Off The Grid News It’s a Clairol moment... - Episode 024

The Bush tax cuts hang heavy over the head of Congress. The economic slump means that we must do everything we can to jumpstart our businesses and our personal income so that people will be freer to engage in the marketplace. Employers must be able to hire, and families don’t need the added burden of increased taxes when they’re barely keeping their noses above water financially. Join Bill Heid and Maurice Glazer, a financial advisor for over 40 years and the current CEO of the Glazer Financial Network, as they discuss the expiring Bush tax cuts and other related tax matters on this edition of Off the Grid Radio.

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Off The Grid Radio
Ep024
Released: December 3, 2010

Welcome to Off the Grid Radio, better ideas to bust you and your family out of today’s global control grid. Now here’s today show.

Bill: Well welcome as the announcer says, this is Bill Heid your host today with Off the Grid News coming from beautiful, sunny, downtown Thompson, Illinois and I’ve got a guest today at we are going to talk about some things that are not always pleasant to talk about. And we’ll talk a little bit about some of the tax things that are coming up, some tax issues coming up next year and surprisingly we’ve got a little bit of good news for you and that because taxes are in the news right now and we thought we’d pick up that subject because it’s time to plan, it’s time to think about what you’re going to do whether things go your way or not your way you still need a plan. And I’ve got an expert on planning today as my guest, I’ve got Maury Glazer and Maury has been planning taxes and retirement pensions and so forth for years and years and I’d like to welcome Maury.

Maury: Hi, how are you doing Bill?

Bill: You know great, do you remember the last time we met was in Belize and I will tell the listeners that I was so intrigued by Maury’s presentation. When someone starts out and you find out they were Jimmy Hoffa’s accountant you are kind of doodling around with your pencil waiting for the next speaker to talk as you are sitting there listening in a conference and then when someone says the next speaker was Jimmy Hoffa’s accountant you kind of drop your pencil and your jaw all and you listen really careful. So do you want to tell us – let’s go back before we start talking about good news, bad news taxes 2011 – do you want to talk a little bit about just how you got into this and your relationship with Jimmy Hoffa?

Maury: Well, I started an accounting practice believe it or not when I was 17, started a bookkeeping practice and of course went to college, got my degree, took some advanced tax courses – left college in 1963 after Northwestern for a year and became a very, very good auditor. I worked for a very large firm in Chicago that ended up merging with Grant Thornton back in the middle 60s and which was Alexander Grant back there. Anyway a year and a half or two years after I started that firm I was approached by a couple of former special agents of the IRS and they asked me to come and work for them and do auditing own tax cases. So that really wasn’t a client but it was, what I did was some very intense auditing to make sure that what the impact of the scenario was so my bosses knew exactly how much money was due to the IRS. And of course in the meeting it was pretty hair-raising with Jimmy Hoffa and his group being pretty much very intense themselves and making sure that, where the money – because the amount of money that was owed was considerably more than what they had said was owed and it was a very interesting hair-raising scenario.

Bill: Did Mr. Hoffa look you in the eye at all Maury during your meeting?

Maury: No he just made me cough so…

Bill: I think that would intimidate anybody to be in that meeting…

Maury: Yeah, being 26 years of age with two little kids I was not a happy camper. You know, in fact I wasn’t good in public speaking back then and I was really shaking and nervous.

Bill: Did you have to go on the witness protection program for a while after that?

Maury: No, no I…

Bill: You just moved?

Maury: But I did leave that meeting and resign that day.

Bill: That was probably a smart thing residing that day.

Maury: I just decided that, that was a little bit above my character the fellows who owned the firm ran the firm were much tougher and had 20 or 30 years experience and I thought well they can handle the stuff on their own and I left and went back into the regular auditing arena.

Bill: Sure so then how did you get back into the planning where you are at today? You are in Texas these days and you had an office or you still have an office fairly close to us up in Rockford, Rockford Illinois and I think we had known some common folks from a previous business.

Maury: In Chicago, I had my own accounting practice for a long time. I had in fact even while I was working for the big auditing firms or whatever I had my own accounting practice going back into the 50s, 60s and into the 70s and of course you know it was an interesting scenario. But I got into the planning business even back when I was doing auditing because I started to think of concepts of how to defer income and bag then income tax rates were 86% on passive income, 50% on hard income and so doing things like retirement plans and putting people on salaries and whatever was really good tax planning because you would reduce some of that 86% tax rate down to the 50%. And of course in 1960s John F. Kennedy actually not a Republican, a Democrat reduced income tax raised I believe it went down to – I really wish I could remember but I think it went down to like 38% income tax brackets. And of course that is part of my thought process always if you do good planning and you defer you potentially could end up in less tax bracket than the current so you just have to be constantly looking. And that’s what I did in my entire career, always told everybody hey let’s look at the income before the end of the year. Let’s try to determine how much tax you owe today and then let’s look at it if nothing changes and let’s look at it if it does change. Today we are talking should we pick up capital gains today or should we wait until next year – well like myself, I’m selling some property because I know 15% a capital gains rate is in force right now today if I can get my land sold or whatever I might take that and pay the tax this year. Now I can play with the income because I don’t necessarily have to take my salary because I am self-employed, having loan Corporation and so I can delay taking the salary and take the capital gains, pay it and try to level out my tax bracket so it is not in the highest bracket.

