciation that would come from the 10 percent equity stake.

Amanda Han: It really depends on how it's structured.  In a simplistic form maybe the question is, I have rental losses from depreciation that I created. And then I separately have interest income. Whether it's from the same  fund or just interest income from Bank of America  generally don't offset each other. Just like if I sold Apple stock or Tesla stock. Even if it's the same, those are different designations. That's the default rule, but, If your spouse qualifies real estate professional, then rental losses offset all different types of income, which then includes all this investment portfolio income too.

Dr. Alex Schloe: I'm sad to report that my wife, Stephanie still is not a real estate professional even after listening to the first episode.

Amanda Han: Like you said, if I invest in real estate, I have so many different options. I can buy my own properties. If I don't want to be so hands on, I can invest in a syndication.

A lot of times people think, my fund is involved in real estate. I'm gonna get all these tax benefits of real estate, but there is a very big difference between how the fund is investing. Let's say you had a assisted living fund and I invested in it and it's structure where I'm going to have rental losses because we own the building, then great. We're going to depreciation. But if you have an assisted living fund, but I am a lender to that fund. I'm investing in a note, there's no depreciation. So really important. We say it's a real estate investment, we have to look at is it ownership in real estate or is it lending secured by a property? Cause those are very different tax benefits.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Good to know.  We did start a fund kind of inadvertently, and it's set up where essentially the fund has equity. Also the operator that we partnered with is paying 10 percent on the money that was lent as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think since we still own and we'd still have those rental losses, we could use the depreciation from that ownership piece to pay or at least offset the income from the promissory note. If I'm understanding it correctly, since they're kind of still the same bucket or is that still fall of like that promissory note income is different  than the losses from the rental.

Amanda Han: In a normal scenario, your depreciation from the rental property will offset taxes from rental income.  That could be like, if a property is renting to the operator who's actually operating the assisted living, but if I am an investor in your deal, both as an equity owner and as a lender, then those are different.

Dr. Alex Schloe: I'm glad to have you on the podcast today, answer some of these questions selfish of me, but thank you.  Speaking of 1031, so we mentioned that briefly in the last one there. We've gotten some questions about kind of 1031 key considerations and pitfalls with 1031 exchanges.

I think folks have a good idea on what a 1031 exchange is but kind of some of those pitfalls or considerations for docs that might be beneficial.

Amanda Han: In terms of missteps, the first thing is we have to decide is whether we should do a 1031 exchange. I think people always talk about it like it's super wonderful and it is wonderful because we can sell something and not pay taxes and keep deferring. But oftentimes, especially for physicians who maybe are not real estate professionals, they have a lot of losses from previous years.

The first step is we want to know, do we even need a 1031 exchange. So I bought a property, I'm selling it for a gain. I think I'm selling it for the gain, but do I naturally already have other losses to offset that gain from passive losses? Or am I invested in some syndication or other deal where there's already losses coming through?

That's kind of taking a holistic picture. Like, sure, I might have gained on this transaction, but do I have other losses already built up where I can offset? If the answer is yes, maybe I don't even need a 1031 exchange. I would just sell outright. And then I would use the money to buy more real estate and get higher basis for depreciation on the new property. But assuming that we don't have other losses, we analyze everything and there's just going to be a big gain, then 1031 exchange is super helpful in terms of trying to allow us to defer the taxes.

In the traditional sense, if we're just selling a property and then buying another one people don't usually get in trouble with them. They're pretty simple to me in terms of the deadlines and the requirements and dollar amount. I think where we see people get in trouble is, If they sell a property and then they buy a replacement property with somebody else, like they kind of start partnering in the middle. Some missteps sometimes. It's like, I sold something, but my replacement is now 50 50 with you. And some of the numbers don't really work out as well because now we have to decide of that new property, how much is mine? How much is yours? So that's something we see a lot or inadvertently moving it. Like if I sold in Main Street, LLC, but I bought it in Fremont Street, LLC, sometimes that will violate a 1031 exchange.  Titling of how I sold and how I buy is also very important . This seemingly small thing could be a really big deal when it comes to taxes.

