Own the Outcome with Tyler Deveraux

Use Taxes to Your Advantage with Amanda Han

• Season 2

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Discover the transformative power of tax strategies with Amanda Han from Keystone CPA, as she leads us through her fascinating career shift from a big four accounting firm to launching her own venture during the 2008 financial crisis. Amanda's journey is a testament to resilience and adaptability, shedding light on the dual nature of taxes—both as a burden and a tool for growth when wielded with knowledge.

 She offers a wealth of knowledge on how commitment to goals and strategic tax planning can empower real estate investors, especially during challenging market conditions. Tune into today's episode and be inspired to take control of your financial well-being through informed tax strategies.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. If this podcast has brought a smile to your face or sparked some new ideas, I'd love to hear from you! Leaving a review would mean the world to me. Appreciate you!

Connect with Tyler on Instagram: @tyler_deveraux

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Speaker 1:

All right, aloha and welcome to the Only Outcome podcast. My name is Tyler Devereaux, and today we got Amanda Hahn, and we are excited to have her on here, because taxes are the sexiest thing in the world when it comes to real estate investing right. Isn't that the case? To real estate investing right, isn't that the case?

Speaker 2:

That is the message we're trying to spread.

Speaker 1:

Yes, it could be sexy and powerful if you know how to use it to your advantage. That's the opening tagline. I think that's exactly so true, right? It's a double-edged sword it can be beautiful or, if you don't use it to your advantage, it can also be not so beautiful. So first, amanda, thank you so much for taking the time to be on here. I'm so excited to get an opportunity to interview you and I really do want to get into like the nitty gritty, but I want to hear a little bit, like I'd like to start with, some of the background. So give me a little bit about your background and then I would love to get into some of the nitty gritty on how we can take advantage of well you and what you offer and everything that you provide.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love the honesty. So, yeah, so, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Amanda Han, my firm is called Keystone CPA and we specialize in helping real estate investors nationwide on how to use real estate to pay less tax effectively, estate investors nationwide on how to use real estate to pay less tax effectively. And so, like most people, many of you I am a CPA by day and I'm also a real estate investor myself. So I say I'm a real estate investor by night. That's sort of my night job.

Speaker 2:

And how I got into this profession was I actually started out my career at one of the big four public accounting firms and I happened to be in the real estate specialty group and in those large firms we work with, you know, like the largest builders, private equity real estate folks. And when my husband and I started investing in real estate ourselves, you know, we started going to meetups and conferences and we started meeting everyday investors, just like most of you, and that was when we first realized that a lot of the concept of tax planning and using taxes as a tool to grow wealth was something virtually unknown to everyday investors and only, like you know, the very, very large, super wealthy clients had access to that, so kind of started our passion project where we would, just, you know, start chatting with regular investors at meetups and sharing tax strategies, and so that kind of was the gosh, the impetus for starting our firm to really try to help everyday investors use some of those same tax strategies.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I didn't know this. The founder story, like the starting story. I love that. That's your journey that you took. I think that's amazing. So you and you started in. Was it 2008? When did you start your firm again?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, About back around 2008. And I know for those of you who are old enough to have been around in 2008, it was kind of the start or the heat, of the last real estate market crash. And yeah, funny story it was I got pregnant around that time. We started our firm and then the real estate market crashed. So you imagine someone two people who quit their job, start a firm helping with real estate investors when the market was crashing. It was very, very scary for us. But looking back now, you know, I think we learned so much and I wouldn't have done it any differently.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, I can't even imagine that time frame. Those are three big, major you know experiences or events. So tell me this you know that before we get into the tax stuff, maybe we just even leave with this, because you know the title of the podcast is only outcome podcast and I would imagine that those three things any one of those things in and of itself is big, but how did you own the outcome? Did you experience challenges during that time and how did you own the outcome regardless?

Speaker 2:

Oh man, you know so many challenges, I think, going from a nice corporate job in one of the big four accounting firms, we had people who did everything, you know, we had the mailman, we had the supertaries, we had, you know, file people there's. You know, call somebody and you get things done. When we started our own firm, it was my husband and I were like, well, who's going to the post office? You know who's going to go scrub the toilet in the office building, and so, yeah, definitely a learning curve, like how to wear many hats and do it all.