Bill: So what do you, let’s start talking about higher brackets. Well actually before let’s go back and just look – I think a lot of folks will look at impending tax raises that we see coming and say it’s the end of the world, is the end of the world that you just mentioned something that a lot of folks maybe aren’t cognizant of and that is, tax rates have been higher in the past than they are right now so as you said you know because of the reduction of rates that we have experienced I think we are in a better situation now than this country has been in other periods of time. And I know Maury I think even England has had like a 90% tax rate right after World War II if I’m not mistaken.

Maury: It’s even, if you go down, in fact I wish I had sent you that article – all of the countries, you know most of those countries by the time you get through you are paying 60, 70% in all of the European countries. You know people think about moving offshore because they’re going to get a tax break or you know you can’t – we report income on a worldwide basis. Going to another country although, a country like Hong Kong, Switzerland you know we have – I didn’t look it up but I think Switzerland is less than 10%, Hong Kong is I think 17% so there are some corporate rates that are lower but in most cases you are going to pay around the 35% if not higher in all foreign countries.

Bill: In foreign countries and if you are a citizen of the United States it doesn’t matter where you go does it, you still owe.

Maury: Well yeah, you still owe but again planning, because you could be offshore and you could end up saving if you are offshore, living offshore over 330 days, you could end up saving at two 91,000 tax on at least $91,500 a year and if you are married that would be double so there are some planning even there. So instead of looking at hey I’ve got to pay tax in the US, you look at what some of the savings are if you are offshore or whatever, do the planning to make sure you note that the tax brackets are going to rise. And unfortunately although they keep talking about these people over $250,000 unfortunately if you really do study and you look at some of the lower rates, I have some clients, actually some single women with children who are going to lose some of their child credit because tax rates are going to go up.

Bill: Hey Maury hold on right there, that’s a good place to leave it. Tax rates are going to go up; we’ll be right back after this break.

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And now back to Off the Grid Radio.

Bill: We are back with Off the Grid Radio and its Bill Heid here and I have Maury Glazer with me today and we are talking about something that – well they say death and taxes, right? Everyone’s got to experience those two things. The last time we, as we must’s and we left off Maury was making a comment that tax rates are going to go up. Everyone wants to know just what’s going on with taxes. You hear it in the news so much but what’s really going to happen and so one of the things that struck me Maury as we come back from the break here is when I look at the projected of the 2011 marginal tax rates, the part that, you know the hope and change president gave to the 0 – 8500, the poorest of the poor it looks like he is hitting been the hardest percentage wise, is that your read too?

Maury: Well actually, if you do the studies and you can look in come you know well you have put it on the computer today but people that are in the 10% tax bracket that is going to go up to 15%, you know single parents with children, you know they are going to lose a good portion of their credit, it could be as much as 15%. I have a single mother that was getting 3200 and she works hard for her 15, 20,000 whatever it might be and her credit, child care credit that she is going to end up getting is going to drop from 30 some hundred down to 1500 so she is going to have a 50% decrease in her refund that she sorely needs to make sure the kids can go to school and all of that. So yeah, the smaller people, you know look at the rates of 10 to 15%, it’s a 50% increase for people in the 10% tax bracket.

Bill: So the poorest of the poor got hit from the marginal rate increase got hit the absolute hardest?

Maury: Right.

Bill: That’s unbelievable, for somebody they supposed to be from I guess an area where we are supposed to be protecting the poor or whatever it just doesn’t seem like – not that that is a huge amount of money, a lot of those folks won’t pay any way but it seems crazy on the surface to even…

Maury: But what it hurts is the work ethic because the people who aren’t working at all, of course their living on the system that the people who are working at McDonald’s or Wal-Mart or as a secretary, receptionist, they are getting hit the hardest and they are really trying, they really believe in the work ethic. And so, you know they are sitting there saying well maybe it pays not to work.

Bill: So yeah you just disincentivize the whole idea of working, you give people more reasons to stay home and watch Oprah or whatever rather than go out and make it happen.

Maury: Right, and today just look down the healthcare bill, some real issues that come up, I mean you know people – I pay for 100% of my employees insurance and then I give them long term care, a whole bunch of different things. And you know if I – and I’m not going to do it, whatever it is it is, it would probably be better for me if I didn’t offer health insurance and then just think if you had to pay, if you are single or if you are married and you have $500-$1000 health insurance bill every month, I mean that could be 50% of your compensation.

