I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert.

You don't need a dictionary to understand.

It's time for some money rehab. It is almost tax day. Are you ready, money rehabbers?

Well, ready or not, here they come.

And to help you prep today, I'm talking to Lauralynn Wilson, CPA extraordinaire, all about her best tax tips. I had Laurelin on the pod around this time last year, and I was so shocked that she could make tax talk. Super not painful. So I brought her back this year to talk about what's new for 2024 and how to get the most back on your refund. Let's take a deep breath and talk taxes. Laurelynn Wilson, welcome back to Money Rehab.

Hi.

Thank you so much for having me again.

So you are by far the coolest CPA I have ever talked to in my entire life. Granted, the bar is very low, but nonetheless, I always look forward to talking to you. I don't look forward to talking about tax season necessarily, but you are the coolest.

Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much. And it's true, there's no other cool cpas out there. I'm it, folks. I am the only, the only ones, honestly.

Yes. So the filing deadline is fast approaching. What happens if you file your taxes late?

The famous accountant answers, it depends. So, and it really depends on if you owe or not. So if you don't owe any money or you're getting money back, the IR's like, kind of doesn't care. So you can extend, there's no penalties, and you actually have then up to three years to still file and get that refund. But if you wait longer than three years, then you lose that refund. If you owe money, though, even if you extend, your payment is still due on 415. And so a lot of people actually get confused about that. They're like, but I extended. Why am I being charged penalties and interest? Well, it's because you actually had to pay the amount due on 415 still, even though you filed your return later.

Yeah, I always remember it like it's an extension to file and not an extension to pay.

That's a great way to put it. Yeah.

If people do file by the deadline, what can they expect to receive from when exactly can they expect to see their tax refund? So if people do file by the deadline, though, when can they expect to receive their tax refund? If they get one?

Usually I see turnarounds about a week if there's no issues. So if for some reason, like the IR's decides to pull your return and look at for some reason that can delay it. Or if you're paper filing, that will delay it substantially. But if you e file it and there's no issues, usually on both the federal state, about a week or two, we see those refunds hit.

Yeah, I mean, I don't advocate a refund. I'm sure you don't necessarily either. It means like you're not doing withholdings properly. Like you're giving the government a loan.

Interest free loan.

Interest free loan on your money. So the refund is basically your money coming back to you. It's not like play time. Free money.

Yes. Yeah.

It's just like money you were owed. And so that's where people get confused a lot. They're like, oh, I get this big refund back. Like I'm winning at taxes. And it's like, no, that's just money that's yours that you just overpaid the government.

I know, but the years that I have received a refund, if it was more than a couple of weeks late, I was like, oh my God, I'm for sure getting audited. This is too late. But don't read into that. I assume, like, the IR's is always backed up. So if you don't get it after a week, if you e file, or a little bit later, if you file by snail mail, you shouldn't freak out.

Yes, absolutely.

All right. So if someone has pretty straightforward taxes, like they're a w two employee, they have a brokerage account, they have a retirement account. Like nothing too crazy. Should they just file themselves?

Yes.

I'm not trying to take business away from you, but yes.

Oh, no, absolutely. Because I do like a substantial amount of consulting calls and people will tell me, I'm like, okay, what do you have going on? And when they tell me that, I'm like, okay, you could pay me to do it and you're going to overpay me to do it. And I'm like, just use turbotax or just use the free file system. I'm like, you don't need me to do it. I'm like, if you really want the peace of mind and you want me to handle everything, of course I'm not going to turn away your business, but you can handle it yourself. You don't need me for that.

That's really honest and awesome of you. And the IR's recently rolled out an option for folks to file online directly for free. You're talking also about the idea that the IR's has come out and said it's growing its team. There are 90,000 employees right now. It's up 113% from 2022. The plan is to have 105,000 employees by the end of next year. People are looking at that, though, and saying, okay, you're going to have more people there. Does that mean more often audits? Have you observed that?