Speaker 2:

I think about owning the outcome, you know. I mean, part of our thought process at the time was did we make a wrong decision? You know, do we really want to focus in real estate? It was really seemed nice to have that consistent corporate job paycheck that we were now missing. But I think one of the things that we did was, you know, we decided that we really wanted to make an impact on our clients, you know, and we didn't really feel we received that working in the big firms with, like, large corporations, and so we stuck to our grounds.

Speaker 2:

We really had to pivot At the time. It wasn't about saving our clients taxes because no one was paying taxes when there was a bunch of foreclosures and losing money. It was really a lot about how do we help our clients to reposition what they were doing in real estate and take advantage of the down market. So I think you know, for us, owning the outcome is just being able to commit to what your goal is and also being able to pivot so that when there are shifts in life or in business, that you continue down the path that you started on.

Speaker 1:

I love, love that definition. Stick to what the goal is and then being able to pivot, you know, despite the challenge, you get to the outcome. That's literally that's how I view it for sure. It's the goal doesn't change, the target doesn't change, it gets bigger, it gets better, you know. But it's like you don't just lower things down, you, you grow and you do that by being flexible, you know, with your approach. So I love that. And you guys wrote a book. So you wrote a book tax strategies for savvy real estate investors. When did you, when did you publish the book, by the way?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's been a couple of years now. So we actually wrote two books. The first one was tax strategies for the savvy investor, a real estate investor, and then we wrote an advanced version of it, you know, for people who kind of already knew the basics and yeah, it's been really well received. For any of you who want to check it out, you can buy it on Amazon or bigger pockets. I promise you it's not what you think. I know people are like why I'm not going to read a tax book, but I have had people on social media send me pictures of them reading on vacation, reading on a beach, reading by the pool. There's very little math. There's very little code sections about taxes. It's a lot of client stories about what you can do to save taxes effectively and then also some nightmare stories about what happens when you don't do planning or you do the wrong kind of planning when it comes to real estate.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and go look it up. We'll put all the links and everything in here. And, first off, those of y'all who don't follow Amanda and haven't read the book you're gonna go follow Amanda and you're gonna read the book and we're gonna talk about some of it here, but if you go read the reviews, your reviews are awesome and a lot of them are like man, you made it. You took this big, complex topic and you're able to simplify it and I think that that is a massive skillset and so valuable. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I still struggle with that every day. You know we were talking about like what are some of my challenges? Because it's difficult for, I think, most CPAs including myself to take some of these very heavy and boring topics but to simplify it in a manner where you know someone who's not a CPA could understand it and also be entertaining enough where people you know want to consume it. So I spend a lot of time on social media Instagram, youtube and I'm always monitoring, like okay, I did a post here.

Speaker 2:

Did anybody like it. Do they know what I'm saying? I try to tweak it all the time because I just never know if something is, you know, well received by the audience in terms of like learning. Did I actually learn something, or just over my head, that's?

Speaker 1:

so that's so big though. So that was literally going to be one of my questions is how do you, how do you gauge it? Because the more that you know, the more disconnected sometimes that you get. So are you looking at stats? Are you looking at feedback? Are you looking at? What are you looking at there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think one of the things we do is I try to internally, we explain it to some of our team members who are not on the tax side.

Speaker 2:

So I feel like, hey, you know, if you don't know much about taxes and I'm telling something to you, does it kind of make sense. I'm a big believer of just providing enough information for someone to take action, and I think that's what a lot of CPAs get caught up on is telling you like the rules and the laws and the calculation and the regulations. But the reality is most investors don't need to know any of that stuff. They just need to know what is it that I should be doing? What do you want me to do? What do you want me to track? How do you want me to do things? Where should I pay these expenses from? And then the CPA was actually going to do the rest of that heavy lifting, right? How do we calculate this or that, you know? So, I think, just really targeting the message just specifically to what does the investor need to do, and I think that simplifies, you know, maybe 80, 90% of the unnecessary technical jargon that we see too often.

Speaker 1:

See that's so good. That's why I told you before we got on the call that Nico raves about your content. And she raves about your content because of exactly what you just said. Because that's like so many people want to get on social media and they want to make it look well. They want to show how smart they are right. So it's like they complicate it to show how smart they are right. So it's like they complicate it to show how smart they are, somebody who really knows that.