Bill: And is that the law? I mean tell me, let’s talk about the healthcare bill. What does that mean to the average guy and what does that mean to the average employer? Let’s say someone employs 20 people, how does that hit him?

Maury: Well, the thing is you got to look at pushing that caused off as an employer. From my standpoint I have got to wait to see what is my insurance costs going to go up in my group plan, okay. I would think everybody offering insurance as an employer will attract the better employees if they have good benefits, okay, that’s the well look at. But I love my employees, I love the people who work for me, what can I do for them, right and how can I keep them because it is expensive to retrain. But the point is, is if I gave up my health insurance then every one of my employees would have to go get individual insurance or join the government plan or go on public aid or some stupid thing like that and it’s going to be a real problem. It’s a major – I spent $150,000 a year on health costs for my employees, that’s a lot of money.

Bill: That’s a lot of money. So an employer, let’s go back to this – an employer that’s got 20 employees, does he have to have healthcare for his employees, can he opt out? I am talking about the employer here.

Maury: Yeah, the employer could make some heavy decisions on what he wants to do in regard, you know just cut out the health insurance, you know there’s many, you know I forgot the big company that’s doing that, Wal-Mart I think is doing it for some of their lower paid people so they just cut them off of the health insurance and make them go and get their own health insurance.

Bill: Which means they are forced to opt own to the government roles as you said…

Maury: Or find some way to afford insurance in general with a big deductible or whatever. It really isn’t a good scenario for a lot of people, you know people who are uninsured who this Bill sorely gets to are people who like to use the emergency rooms anyway, pay cash so that is a problem. This healthcare bill really, I have a chart in my seminar which I don’t think when you were with me that I had in there that is this maze of things in there that you know that in addition to the health insurance thing there is also an item in there that says any business that spends over $600 with anybody has to send a 1099 for that business so there is also a huge cost for small businesses to keep track of every dollar they spend and send a 1099 because they have got to get Social Security numbers, you know taxpayer identification numbers…

Bill: So explain that again Maury, explain, so every business that spends more than $600…

Maury: Is going to have to send a 1099 to the business that they are spending the money with.

Bill: No matter what…

Maury: No matter what so let’s say your favorite restaurant in your little town, you only spend $10 a day but you go there you know 365 days a year right, or 200 days a year, all of a sudden you’re spending $1000 – you have to send that restaurant a 1099. You have to get their Social Security number and send them a 1099. Now you might think they are trying to figure out the income on those businesses but really what they’re trying to do is also audit the expense on the businesses books.

Bill: Okay.

Maury: So it is a contrived plan by someone sitting in some back room in Congress to better control our spending. It is a good thing for someone that has QuickBooks right because everybody is going to have to have an automated system in order to be able to keep track of all of this.

Bill: Yeah, how is that going to play out? What you think that is going to do to the economy on a macro level because that’s no small thing.

Maury: No, no, it’s huge and when you tell someone oh I’d never do that or I don’t have to do that, will you know penalties and interest is bigger than the tax that you have to pay so you know it’s sort of like I was just talking to a client who doesn’t have a limited liability Corporation, he has a lot of exposure – I said you know defending your self is more costly than doing it up front but what it does is, it drives the cost of running a business big time, okay? So when I look at it we’ve got to start thinking about okay what are we doing, how are we doing it, how we are going to take care of it and hope to God that you know clearer minds will prevail as we move forward because this thing with 1099s, I mean that’s almost more ludicrous than having the IRS audit us for making sure we have health insurance.

Bill: Yeah, that’s crazy and I think when we come back from the break we want to talk a little bit about again just some of the new changes and you know what is pending in the news is obviously they can go back on what their intentions are but what some of the changes are, are pretty crazy. They’ve got new agents that they are hiring to make sure everybody walks goose-step along, you’ve got phase out for so many different types of deductions and again the Bush era tax rates are going to expire unless Congress does something so will get back with Maury Glazer right after this.

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Welcome back to Off the Grid Radio, getting you ready to prepare for the worst.

Bill: We are getting you ready to prepare for the worst. It’s Bill Heid back with Maury Glazer and we are talking about the worst of taxes and what is coming for 2011. And Maury when we left we were talking about some of the issues that we were all going to be facing, do you want to touch on the estate tax issue because I think where I see it I like to approach things from sort of a biblical base and I think this is one of those areas where it’s sort of God ordained family to sort of be in charge of inheritance and pass a godly inheritance down. And this is one of those direct attacks on that inheritance because it takes money from the family and the shovels it back into the black hole of government said you want to kind of give me a comment on what is coming there?