From my perspective, it means faster resolutions to problems, quite honestly. Cause it's like, that's really what happens. People will get notices, then they'll freak out, and then they're like, oh, I gotta call the IR's. And then they'll sit on hold for 6 hours, not be able to get a hold of anyone. Or we'll send correspondence back and forth and back and forth and back and forth for months and months and months and years and years and years just because they don't have the staff to do stuff timely. So might it increase audits? Maybe. I've seen statements that they're kind of more focusing on the wealthy. That's where they want to increase their audit numbers, not just like across the board, because historically, which is disappointing, is they've gone after a lot of lower income taxpayers. And so they do it because it's kind of low hanging fruit. It's easy, you know, low hanging fruit like that isn't going to be able to afford an attorney to fight anything in court. And so it's easy to go after and audit that type of population where with the wealthier population, like, they're going to throw attorneys at you.

They're going to make it as confusing as possible. And so my hope is that, you know, they've said the audits will be focused toward the upper income class. And I think I saw there was some statistic where it was like, in the past year or something, they've been able to get, like, so many x millions of dollars from auditing the upper class.

So, like, that's like bigger bang for their buck, I guess.

And it is. Statistically it is. And so that's where I would like to see the focus. Cause like I always say, crime is committed at every level. At the higher levels, you just don't get caught. And I honestly think that's where a lot of crime is committed, is through tax fraud with upper income earners.

Yeah, I mean, everybody, I feel like, worries about the fact that they're gonna make a mistake, and it could be an innocent mistake, but they're gonna go to jail. I mean, I have this complex every single year. I've done therapy around it, but let's tackle it head on because it's a fear that I think a lot of us share. What are some of the common mistakes that you see individuals make with taxes that have trick route and audit? And I'm assuming you've dealt with quite a bit of audits in your work. What do those look like in practice versus in theory? Because in theory, like you think somebody's going to show up at your door.

And take you to jail. Yeah. So actually the IR's does not do door visits anymore, unless it's like the only time they would show up at your door is if there's like other crimes occurring. So like human trafficking or drug trafficking. Like then they might show up at an IR's agent anymore, is not going to show up and arrest you. So actually in my ten years, I don't think I've ever had a client go through an official audit. Normally what happens is they will get a notice saying, hey, we see this discrepancy. This is what you report on your tax return. This is what third party documents you got. Either accept the discrepancy, which sometimes it's like, oh shoot, I did forget to include that income, or I lost that form and didn't include it. Or sometimes it's like, no, you're actually wrong, we're going to amend or we're going to contact you and tell you why you're wrong and get that penalty or whatever resolved. And so more often than that, it's like, it's just notices they get and then it's either, okay, the notice is correct and we just say, yep, ir's, you're right, here's the difference.

Here's a check, or no, it's not right. And here's our proof as to why it's not right.

So the biggest mistake, I guess the most common mistake is that you just didn't get a form or you didn't see a form. This has happened to me before. Like a 1099 has come or I've moved and I didn't get it. And it was the discrepancy. You pay the difference at the end.

Yes, 100%. That is like by far the most frequent thing I see notices for. It's like, hey, that seems like you should have reported this form and you didn't. I don't think I've ever, yeah, I've never had a situation where they like, came back to a client was like, we need more information on this deduction you took. It's just, it does not, it doesn't happen often. I mean, even like when the IR's is fully staffed, I think the audit rate was less than 1%. And so it's like you, you know, now it's even less than that. So it's just not frequent.

So they're not coming back to you and being like, show me that receipt for that dinner and prove that you didn't order too much food or something like that.

I mean, they could do that. Like, that does happen in audits. But then also too, like, here's my take on it. It's like, let's say they came back. And like, I'm trying to think of what my meals and entertainment is. Like, I don't go out much, so probably for my business, it's probably $1,500, you know, a year. And if I didn't keep great records and they're like, okay, we actually want to audit this expense category and provide receipts, I'd probably just be like, screw it, I'll pay the tax difference. It's like, I don't care. It's not worth my time to, like, track all these down. And what's so interesting is I do read a lot of tax court cases. Cause I write a newsletter for other.

It actually is no wonder you don't go out.

People try to do the craziest stuff in there, but it's like, people will fight. The IR's over, like $5,000. And I'm like, how much in tax attorney fees did you spend to try and save $2,000 in taxes? So that's like, kind of how I approach this whole thing. So it's like, even if I were to be audited or one of my clients, I would say, okay, like, what's this really worth to defend or whatnot? Or is it just cheaper overall just to pay it and do better going forward?