Speaker 1:

The only way that you can really simplify it is if you really know it and you understand what your goal is. Your goal is to educate enough to be able to get them to take action. Like that little piece of gold is huge. What is up? Y'all Listen, if this podcast has brought joy or value at some point as you're listening to it, we would love it if you would be so kind as to leave us a review down below. That is how we keep this thing moving and finding individuals just like you to pour value into. Now let's get back to the show. And this isn't a social media. You know this isn't where I wanted to go with this, but I didn't know you had a second book. What's the title of your second book, by the way?

Speaker 2:

It's a book on advanced tax strategies and it's also for real estate investors, so it just gets into more about the 1031 exchange, like what we see go wrong. I feel like in our advanced book we have a little bit more of the what could go wrong kind of stories, right? Because, like you said, as you know more, you get more advanced and you're like, oh, here are all the things that could go wrong yes but yeah, but I, you know both.

Speaker 2:

both books have been pretty well received and it's funny. You know what you mentioned earlier. The reason that my husband and I wrote the books was because we were on a cruise ship and back then Internet was very expensive on cruise ships and so we didn't have Internet and we brought a bunch of textbooks to read because that's what accountants do we read textbooks on vacation and I just found myself really bored in reading the books, you know. And so I thought you know, if I can't read these kinds of books, how could any non-CPA get anything out of it? And so I thought you know, I'm going to write something that just like non-CPAs will be able to do. So yeah, that was kind of the the impetus for like, why write a book? Why does? Who cares?

Speaker 1:

Good for you, man, and so many people are so glad that you did. You know, like you have a skill set. Once again, you have a skill set, and you have a skill set because you actually care about who the person is, and I know that just from literally what you said. Man, if I feel like this, you guys have to feel like this. Let me actually, you know, change the narrative here, make it a little bit different. So I got to go.

Speaker 1:

So I gotta go check out your second book. I don't know how I, how I didn't know that side. That's the book that I probably need to read for sure. So I'm gonna go dive into that, but I'm gonna ask some questions. This is this is gonna come out um, probably, we'll definitely queue for probably end of october or so is when this one will air.

Speaker 1:

So year-end tax planning and if you're it was a lot of the, the listeners are multiamily investors, both on the passive side of the active side, and I would imagine that you have some clients that are make your life a lot easier and make their life a lot easier by what they do to plan now for the tax year, and others who do not, and I have been on both those sides, I know that for sure. So I would love to get your advice and get into some of the nitty gritty details of if you're talking to an investor. They own multifamily properties. Maybe they're a passive investor, active investor. Either way, what are some things that you tell them on how they can plan and set themselves up for success for the?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, when we talk about saving on taxes, the one main thing to do is to do tax planning. You know, that's really the one major difference between someone who pays a lot in taxes and someone who pays less taxes and planning. You know, sometimes people think that's like a very, you know, advanced, difficult thing to do like I've talk to my CPA forever and ever. But it's actually very, very simple. It's actually just a conversation that you have with your tax person where you talk about what you've already done this year and, more importantly, what do you plan to do for the rest of this year and maybe even into next year, right, because now we're kind of towards the end of the year. So, and in those conversations about what you are doing and plan to do is where your CPA can then chime in with okay, here are the tax opportunities that I see if you do things a certain way. Or here are some tax pitfalls, right, if you continue down this path, here's what we expect for you to have to pay in taxes for next April, and so the earlier in the year you do planning, the better it is, because you figure in January you have unlimited options, right? How am I going to operate this year? Am I going to keep my job? Am I going to go, maybe go down part-time a little bit? Am I going to invest passively? Do I want to generate other types of passive income? Right, am I going to keep my multifamily or trade up in a 1031? There's so many options and then you know midway through the year we still like, oh, there's still some time, we can make some major changes. Year-end planning that happens now in the fourth quarter is what we consider like the most important time, because this is kind of like in the next couple months this is it when our numbers end on December 31st is going to determine how much or how little taxes we pay. So in the next couple of months we could still do certain things to potentially reduce our taxes, right, whether that's putting more properties in service or do a refi instead of selling a property. Right, delaying the sale of a property until January so we can defer some taxes.