Dr. Alex Schloe: That's good to know. If, if someone had like say there was a 50, 50 partnership on a property and they want to continue that partnership, do a 1031 exchange into another property. Could they both 1031 together as long as the 50, 50 partnership stayed the same and the home was of equal or greater value .

 Amanda Han: Absolutely. And that's actually the requirement. Let's say that you have an LLC that's owned you and me 50 50. If we wanted to do 10 31, the LLC actually has to do it. So ABC LLC has to sell the property. ABCLLC has to buy the property and  allows both of us to defer the taxes.

The problem arises when Let's say you and I have different opinions. That's where it becomes very tricky because we have to kind of move in unison within LLC, we're like a married couple. I was just talking to a client earlier, so there are ways where we can part ways and you can 1031, I decide not to. It does involve a little bit longer approach to tax planning.  Typically for something like that, we need to start planning like a year or two ahead to say, how do we move the property out of the LLC so that we can 1031 exchange in a year or two or three years, but possible to do that.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Another piggyback question to that. If say you bought a short term rental per in your personal name, 10% down, you quit, claim that into an LC and then you want a 10 31 exchange. Would it still be similar, like, hey, that LLC, that's 10 31, exchanging the initially quick claimed short term rental would it still have to be into as the same LLC for the 10 31 exchange?

Or do you have to quick claim it back into your own personal name?.

Amanda Han: Great question. The role for 1031 exchange is that the person or entity who sells the real estate, the taxpayer who sells the real estate has to be the taxpayer who buys. Taxpayer usually is defined as well. How is it reported on the tax return? So in your example, if Amanda on the real estate, I put it in an LLC owned 100 percent by Amanda. It's kind of the same. It's just me and my wholly owned LLC. So, no problem there. Or if I bought in another LLC on 100 percent by Amanda again, that's all the same thing. But what we cannot do is to say, well, Amanda is moving into an entity where you and I both own now, then when we 1031, that's a little bit different because that's a different tax period than where I originally held it. It could be done, but those involve more time.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Sounds good. And then another question in regards to quit claim is implications for quit claiming from a personal name to an LLC, same owners, as you mentioned. People are always concerned about the due on sale clause. Is that something that needs to be of concern for what you can and can't say as CPA, or is that more so when you see it's like being quick claimed into other.

 Amanda Han: There's definitely a concern if we're talking about a true change in ownership. If it's just me and an entity owned a hundred percent by me, is that that big of a deal? I personally have not had any issues with that. I've not had any clients who've had issues with that, nor have I, Met investors. I know who have had issues. Having said that, is that like a real threat? I believe so, I mean, there is a do on sale clause. The question becomes what is the incentive for the bank to call a note to do if you're paying on time and you're a great customer? Years ago, Even two years ago, we're like, there is no incentive. We're fine. But now we can foreseeably think of an incentive, which is to increase your interest rate. That is a risk, but I've not really experienced or had any clients experience that. We have LLCs for asset protection purposes.

And so the question that needs to be answered is more likely to happen? Is it more likely that if I were to get sued or I'll get sued and then I'll lose my asset, so I would rather have an LLC, or is it more likely that the note will be called due, unsolicited? If I'm paying on time. I know there are attorneys who just don't recommend LLCs at all. Very far and few in between, but you know, most attorneys want it in an LLC . At the end of the day, I think for every investor, we just have to rely on our own attorney. I don't really care what Alex's attorney says. I care what my attorney says, because if I am sued. I'm calling my attorney. I'm not calling Alex's attorney. So I really don't like what he says.

Dr. Alex Schloe: You got to protect your assets. I've heard a good bit about that lately of like, Hey, does it really make sense to hold all these LLCs for like a 200, 000 house when you could just get an umbrella policy?

I do think doctors are probably at a higher risk of being sued. I think LLC and umbrella insurance maybe is a good idea. But I'm not an attorney sometimes I wish I was. For any patients listening to this minor fully in LLCs and well protected. So let's let's keep it that way. I'm going to get in trouble for this episode. We've hit on this a bit already, but what are some strategies that doctors can use to qualify their real estate investment activity as a business to offset more of their active income?

We talked a lot in the first episode about real estate professional status and the short term rental loophole. So definitely listen to those folks, but is there some other ways that are more common that you're seeing as well.

