Speaker 1: You know, we're following to get into a place where
it's a little bit consistent. Things are a little bit
the same as last year, you know, and then we're
going to add some sort of tax legislation that happens
this year, and it's just going to be a whole
bunch of change again. So the pace of change is
most definitely getting, is most definitely increasing. You've got state
and local governments that are always on the move, and
trying to keep track of that is a challenge.
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Speaker 3: And welcome you are listening to and watching the Financial
Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. Well, hey, it's
tax time again. You know, you think you finish your
taxes last year and you never think it's going to
happen again, and then boom, here we are. It's tax time.
A lot of changes happening at your least favorite three
letter agency in Washington, d C. That's for sure, But
it really doesn't matter because you have to manage your
finances properly, and you've got to you got to meet
these deadlines. The forum's got to be filed, the money's
got to be paid. It's that simple. But someone who's
an expert in this is Chris Prva Sean CPA and Chris,
it's great to have you on the show. So a
three pieces of advice, since we're coming up on April fifteenth,
what are you recommending to like, all of your businesses
that are your clients.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're coming up here as we're recording this
as March twenty six, right, So three piece of advice
would be number one, be organized, Be as organized as
you can because at this point we're at a very
tight turnaround. Be patient, everybody's everybody's crazy busy in the
tax world right now. And then the third piece of
advice would be looking out beyond April fifteenth. We know
that we're going to get some tax legislation this year.
We don't know exactly what that's going to look like,
but we do that we're going to get it probably,
so just kind of keep an eye out and see,
you know, what's happening, what's developing in Washington, and then
how that might impact your situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so what do you think, what kind of text
stuff you think is coming down the pike at US.
Speaker 1: I said, anybody's Yeah. I was on a webinar last
week with the as CPA. They do it a semi
monthly talent hall and kind of just let us know
what's going on in Washington and what they're what they're
paying attention to, and their message was basically nobody knows.
Some of the things that that I've heard are interesting, like,
you know, maybe we're not going to have tax for
individuals under that are making less than one hundred fifty
thousand dollars. That's interesting. How's I think going to play
in with tariffs? And you know, how the administration is
looking at actually raising revenue. That's interesting. The provisions that
are in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which we
had at the very end of twenty seventeen, it's like
effect in twenty eighteen, But what is actually going to
expire or what are they going to extend or what
are they going to replace? What's that going to look like?
That's all very interesting, especially when you get into tax
brackets and pasterentity tacks and things like that, which is
kind of near and dear to the hearts of my clients.
But you know, all of those things are interesting, and
what we're going to we're going to end up with
is anybody's guess. I would say at this point.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting because I live in Florida, you know,
which is considered one of the best managed states in
the country for what that's worth. And our governor says
he'd like to eliminate the property tax, and I mean,
you know, like, hey, we wouldn't want to get rid
of that. But the thing is, they got to get
money from someplace. The cops aren't working for free, the
streets aren't going to fix themselves, and you know, one
fire and the whole town will burned down. It's the
same thing with the federal government. Now, I happen to
have studied this tariff thing. Right now, we collect approximately
eighty billion dollars a year in tariffs. The effective tariff
rate is two percent, right, So if we multiply that
and made it five ten percent, all right, it would
go up to four hundred billion it's just not enough here.
Speaker 1: Something has Tenny's yet. Right, Yeah, it's a waterbed, right,
you got to you push one thing down, the other
side goes up. That sort of think, and you know, yeah,
how serious are they really about getting to some sort
of bounced budget reducing spending and that's where things what
number they actually have to get to? Like what does
all that mean? You know, it's it's an interesting kind
of time.
Speaker 3: Well, I finally believe that there's enough fat to cut
out of there to at least cut the deficit in half, right,
I think, so we have a numbercent economic growth, maybe
that's going to do it. But I think we've been
in a recession for a couple of years, and they
just redefined this recession last administration to fool everybody. So
you know there's a third a third and a third
third tariffs, a third government cuts, and a third economic growth.
You know, when you knock a million people out of
work or half a million, that's going to affect your
tax your tax collections, right, yeah, as.
Speaker 1: To it has to. You know, it's going to take
some period of time for those people to get reseated.