Speaker 2:

Or this time of the year we look a lot at income shifting and expense shifting. Income shifting I just mentioned like I have a large income let's say it's commissions or real estate gain If I defer the closing by even one day from December 31st to January 1st of next year, I delay the taxes for a whole entire year, and not only does that defer the tax, but it gives me a whole year to plan for how I'm going to offset some of those taxes right? And then the reverse is true. When we talk about expenses, you know, at year end we typically like to look at accelerating expenses. So, and that's as simple as you know taking a look at what are my recurring expenses in January, february or March of next year and figuring out whether it makes sense for me to charge those on my credit card or pay those before the end of the year so I can accelerate more write-offs if I'm considering your, if I'm anticipating a larger tax bill for this year, Okay, okay.

Speaker 1:

So so how early? You said, the earlier that you plan, the better, and then you have, you know your year-end tax plan, but how early are you? Would you suggest that they have? You know the conversation with their CPA.

Speaker 2:

You know, I think the conversation so there's, there's a couple of different things. Okay, the right now, like the, we're doing year-end planning for 2024, but we're also planning for 2025, right Cause, you know, if I was, if you're my client, I'd already want to know, like, what do you? You know what's your goal for 2025? What are you thinking right? Are we going to do syndications? Are we going to have our own? More multifamily? Because I kind of want to get an idea already a year ahead, like this. Those are the things that you're working towards and we can already start thinking about. What are some of the strategies associated with it.

Speaker 2:

How frequently should you talk to your CPA? What I typically tell people is as frequently as necessary. I know some CPAs have, like monthly or quarterly meetings. I find those to be less effective. Why? Because our clients move at different paces. So you might be in a scenario where we have to talk five times this week because you're in the middle of a transaction and there's so much going on, right. Or there might be two months where everything is status quo, there's not much going on and we don't really have much to talk about. So, from the investor again, what do you have to do as an investor is really knowing what are the times when I should call or email my CPA. Right, that's really all you have to do. You have to just have that line of communication to prompt them like, hey, something's happening. You have to just have that line of communication to prompt them like, hey, something's happening, and then you have a really good discussion about what are the tax opportunities associated with whatever is upcoming.

Speaker 1:

What do you think that they should notify them of? Right, so like OK, so this thing's coming down the pipeline, Maybe it's something I should notify my accountant. What are those things like? What are those events that you're like hey, you should have told me that that was going on.

Speaker 2:

You shouldn't tell me you were going to do that. Yeah, I mean there's so many but the um. We have a list for our clients. I went to call us. Uh, but the major ones you know.

Speaker 2:

Obviously, acquisitions, right, acquisition If I'm buying properties, which entity should be in? If I have partners, that's a little bit more complicated. We need to know what's the best entity for you to have your share Exits. Any kind of sale, refinance, those are big ones. If you're selling, we want to calculate the gain to see if there should be a 1031 exchange or not. If you're doing a refi, we'd want to know what do you use the refi proceeds for? How can we make sure we can deduct the future interest on that? So, yeah, I mean basically anything involved with the real estate itself.

Speaker 2:

Specifically, I think, outside of real estate, big income changes like hey, I have some stock options that's vesting this year, I'm going to have a large gain If I'm selling stocks for a large gain, those are any kind of major financial moves. I think is always a good time. And again, when I say contact your CPA, I don't mean you have to sit with them, bring all your paperwork, talk to them for an hour. For a lot of our clients it's just like a two sentence email. You know, hey, amanda, I just looked at my income, projected to be $200,000 more than last year. What do you think? And from there we can say, oh, what about retirement accounts? What about pre-paying the expenses? Right? So, just on your end as an investor, it's a very quick update on hey, here's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 1:

Good, that list is great. I love that you provide a list. I don't think any of my CPAs have ever provided me a list of those things which that really is.

Speaker 2:

Don't get me wrong. I said I provided a list. I didn't say all the clients read the list, but my clients were probably like hey, where's that list?

Speaker 1:

I love it. That could very much be the case, but you know they're like no, we provide you the list, bro, you never looked. That could very much be the case. So what's, what's one of the biggest mistakes that you've seen in investment? And first I'll backtrack. You have clients, obviously real estate investors. What kind of real estate, before I ask the biggest mistake what kind of real estate assets do your clients own?

Speaker 2:

Great question. So our clients kind of run the whole spectrum of real estate. I would say 99% of our clients are real estate investors. Now the involvement and the type is very diverse. So on the, you know, on the, I guess, more beginner end, we have clients who are just passive investors. So they're a high income W-2, you know, physician, attorney, even other CPAs who maybe have a full-time job or business but investing passively in real estate on the side.

