J Darrin Gross
I'd like to ask you, Catherine Tindall. What is the BIGGEST RISK?
Catherine Tindall
I say, you know, the BIGGEST RISK that I see, just from my professional perspective of the kind of cases that I diagnose and deal with on a day to day basis, the the main area of loss I see for people is that they, they do a set it and forget it strategy when it comes to dealing with their tax situation. And a lot of people because it's so technical, they don't have a way of assessing whether or not they're doing everything that they can unless they're going to take the time to learn how to do it themselves. And so I'd say for most people who get involved in real estate or who get, you know, start having a lot more going on economically, that it's, it's worth it to take the time to reassess your situation, get a second set of eyes, to make sure that you're not missing out on things because it can be 20 to 50% of your yearly effort. You're kind of working for the government, right if that's how you deal with, you know, paying your tax. And so to just not re examine that every once in a while, you can really be losing a lot of the effort that you're putting in just for, you know, things that are very easy to change, like just filing paperwork for splitting out entities or adding a kid to payroll or things like that. So that's what I see is the biggest risk. And a lot of the times once, once those things are set, and times gone by sometimes we can go backwards to save the tax. But more often we can't, it's once it's done, it's done. I had someone recently where they, they tried to execute a 1031 exchange on their own. And they didn't do it correctly. And they didn't, they didn't meet the timing requirements involved with it. And so they ended up with like over $200,000 in tax that could have been very easily deferred. You know, they were aware of the strategy, they had an intermediary involved, but they just didn't execute correctly. And so I think that's the biggest risk I see for people is, you know, to try to DIY too long, or to just set it and forget it, and not realizing that this, it's another area of being able to really maximize your wealth is being more strategic with you know, that tax number.