So if they came back to you and they said, laurelin, show me the receipts for these. $1500 in meals and entertainment or whatever, like, I want to see the actual receipts. And you say, it's not worth my time. You're not paying $1,500, right. You're adding that to your taxable income, and you're paying, you know, a portion.

Like a. Yeah, probably like 30% of that would be tax I'm paying. Yeah, but so $500, like, and when I think about what my time's worth per hour, I'm like, it would take me ten to 20 hours to track down all those receipts because I'm not great at my own background. And so it's like, okay, I could do that and save $500 or just pay $500 and spend those ten to 20 hours working and make way more money.

Honestly, I'm not surprised that you're not great at your own record keeping. It's just often the case, like, it's really hard to take your own advice.

Exactly for other people.

You don't want to do it for yourself.

I know, because I get paid to do it for other people. Like, why would I spend any time doing it for myself? I don't make any money when I do it for myself. The only thing I will do is I do estimate out my own taxes and preemptively try and be on top of withholding month to month. So that's like, I'll do just enough bookkeeping to kind of, like, ballpark where my income is, but then actual bookkeeping, I'll probably do the first round in, like, the summer for myself.

I really appreciate you saying that. And you made me feel so much better about my completely irrational fear of an audit. I am, like, the most by the book person in the history of the world. I'm like, please let me overpay you. I have no idea why I'm, like, extra, extra scared. Actually, I do. This is a story for another time and maybe some therapy from when I was growing up. But, you know, like, it's real. This idea that, you know, you could be in trouble or, God forbid, you see all these crazy stories. But it's really nice to hear you say, that's not usually the case. That's, like, in such a super small percentage of cases. And it's, like, really, really bad stuff. And if you just made a mistake, you pay it, and that's it.

Yeah, you just move on. Yeah, it's like, to actually, I mean, let's be real. Some people do end up in jail. That's a real thing. But it is. The tax fraud they are committing is so intentional to do that. It's not like, oops, I made a mistake. Sorry, here's the money. It's very obvious that they are intentionally defrauding the government.

Do you have any stories of clients or friends that stick out as.

So this was actually one of my colleagues on Twitter talked about it. So he worked for a company and they got raided by the IR's. And what it was was they were running like a ton, a ton, a ton of personal expenses through the company, like their horse hobby, their fur coats, all sorts of personal expenses. And they did end up going to jail because it was like what they were doing was just so flagrant and they were writing off all those expenses as business expenses.

Well, can you do personal expenses but not write it off?

Of course, of course, of course. Where you though, like I got it like tread so carefully here because it's like getting into the legal is where you can screw yourself over on that is, you know, should you get sued and you have an LLC or corporation, you're supposed to keep business and personal completely separate. And the first thing they're going to come in and try and prove is that you don't do that. And so that is something they can come in and say, like you're running all these personal expenses through your business. You're not actually running this like a true business. Therefore these legal protections don't apply and we can come after your personal assets.

Okay, so basically if you have a company or a loan out type company you can put personal expenses on, don't write them off. That's like the big red flag, it sounds like. Yes.

And to like all of us, you know, as good as we try and be with our business card, and I'd say I'm probably better than most. Like there's still times personal expenses squeak through, you know, I accidentally select the wrong card on my Amazon account, you know, or something. So it's not like the end of the world if it occasionally happens, but it's just don't make a hobby of it.

If you're doing your own tax filing and you need to decide whether or not you're going to do a standard deduction or itemize, can you tell me what those options are for those who like, have momentary stroke when talking about taxes and pros and cons of both? Yeah.

So usually if you're using a program to prepare, it's going to select whichever one is more beneficial to you anyway. But basically what it is, is the standard deduction is saying, hey, depending on your filing status. So whether you're filing single, married, married, filing single or head of household, we are going to just take off this chunk of money from your taxable income. But then they say if your itemized deductions are bigger than that, then you actually get to take itemized deductions. And what are itemized deductions? These are things like medical costs over a certain amount, mortgage interest you pay up to $10,000 on taxes you pay. So this could be state taxes you pay, real estate taxes you pay, sales tax you pay. This is also going to include things like charitable donations, whether it's you know, non cash or cash. And then there's like other miscellaneous things like union dues and interest, investment fees and that type of stuff. And so basically what you do is you add it up. What are all these itemized expenses I have? Is this bigger than what my standard deduction is? And trying to remember where the brackets are.