Amanda Han: At the end of the day, regardless of whether you're a real estate professional or not, or using the short term rental or not, our real estate losses always offset real estate income. And I think that's something very important because especially for a lot of physician clients, they're often told by their CPA like there's no tax benefit to investing in real estate.

You're a full time doctor. And so  when CPA say that they're just really taking a very tunnel vision look and really what they're saying is because you're not a real estate professional, you're not married to one. Your rental losses only offset passive income from real estate, not offsetting W 2. But the reality is when we have passive income it always offsets taxes. It's just a matter of timing. So if I buy a rental this year, I have some losses. I'm not a real estate professional. I'm a single doctor. Don't ever plan on quitting. Those losses will always offset my rental income next year, two years, 10 years from now. And let's say worst case scenario, I don't ever have that much income and I sell my property and I sell it at a loss. I'm not hoping, but let's say that was the case. Well, guess what? In that worst case scenario, when you sell a property, you can use all of those accumulated losses to offset your W 2 income. I just hate it when CPAs say there's no tax benefit to investing in real estate because it is the same exact benefit, the only difference is the timing of when I get to use it. Some people get to use it now if they have a nice spouse who could be a real estate professional or they can use the short term rental loophole, but if they're not, then they just get to use it down the road when they exit or when they're able to generate more income from it.

Dr. Alex Schloe: It makes a whole lot of sense. I originally reached out to you to, if we could touch base on retirement accounts and for real estate investing, but had those questions come up and figure that that'd be of benefit and really appreciate it.  I want to be respectful of your time, but also if that's okay, I wanted to talk a little bit about utilizing retirement accounts for real estate.  If you don't mind, is there a difference for folks who have self directed IRAs and self directed 401ks in terms of real estate investing or utilizing those for real estate.

Amanda Han: Whenever anyone is eligible for a self directed 401k, I always recommend that over the self directed IRA for a couple of reasons. In the self directed 401k, we can contribute more into it based on the same earnings because like any other 401k, we have employee and employer contribution.

If I was someone making 50, 000 low income income, or I just have my own medical business, then I can contribute more into the 401k than I could in an IRA. Also when we use that to invest in real estate, we are allowed to use leverage. We don't have to use all cash from our IRA to buy something. We can use cash from our IRA and a 401k as a down payment. And the retirement account can go out and obtain non recourse financing, like any other real estate loan.  You can find lenders who will lend.  If I've accumulated a hundred thousand dollars in my 401k or IRA, for example, I can use that as a down payment and buy a two, three, four hundred thousand dollar rental property in the retirement account.

Although it's allowed in both IRA and 401k, if you do it in the 401k, then you don't have to worry about UBIT taxes, which basically is assessed on all different types of IRAs when it borrows, but 401ks, you're allowed to borrow and use leverage to invest in it without that sort of hidden tax.  Those are kind of the main reasons if you're a physician that are eligible for one, I typically recommend that.

 Who's eligible for the 401k? If you have your own practice and obviously you can have a 401k, but if you work for someone else, they have a full time W 2 job and you have some locum income on the side so you do some amount of expert witness work or just regular local income, then you could also be eligible for a 401k.

Once you're eligible, you can now take your work for a one K potentially roll it over into self directed, or if you have IRA money from before, potentially you can roll it over into the solo 401k as well.  Way to use retirement money towards building more real estate.

Dr. Alex Schloe: The solo 401ks, does that have the same kind of prohibited transactions that a self directed IRA would

Amanda Han: Unfortunately it does. The rules are all the same with respect to what you can and cannot do. In both scenarios prohibited, meaning I cannot buy a property for myself, I cannot sell my property to my 401k or IRA. My kids can't live there. My parents can't live. There's just regular rental real estate, that's what we're talking about.

Dr. Alex Schloe: And you can still use that to invest in syndications or funds or any asset class in real estate and alternative investments, correct?

Amanda Han: One thing that we hear a lot. From our clients, it's like, okay, let's say that you just have a full time job. Now, as a doctor, you don't have any 1099 income. So you can't have a solo. But you wanted to invest in someone's syndication deal, most indications, as we know, have leverage. I'm not raising 100 percent . People are concerned, like, wow, well, then if I'm using my IRA to invest in syndication, am I going to pay UDFI taxes? Because now there's leverage my IRA.  The strategies is, you can still invest now if you want to fund it today, but in the next year or two, before there's taxable income from that asset in the fund.