And you know, somewhere else in the economy, so where
they're being productive and gaining a wage and those sorts
of things, and that means paying tax too.
Speaker 3: Right. You know, we don't have to worry about the
businesses around those government offices closing down because they haven't
been showing up to work for four or five years anyway,
So those businesses have already closed. So that's really not
going to have any effect. Except maybe I wanted to
call it the newspaper stand, but we really don't. It's
not really a newspaper stand anymoreere is it. But that
guy who runs the little coffee bar in the building,
maybe he got hit. Maybe he's been hanging on praying
these people are coming back, and now they aren't coming back.
Speaker 1: Yep, one hundred percent. So it's an.
Speaker 3: Interesting phenomena here smoking mirrors.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I have a theory about the way they're going to
get rid of the thirty six trillion dollars, but we're
not going to go into that here. It's very ingenious.
I've written an article about it. You can go over
and look on Financial Survival Network dot com.
Speaker 1: But no doubt it's coming. Hey, So.
Speaker 3: Stay organized, keep all your numbers close, you know. Now
with the digital information, everything getting sent to you digitally.
It's it's a lot easier to keep track of your
info than ever before, isn't it. It is for those
who are technologically savvy.
Speaker 1: For sure. You've still got a segment of the population
who's not comfortable with things like tax organizers that are
digital client ortals, things like that. Certainly, interacting with the
irs in a digital way is theoretically easy, but in
practice difficult, I would say for a lot of folks.
But certainly the tools that we have at our at
our at our disposal are way better than they were,
you know, a decade ago or twenty years ago when
I've started to get into the business, you know, online
tax organizers, online tax software, all the all the good stuff.
It's certainly made it a lot easier. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So so like looking at this thing, you know, uh,
it's definitely easier, but there's definitely more stuff than they
want than ever before, right.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah, it's it's it's not getting any
it's not getting any less complicated, and in fact, it's
just getting more complicated. You had a lot of a
lot of folks in our profession. We're talking about that
around twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, when the Tax Cuts and
Jobs That came into effect. Right on the heels of that,
we had everything that related to COVID and all of
the stimulus, and you know, all the accounts were certainly
involved in that. So that's just more complexity and more
to deal with. And then you had, you know, things
like you know, the states how they're dealing with some
of the provisions and passives or some of the state
and local tax provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
And now we're you know, we're finally to get into
a place where it's a little bit consistent. Things are
a little bit the same as last year, you know,
and then we're going to have some sort of tax
legislation that happens this year, and it's just going to
be a whole bunch of change again. So the pace
of change is most definitely getting is most definitely increasing.
You've got state and local governments that are you know,
always on the move, and trying to keep track of
that is a challenge. You know, it's just the it's
just layered complexity that's just getting worse as we go through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, maybe nobody's really talking about simplification though, are they, Chris, No,
not really.
Speaker 1: You know, I think probably the biggest hint at simplification
that we've seen so far is, hey, we're not going
to have anybody who earns less than Harvey two thousand
dollars pay tax. But you still, you still get into
all these duridic questions around well what does that mean?
Does that mean they're not going to have to file
a tax return? Is that What is that going to
mean from a state perspective? Are they going to be
filing a federal or not following a federal or term
but following state returns? Is it actually going to make
it easier in practice? Be hard to say, but nobody's really.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the future is always uncertain, right for sure?
I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody's really seriously come up with a
simplification package that has gotten a lot of trackage fraction
that I've seen yet.
Speaker 3: No doubt, no doubt.
Speaker 1: So all right, Uh well, hey tell us.
Speaker 3: Where we find you, how we connect with you on
the web and uh in and then your social media
contact whatever?
Speaker 1: Sure? Yeah, best best pace to find us is on
our website, better numbers dot cp A and You can
find me on Twitter mostly on social uh chray service
on and you can also find me on LinkedIn at
per service on.
Speaker 3: Excellent well links. In the show notes this interview on
Financial Survival Network dot com. Appreciate you coming on, Chris,
and a happy tax season and I'm sure you'll be
happy when it's all over.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, absolutely, Thanks Gerry, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your
solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to
Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,