Like, if you're single, it's around 13,000. Head of household, I think this year is around 19,000. And then married filing jointly is usually twice whatever the single is. So that's like 26,000. And so it's just going to take whichever is bigger and say, all right, we're reducing your taxable income by that amount.

And when should someone take the standard deduction?

When it's bigger than the itemized.

Yeah, I didn't know if there was, like, types of people that should just be taking standard deductions.

So when the Trump tax law changed back in 2018, he actually doubled what all the standard deductions were. And so what we saw was, once that happened is a lot more people ended up taking the standard deduction than itemized deduction because it was so high. So usually, unless you own a home, I'm not seeing people take the itemized deduction just because mortgage interest is usually that piece that kind of kicks you over larger than the standard. And so most people now I'm seeing take the standard deduction.

So if you do file your taxes so low, beware of that. Be mindful as well of scams. The IR's has been warning people, I mean, they do this every year, but they're warning people about phishing scams around tax season. Like somebody basically getting an email from someone claiming to be the IR's will.

The IR's email you, they will not email you. And they will. And in most cases, I'm like, trying to think of if they ever call you either. Like, they won't email you, they won't call you, they will send letters. Yes, yes, they will send snail mail. So always make sure your address is updated or if you moved, you know that you're getting stuff forwarded. So you do get those. Or what's super cool is you can just create a portal on the IR's website and then you can log in and see stuff. They send you there as well.

Can your accountant do that for you?

I don't think so. I think you have to do, like, verify me id. It's like a, it's a whole process. Yeah, but it's worth it because what's also cool is you can see your transcript, meaning you can see what forms people submitted, like, on your behalf. So if you're unsure, like, did I get all my ten ninety nine s? Am I missing a form? You can go log on and see what the IR's said they received on your behalf. And you can kind of double check and make sure you got everything so.

You can do it in addition to having an accountant and you can almost check their work. Yeah.

And actually what your accountant can do is they can get access to your transcript on your behalf. So, like, I can go pull. If the client's like, I just don't know, you know, I can get permission to go pull their transcript and look at it.

All right.

And you mentioned some of the credits and deductions. When we're talking about whether to itemize or take a standard deduction education credit, some of the things that we already know about. Can you talk first about the difference between the two and then some of the ones that are new and that people will overlook?

Yes. So an easy way to think of it is a tax credit is a dollar for dollar reduction of your tax due. So if you owe $2,000 and you get a $2,000 tax credit, now you owe $0, whereas a deduction is going to be like a percentage reduction of the tax due. And so we want to think of deductions as a discount and not a dollar for dollar reduction. So it's like, okay, if I owe $2,000 and I have a $2,000 expense, doesn't reduce that $2,000 owed by that much. What it does is it reduces it proportionally by the tax due. So if I owed, let's use very easy numbers, like 1500, and I was able to take a deduction for that amount, then it's like giving me a 30% discount. So then my tax is only $1,000 and not 1500.

That's a good way to think about it. And what are some of the new ones?

Yes.

So the biggest one I'm seeing people utilize this year is the new electric vehicle credit. So that's a big one. I had a client get two, so one for her and one for her husband. So they got a double dip on that. So, yeah, so any type of home energy improvements, that's a really big one.

And that's also for, like, solar panels and.

Yes, solar panels, water heaters, all sorts of stuff. So basically, like in my organizers, one of the questions I'm asking my clients is, did you make any energy improvements to your home, please let me know what they are and see. Then I can go look it up and see if they qualify for anything.

Hold onto your wallets. Money rehab.

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For w two type employees. What are some of the tax credits or deductions that people should make sure they don't miss?

Yeah. So if you have kids, obviously you're gonna get the child tax credit. Unless you make too much money, then you'll phase out dependent care expenses. So if both parents work, you can get some reimbursement. I mean, it's not like a huge amount of money. So dependent care credits, let's see if you're doing, like, charitable donations, honestly, make sure you are keeping those receipts and you're, like, writing down if you're on.