If you can get some sort of 1099 income from locum income, you can open a solo 401k at that point in time. You can always roll over that asset. You can call the syndicator and say, Hey, I would like to retitle this asset for my IRA into my 401k. And then now in the future, you avoid that hidden tax issue .

Dr. Alex Schloe: I didn't know that. I got a couple of people I need to make sure to listen to this episode that just invested in a deal with us.

Amanda Han: I've talked to  you've got the better life event. I talked to a lot ve never heard about it because not that many CPA specialize in real estate and then self directed for real estate. So a lot of times they're like, oh my gosh, I did not know my IRA or Roth IRA, even like it's Roth. But it still would need to pay this UBIT tax if there's leverage. And again, simply earning 1099 income, rolling to a solo K, because you have that earned income, is really, really helpful to save a lot in taxes, especially if it's a syndication fund where you're expecting a lot, a high return in the future.

Dr. Alex Schloe: The UBIT tax, is that a certain percentage or is it based off like the amount of gain from the the deal?

Amanda Han: I believe it's about 37%. It's pretty high but it is on taxable income, not just gross rent. We do get to take depreciation. Let's say I have invested my IRA in your fund. I'll still get a K one that shows my natural depreciation. That's how I was saying the first couple of years, maybe I'm not concerned because I'll have a loss from the depreciation. But it's in the later years where like, okay, now we've used up the depreciation. I'm going to have taxable.  Whatever the taxable portion is we allocate it between cost versus debt.  If the property ,let's say it's a hundred dollars of income. This deal is 50 percent leverage now 50 of that is going to be subject to this tax. It's always a cost benefit analysis to when we look at, does it make sense to use IRA or cash for a specific investment or 401k?.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Are there specific events where you would recommend like, Hey, use your savings account money or cash instead of using your self directed IRA or 401k?

Amanda Han: Yeah, I'll give you a great example.  Let's say that I want to do a rental real estate. I also want to invest in notes. There's a two like common real estate routes. What we typically recommend is If you're going to make note investments, it's really good to use self directed IRA or self directed 401k. Reason being that when I'm a note investor, I mentioned earlier, we don't get depreciation, because I don't own a note holder. I'm a note holder. What am I writing off? There's nothing to write off. And interest income is taxed at your ordinary rate which is whatever your highest marginal rate is. So no write offs, no depreciation, high rate. I want that in a retirement account. Because that's tax deferred. If I'm buying rental real estate, if I am investing in a syndication, I would start with my cash. Like, non retirement money, because those come with tax benefits. Those are usually the order of preference. If it's like, hey, I need 50, 000 from both buckets for two different deals, that's how I typically prioritize it.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Are there any other like specific resources or tools that you recommend for folks who want to look more into kind of the tax strategies of this? Of course, your book is a great resource, but more specifically for like solo 401ks  or self directed IRAs or any specific resources.

Amanda Han: There's a lot of custodians who are in the self directed IRIS space. That's always a good place to start. A lot of them have really great educational content as well. Definitely talk to your own CPA regardless, because education is education, but how it applies to you is going to be very different. For a lot of physicians, whether it's like their own medical group or part of a big group, a lot of them have pension plans, defined benefit plans.  What a lot of people don't know is pension and defined benefit plans are by design self directed. Those actually a lot of times can be used for real estate.

We have clients older physicians who can fund a lot more into these plans. We have people who do two, three, 400, 000 into a defined benefit plan, take an immediate right off. And then the defined benefit plan and the 401k goes to invest in real estate. Very powerful way to save taxes. It's depending on like how much income you're making from there as well. So yeah, and that's the fun stuff. We get to look at how do we move money from here and buy real estate and then get more write offs and kind of cycle the money back and forth to build wealth and also get some tax savings too.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Thanks, Amanda. I know that there's going to be a lot of docs who are interested in working with Keystone CPA. Are you guys still taking clients or what's the best way for folks to reach out if they're interested.