Speaker 2:

So multifamily syndications, mobile home parks, you know all types of passive investments we have. You know, people who have rentals of their own single families, duplex, small multifamilies scaling up slowly over time all the way up to clients who are probably some of the largest syndicators that you hear today in you know, self storage, mobile home parks, multifamily, where they, you know, run the syndications. They have the property management company, so kind of that whole spectrum. We also have a lot of people who do short-term rentals and midterm rentals and wholesale yeah, I mean creative financing, I think anything real estate related. We probably have a client or two who's doing that type of stuff.

Speaker 1:

Nice, yeah, that is a whole gamut. How big is your firm now?

Speaker 2:

So, gosh, it's ever changing. So right now we have about 20 people in our firm. We're just making an offer on another tax manager to come in, so, fingers crossed, it'll be growing by the time this episode comes out.

Speaker 1:

Good for you. That's awesome, that growth is awesome. Okay, so I was going to ask you the biggest mistake that you've seen an investor make, one that you were like, damn, that could have went a whole different way.

Speaker 2:

Gosh. Okay, so I'll share the biggest mistake and I'll share the most common mistake. I think a big mistake that's very costly I see people make is with respect to entity structuring, where people hold rental real estate in corporations, whether that's S Corp or C Corporation, and the reason that is a very costly mistake is because it's very expensive and sometimes impossible to unwind. Because it's very expensive and sometimes impossible to unwind. So you know, I can talk for a whole hour about why you shouldn't hold rentals in S-Corps, but high level. If you have a rental property in an S-Corporation, a lot of times your ability to use the losses are very, very limited and that's simply because of how corporate rules for taxes are different than like regular LLCs and partnerships. So if you're someone who is like, how should I hold my rental properties? I don't care if it's single family or apartments, we almost never want to hold that in corporations of any kind. It's going to be in like an LLC or a partnership.

Speaker 2:

Most common mistake I see, whether it's a newer investor or by some of the largest syndicator clients I have is not understanding what are the legitimate tax write-offs. I think we all talk about write-offs and stuff like it's super simple, you know, but I think the reality still is people just don't know. They just don't know, like, what can I write off? You know, if I'm buying this, can I deduct it? If I'm going on a trip, can I write this off? I'm having a dinner with Tyler. Is it a business deduction? So I think a really great tip is that if you're spending money on something, ask yourself is this something that would be necessary for a real estate investor and is it something that's ordinary, Like an ordinary person investing in real estate or mobile home parks or apartments? Is that something that's probably pretty common for them to have these types of expenses? And if so, make sure you pay with a company card, make sure you track the expenses.

Speaker 2:

You will inevitably come across times when you don't know. You're like I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it's not, I don't know. Well, that's what your tax person is there for, right? That's an example of email them like, hey, I'm going to go on this trip with Tyler and some friends and we're going to do some real estate. We're also going to have some fun. Is that a tax deduction or how can it be a tax deduction? What needs to happen for me to write it off?

Speaker 1:

Great question, yeah, what needs to happen for me to make that happen? Yeah, that's a great question. You know the legitimate tax write-offs I had. You want to hear a horror story of mine? Good, I had a tax matters partner, so so a partner that handled, handled the tax matters right For the business. And uh, then that partner left and we found lots of gaps, lots of errors. Long story short, he was writing off things that he definitely should not have written off, nor should the CPA have ever. They should have never allowed that to happen and got hit with a $35 million dollar tax bill 3.5. That one hurt badly, that one stung badly. And I will tell you that ignorance because I allowed myself to be ignorant, and ignorance is not bliss ignorance is painful, especially when it comes to the IRS, because, if you like, that's not when you're like well, listen, you know, hey, I got you, I'll just pay you later. Like no, you want to dive into that now, right, challenging man, yeah.

Speaker 1:

That was a challenging one, some of the best learning lessons ever and hopefully, hopefully, somebody listens to this podcast and they partner up with you so that they do not make those mistakes and that you can guide them in the direction. Because that's what's crazy. Like some of the stuff that was pushed through, amanda, you would die. You would have died Like you would have died Knowing what you know. You would have died Like the accountant should have never put that through.

Speaker 2:

But they did. I'm so curious. Maybe you can share with me offline what some of those things are. But I think you're right. You know a lot of them you were mentioning. Ignorance is bliss right. I think a lot of people take the approach that I have a CPA so they handle all of my stuff.