Social media and you're donating to somebody's cause.

Yes. If you're spending money doing it, it's a tax write if like. Or here's another one. Charitable miles are a deduction. So if you're driving for charity, you can track that. If you have a high deductible health plan, you can do hsas, which are great, which allow you to basically, that's not what's called an above the line deduction. And so that's a really good deduction to get. So you can do hsas for you and your family. You can also contribute to pre tax to individual retirement accounts if you have earned income as well. And that's like, the total number you can contribute is based on if you have a w two and stuff, how much you're contributing. But, like, it's good to be aware that you can throw money into there. An important thing to remember, though, is, like, all of these deductions or tax savings are, again, not a dollar for dollar reduction. In most cases, you're spending a dollar to save $0.35.

Yeah. So don't, like, let the tax tail wag the dog or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. So it's like, from a cash perspective, you will be out more cash, but so will the government. And some people just, like, want to spite the government. And so they're like, I don't care. I'll spend $100 to save 30 as long as I'm not having to give that 30 to that guy. So, like, okay, just as long as you understand.

You said that. I'm so, so glad you said that. Because when people lead with the tax deduction, I'm like, wait a minute. You're spending all this money for a tax deduction? And then it goes like, okay, so the order of best to less good, I guess, is credit above the line deduction. Below the line deduction.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

So, I mean, don't do something just for tax.

No, never, never, never do something just for tax. I always think it's funny when people are like, I'm moving to a no tax state, and it's like, if you look, you know what's actually going on in those states, they always get the money one way or another. So you have no state income taxes, but your property taxes are four times as much as they would be in any other state.

And so did you listen to the money rehab episode about this?

I didn't. I didn't. But I'm like, yelling this at people all the time, and I'm just like, no, you need to understand for your situation what makes sense. And if you move somewhere else where there's no income tax, like, Washington's a perfect example. I'm in Oregon. We have a pretty high income tax. It's like 9.9%. So it's significant. And you have Washington across the border with 0%. But we don't have sales tax. They do. So it's like, you're going to pay one way or another. The state has to be funded.

Such a good point, too. When people look at Texas, the Florida, Tennessee is a big one. Nevada, it's not. No tax across the board, it's no income tax. And you can still get taxed up the wazoo in other places. Namely property tax and sales tax. You mentioned iras in terms of what you can deduct for your 2023 tax return for the most part. You know, of course, eligible expenses that you spent in 2023. But also folks should know that if they take a traditional IRA contribution as a deduction, you can make that contribution up until you file. Like I actually did it, I think, last month, my IRA contribution that I took for my 2023 taxes. So even if you technically made that contribution in 2024, it still applies to 2023 taxes. You can do it up until April.

If you extend it up until October 15.

Okay, that's good. And that's good to remember is that the only deduction that works that way.

That you can do any type of retirement plan. So, like, if you're a business owner, because I primarily work with a lot of business owners, so they can set up a sep, they can set up a simple, they can set up a 401k. So any types of those allow that deferred and then look back, you know, contribution.

Look back. That was the word I was looking for. Okay, let's take a moment for our 1099 folks, contract workers and freelancers. What are some legal ways, of course, that they can shrink the amount that they owe?

Honestly, at this point, there's not a lot left. I literally had a phone call with a client earlier today who's, you know, self employed, solopreneur, owes about fifty five k. And he's like, what do we do? So basically the advice was, okay, go back through everything and see if we can find any more expenses that you missed. So that's one is just make sure you are taking full advantage of all the expenses. So it's like going back through meals, going back through travel, you know, going through those types of things to make sure we capture all those. And then the other thing is for him I was like, let's get you a solo 401k setup. To me, that's my favorite type of retirement account for self employed individuals with no employee. Our solo four hundred one k. I was like, and luckily as a brother who's a financial advisor, I'm like, call your brother immediately. We can contribute, you know, up to this amount. It's going to do this to your taxes and some of it too. It's just like, okay, we're going to be able to lower his taxes probably like ten grand or something.