Amanda Han: People always ask me, like, how much money do I make? Should I make to call you or how many rentals do I make? What I always tell people is it's not about how much money you make or how many rentals you currently own, but the ideal person to do tax planning is someone who's looking to scale or build wealth for us, at least through real estate. So even if you're someone making 100, 000, 100, 000, There's absolutely ways to reduce taxes using real estate. If someone making a million dollars your plan is to acquire more real estate. There's tax saving opportunities as well in the long run. It's not about where you are. It's about kind of where you want to be.  The best place to find us is Keystone CPA. You can just go there, schedule a discovery call with my team. My team is really good at talking to potential clients and kind of getting idea what the needs are and see if we can do it, cause there are some things that we don't do as well.  We do real estate. We have a lot of physicians and attorneys and even some CPAs. But, we don't do a lot in  manufacturing. We don't do a lot in restaurants. They're pretty good about knowing, okay, maybe this is not something we can help with, or if it's something we can help with, then yeah, very excited to help as many people as we can.

Dr. Alex Schloe: We'll be sure to put a link to Keystone CPA in the show notes for folks to reach out. Any big plans, anything big coming up here for you in the future?

Amanda Han: Oh gosh, big plans. I dunno. I have a lot of big plans, but, right now, we are just really working.  One of our biggest plans, or kind of a big goal of ours is really trying to simplify taxes for people. I was joking with a friend of mine the other day. Tax return filing is just such a task that nobody likes to do. It's ridiculous how like , if you work at a W2 job, your employer will upload a copy of your tax your W2 to your portal. You gotta go and download it, and then you have to upload it to my portal. Then I'll get it, I put on a return, then I upload it to another portal for you to sign. So then the IRS will then get that. I'm like, with AI and all the techno, there's gotta be a easier way where I can get the W2 from your employer. Give it to the IRS like there's gotta be an easy way, we take the client out of download upload download upload.  That's a big stretch goal of like, how do we solve this problem and get direct access. But yeah, that's kind of what we're working on.

Dr. Alex Schloe: We have equal to 4k wines and just like, everything because it gets so annoying. It's August 7th, I still haven't filed my taxes partly for that reason. That would be really cool to just have.

Amanda Han: CPAP was returned uploads it and now you got to download it then upload it for your investor Then they got uploaded then download it to their CPA.

Dr. Alex Schloe: It's a lot like the electronic medical record. It's just a lot of back and forth, back and forth and waste and so forth too. Hopefully in the future there'll just be one universal tax portal.

Amanda Han: My friend who does real estate taxes She and I were joking. We're like gosh, I wish somebody or some organization would just have all these records. And then we're like, well, it's the IRS. They have it all, but they don't give it to us.

Dr. Alex: It's crazy. Well thankful for people like you who can make such a complicated thing, more simple and something that even I can understand. I really appreciate it and thanks for your time. And you're all of our social media, is there a great way for folks to reach out to you on social media or to follow you?

Amanda Han: If  you can't handle a lot of tax information, but you still want some kind of like daily tax tips in bite sized chunks, the best place to find me is on Instagram as AmandaHanCPA I try to post like short snippets of tips every day but yeah, I'm also everywhere, LinkedIn YouTube. I just started spending more time on YouTube channel just for I have a lot of people who say, Oh, I love your Instagram, but I want more.

My YouTube channel again, Amanda Han CPA is a little bit more in depth.  If you can't handle an hour that you can handle like 10, 15 minutes on YouTube.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Amanda, thank you so much. I really appreciate you and appreciate your time. Thank you for coming on the physicians and properties podcast tonight.  Hopefully we'll do this again sometime for episode number three.

Amanda Han: Thanks for having me.

Dr. Alex Schloe: With that, it's been Amanda Han and Dr. Alex Schloe with another episode of the physicians and properties podcast signing off.

  Hey, real quick, if you're still listening to this, I'm assuming you got value from it. So I need your help specifically.  My two year vision with this podcast is to help 100, 000 physicians learn how investing in real estate can give you the freedom to practice medicine and live life how you want. There are two main ways that a podcast grows.

One is the ratings and reviews, and the other is word of mouth. If you can please leave me a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as well as send this to one to two friends. That you think would get value from it, we can reach the physicians that we want to reach. Thanks in advance and talk to you on the next episode.

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