Speaker 2:

And so two things that wrong with that right, like people say. Well, why do I need to talk to Amanda? My CPA is already doing planning for me. But the reality is, if you are not having planning meetings with them, they're not doing planning for you. You know, there's no way they don't know what's going on. Until next April there was no planning done.

Speaker 2:

And if you don't do planning but you still save a lot in taxes. Odds are some kind of some of these kind of wacky stuff is happening, right, Because if we didn't do the right things, how do I save that on taxes? Well, you're writing off things maybe you shouldn't have. You're saying you did things that maybe you didn't do and that's where you get in. You know could get into a lot of trouble that one and that's literally that.

Speaker 1:

That was it. That's literally exactly. You just nailed it. That's exactly it huge. So, like you know, having the right person and one of the things that you know challenged people to do. They noticed the question that I asked of, like, what kind of clients do you have? You, you need to identify what kind of clients do they have, because that was another thing. They didn't have that that accountant didn't have clients that owned assets and businesses like we had, so it was really just out of his, out of the league, you know, swimming in the wrong pool essentially, which is our fault, you know, for allowing that to happen.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's funny because people always ask me like you know, how do I know if I have the right CPA? I tell people when you, a lot of times when people interview CPAs, they'll ask like, do you have clients who do real estate? And 10 times out of 10, the answer is yes, you know, and they could be, because they have one client who owns a single family home or house hacking or something. So I think a better question is the one you asked is like you know what kind of clients do you have? Or when I tell people to ask is like, what are your successful clients doing today in real estate? Because I think it makes them define who they think is a successful investor and it gives you insight. If my successful client is doing a billion dollars in real estate, then you kind of get an idea of what is that profile. If I say my successful client just bought a duplex, then that's like okay, that's kind of the top of my real estate experience.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great question. I'm literally writing it down out of here. That's a phenomenal question. That really is like a great question because it's a great way to and, by the way, the first question that you asked is the question that we had asked Because I remember I was on that first call with that which is do you have clients that own real estate.

Speaker 1:

Yes, cool, yeah, that's a on that first call with that, which is, do you have clients that own real estate? Yes, cool, yep, that's a great question. I love that question that you just that you just put. Okay, so you have this whole gamut of different investors that you work with the different asset classes and you kind of you spread through it. Is there an asset, so it's a high net worth individual? Is there an asset class that you would say you would gear or steer people towards or away from? Well, let me ask you the question what is your most successful clients? What are they doing in real?

Speaker 2:

estate turning the tables huh there we go.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think you know and I thought about this too like what, what is like a common thread amongst my real estate clients that are super successful in real estate, and I think the common thread is, I mean, most of them do some type of syndication, right.

Speaker 2:

So they all own their own properties too. It's kind of the starting ground, right. So have a couple of those have their own, maybe multifamilies, those have their own, maybe multifamilies. And then I think most of them also have some kind of syndication. Because I feel like at some point when you scale, you got to scale beyond just you and your network, so you're going into the money raising world with syndications. But another profile that's also common for these clients is they also have a business that is complementary to their real estate portfolio, whether it is an education company or social media company that funnels people then into the real estate side, or it is like a successful property management company that somehow finds the deals of other distressed apartment owners to then buy that then. So, um, it's always like some kind of business related real estate business that associates that's associated with, like the real estate and the real estate syndication yeah, that is, and that's that's exactly what we've been able to do, and it's crazy because they're vertical streams, right.

Speaker 1:

So they, they feed each other, right. So I have an investment company that's like the bread and butter, like that's the wealth creating vehicle, but I have an education company and then subsets of that education company that feed into and it's a great circle or cycle, right? Yeah? Yes, yes, so you are a great example yeah so those but it really, really is like those things took off like it's. It really does help a ton and it's.

Speaker 2:

I'm grateful that I learned that side of things, because before that it was dude you could, just it was a slower scale, you know yeah, and I think a lot of that, too, comes just from like naturally, if you are doing the day-to-day of real estate investing, it's natural for people to gravitate towards you to want to learn what you do. And then you know it leads into some sort of education, educational platform, right? So I feel like it's. Nobody starts out like, oh, I'm going to make a course and teach people. It's always just like I keep getting asked these questions, so I might as well just create something so we can help more people that is 110%.