And then I'm like, okay, the other thing we do is just get you on a payment plan with IR's so you can do payment plans with the IR's, and usually with the state, if you're below a certain amount, states probably vary, but for the IR's, if you owe less than 50k, you can get a payment plan in place. Like, yes, you'll pay interest on it, but they won't send you nasty letters threatening to, like, garnish your bank account.

So you just have to work with that. You have to talk to them and work something out. Can you, can you negotiate?

So payment plans are the easiest if you owe less than 50,000, if you owe more than that. There are companies that do, like, tax resolution, specialty type stuff, so there are ways that you can negotiate stuff down. I don't do that usually. From what I've seen, like, tax attorneys, that's one of the things tax attorneys do. So I have, like, a tax attorney colleague where I've sent people to him where I'm like, hey, they have a really big bill. They want to know what their options are, so I'll send them that way. But there's, like, very specific circumstances where you can request and not request, and I'm just not versed in that because once, once we get to that point, I'm, like, passing you along, not my business. Yeah.

And I think the best thing to do is to think about taxes, you know, in the beginning of the year, for the following year. Right. So when we're at this time of year, it's kind of too late, unless you're dealing with a retirement situation for 2023, but it's not too late for 2024. So what are some of the things that we should think about this year to maximize our 2024 taxes?

Yeah. So there's usually just, like, two pieces of advice I give to everyone, whether they're a business owner or not. The first is keep your stuff organized. Keep your stuff organized and kettle. I'm my own worst client. I'm my own worst client. But it's like, you will maximize your deductions if you keep. Keep them, you know, tracked and orderly throughout the year. And again, I'm kind of primarily speaking to business owners in this. I say get a business only bank account and only run business stuff through there. I'm like, that is step one to maximizing your tax deductions is you just have it all in one place. As soon as you're having to look across four different accounts, stuff is going to be missed.

But when you say keep everything organized, you don't mean like, you know, old school accordion folder.

Honestly, I think the most efficient way to do it is some type of online ledger system. So there's, like, paid ones like quickbooks, zero fresh books. And then there's also free versions, like wave. So there's kind of different options out there. And then the other thing I tell people is, you know, at least quarterly, do an estimated tax projection for yourself. So there's free online tax calculators you can use that you can punch in your in income, and you can see how much you've withheld and see are you over under. So throughout the year, kind of keep a pulse on what you think your tax liability is going to be, because it's much easier to plan for a big tax liability if we know it in July. If we know in July, like, oh, shoot, this year is a banger. We think by December we'll make this much. So we think our tax will be this much. Then we can start planning for April taxes, you know, almost a full year in advance.

And if you are trying not to get a tax refund next year, which I know is counterintuitive to a lot of people, what should you make sure you're doing? So you're not giving an interest free loan to the IR's?

Yeah, well, the first thing is we want to make sure we're not under withholding too much, because then you can get penalized with an underpayment penalty. And to, like, give you an idea of what that's at, one of my clients today have a tax due of about 45,000 in the underpayment penalty. They paid in. Nothing throughout the year is about $1,500. So you want to make sure that you're paying in enough. And usually what that is is it's either, let's see, it's 110% of the prior year tax due or 90% of the estimated current year tax due. So you want to be kind of keeping a poll somewhere. Those at. So if you're at least between over 90% and less than 100%. So you kind of like a 10% give in there. That's kind of your sweet spot of, okay, I didn't overpay the government, but I'm also not going to get hit with an underpayment penalty.

We end our episodes, Laurel, and by asking all of our guests for a tip listeners can take straight to the bank. You've given so many already, but is there an extra tip listeners can keep in mind for tax season or anything I missed?

I would say. Just don't freak out about it. Everyone freaks out, and everyone gets really nervous and everyone gets really scared of the IR's. Like, I promise the IR's isn't that scary. Like, I ignore notices from the IR's for myself. I'm like, oh, I'll deal with it later. I'll deal with it later. So it's like, don't let your anxiety get the better of you. When it comes to getting stuff like that, all they want you to do is communicate with them, you know? So should there be a situation where a mistake's made and you have to work something out with them? Like, don't. Don't let it stress you out, you know, it's just there's real people on the other line. Most of them are wonderful to work with, and so just stay calm, and now it's all going to be okay.

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