Speaker 1:

How it works like, that is exactly it still to this day, like these questions that I get asked on the, you know, the multi-family side or business side or whatever it is, instead of answering it, you know, on one-offs, I literally I just create a like a whole outline, a whole training, and put it together and it's beautiful on all fronts. You know, yeah, I love it. Okay, who's your, who's your ideal client? Like, and I know I want to be, I want to be, um, that respects of your time as well. You saw that the time. But who is your ideal client? Who is somebody who listened to this? Who was that person You're like? Yeah, this person should reach out.

Speaker 2:

You know, it's really interesting because a lot of times people ask me how much money do I have to make to hire you or to do tax planning? Right, is there like a minimum net worth or income where it makes sense to do tax planning? And what I always tell people is it's not about how much money you make right now, it's not about how many rentals you own right now. It's more about what is your plan. You know, what do you? Where do you plan to go with your real estate? So you could be someone making a hundred thousand dollars with your very first rental property. There are ways to save a good amount of taxes on income this year. Or you can be someone who makes $2 million of W-2 income.

Speaker 2:

If you don't ever want to do real estate, you just want to spend all the money that you make, then it's not a good fit for us because there's not much we can do from a planning perspective being, you know, real estate CPAs right. So the ideal client for us is someone who is looking to scale, looking to grow their real estate and their business, because it's in that growth and the scaling where opportunities for planning and tax savings will appear. So I just encourage people, because I think a lot of people get scared of the word tax planning and CPA because it sounds very expensive, you know, and sometimes it could be expensive, but you have to look at it in terms of you know, is this really something I want to do If I'm going to build a real estate portfolio?

Speaker 2:

it's no secret that tax law favors real estate investors. We all know that.

Speaker 1:

Now it's just knowing what do we have to do to actually take advantage of them and do it legally? What a great answer. I love your answer where it's not about what you're making currently, it's what are you planning to do? That's a phenomenal answer because it's in line with what you do, which is planning, tax planning. But it's like, but you think about it, so many people come in too late. It's like they do these things and then they come in and switch, you know, switch up or start to plan, and it's like, man, they've missed some opportunity. If you already know you're going to go, do it well, prepare and get weaponized. That's a beautiful answer. I love that answer.

Speaker 2:

What's the best way for people to get ahold of you, by the way? Well, my firm is called Keystone CPA, so you can go to keystonecpacom. I have a lot of great free resources. If you're someone who is wondering if you're overpaying in taxes because I know a lot of people are like am I overpaying in taxes we have created a tax risk assessment you can find on our website. You just download it. It's a series of I think, 15 questions and at the end of it you get a score and you can see how well you score. If you score well, great, you're ahead of most investors we meet. If you score low, you can actually just print it out and you can use that as a starting or discussion point the next time you meet with your tax advisor to see, like hey, here are the places I scored lower on. If you're looking for daily tax tips, the best place to find me is on Instagram as Amanda Han CPA. If you're looking for, like, more in-depth tax content, youtube is probably the best as Amanda Han CPA also.

Speaker 1:

Love it, love it. We'll put all those links and everything in the notes and I love the cause. When you're talking about paying too much in tech, you're not talking about, you know, like what they pay their account. You're talking about what they're paying the government in taxes, correct?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Taxes is our biggest expense. If you really look at how much we paid, you know federal state payroll tax, sales tax, property tax. It adds up.

Speaker 1:

It totally does, but it's one that I've just realized far few people, or far too many people, do not actually take the time to learn and capitalize on how to reduce that expense. They just don't do it. They just don't take the time, and I think it's because of what you said. It's overwhelming, it's intimidating, whatever. But man, our job is to create wealth for our families now and security now, and that's a way to be able to do it. That's wealth creation 101, pay as little as humanly possible in taxes, the right way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's like Robert Kiyosaki said it's not about how much money you make, it's about how much of it you actually get to keep Right. So that's why we think taxes are sexy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's it A full circle the sexiest topic out there period, no question. I love it. Amanda, thank you so much for taking the time to jump on, for your wealth of knowledge and being willing to share that on YouTube, on Instagram and resources that you have like. Very, very grateful for that and, once again, I'm very grateful that we were able to get connected and I will make sure that all the, all the links and everything are in the show notes and all y'all out there, go get the books, go, go utilize the resources, go connect with Amanda and Keystone, her firm, and pay less taxes so you can understand why we understand why this is so sexy. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Hey, share this episode. Live always with Aloha Peace.