Maury: Well, the real issue is the fact that again we talk about the rich, I have a client who is out in San Diego, she works for the YWCA or YMCA, he’s a carpenter, they 50 years ago – no not 50 maybe 35 years ago they bought a couple of acres in San Diego, okay. And they had a one-room shack with an outhouse on it and over the period of the last 10, 20 years they have built a structure of a home. Now these people really don’t have much when it comes to – yeah they are savers or otherwise you don’t even get to where you’re going but their estate today because it is property in San Diego is probably worth a couple of million dollars. But even if it was worth just 1 million then those people have a potential when they both passed away where their children will have to sell that property in order to pay the estate tax because they have no savings so how do they pay it? So you have $1 million piece of property, you have a 50% estate tax, all of a sudden this poor, these working people have assets worth more than 1 million the end up being taxed as estate tax. And what you do, you have to sell it. My family has farmland, my mother-in-law thought it was pretty cute, she was 95, she passed away in January, her husband passed away last November, but she thought it was cute because she listens to me – they lived with us for five years and she was always listening to me and she always said well are you kids going to have to pay the estate tax on our farmland that we balked hundred years ago, right? And she thought it was really cute that she died in 2010 and it was actually a week before she passed away she said well I think we beat them and I said you’ve got to be kidding mom, what are you saying? And she said well I don’t think I’m going to make it much longer, you told me that dad’s come to me and that’s free and here I am going to be gone and it is going to go to you guys and we’re not going to pay any estate tax so, you know it’s an issue that when you get people who are farmers or just working people that have access that were lucky and saved and scrimped and now you have $1 million worth of assets that could end up being taxed, you know it’s pretty sad.

Bill: And if it is a family and to tea like you said a small business or a farmer something, it is just basically shutdown time is an, I mean…

Maury: Well even my firm, you know my son is my partner and you know we have 25 employees, you know, I mean, you know like all small businesses, we are a tax accounting firm and yes it could continue but if the value of this firm got added in whoever would survive would have to scrimp to really try to figure out how to pay the tax on the debt.

Bill: So I know you are not consulting me in this case but like what is the general answer to sort of getting around that?

Maury: I have 3000 clients, I do 1700, 1800 tax returns, we tell every client that, you know here is the tax, you know we need your information so we can try to compute out where you are at, you’ve got to try to think about doing things like family limited partnerships to distribute your assets before your death. You know not the actual assets but the entity that holds the assets, there is planning you can do, people need to be planning, it is cheaper than paying the tax. And I have many, many success stories and it’s you know important, believe it or not September 27 of Obama signed a small business jobs act, it’s actually pretty good, there’s really some good things that small businesses need to know such as accelerated depreciation, you know it’s a bonus to depreciation of 50%. I mean I can only tell you if you could write off up to $500,000 and you are a small business it’s the time to buy it today. This bill for whatever stupid reason was never publicized, we read all the time so – between myself and my accountants, we pick up on things like this, new deduction of health insurance for self-employed, okay so if you are a schedule C type of business, you can deduct the health insurance cost.

Bill: So this is Maury, this is all starting in 2011?

Maury: Actually it started in 2010.

Bill: So it actually started in 2010, signed by President Obama when?

Maury: September 27th.

Bill: Okay, so those deductions and accelerated depreciation, that’s good for this year?

Maury: Correct and there is a five-year carry back. What I do is when I review tax returns, I typically say hey we should be doing this, this, and this and if we do we buy a bunch of equipment and now we can carry that losses maybe we can get back some of the tax we paid the previous years so we are constantly looking backwards and then trying to project forward to how to report the income.

Bill: Well yeah, that’s fascinating. I didn’t even know and I’ll try to watch this stuff fairly closely and try to be a good steward and try to be a good planner, prepper if you will and so many of the listeners Maury of the show are people who like to plan ahead because they see these things so this is really intriguing. I bet you not that many people know about this bill signed in September.

Maury: I know they don’t, I mean truthfully my tax manager picked up on this at one of my – I deal with a couple of big tax attorneys and he happened to be in a meeting and picked up on this because I had not read about it. All that information that I print off and look at in whatever it wasn’t even publicized and there were eight new small business cuts, eight. And, you know all I can say is that people need information be sure for them to get to you and you get to me and let’s try to get the information out of them and let’s try to think about what we’re going to try to do the calls I personally don’t think tax rates are going to go up – there is going to be some kind of compromise on one hand, on the other hand eventually they are going to have to go up to fill the deficit they’re trying to cut off the deficit but we can’t take that risk so everybody needs to be planning, okay where are we at, what can we do, should we pick up income today, should we prepay expenses today? You know, to me we defer income and speed up expenses, okay unless it’s going to cost us more next year than this year – so we just need to play the game. I try to level out the situation so that people are in a reasonable tax bracket, everybody needs to file, everybody needs to pay their tax and people shouldn’t have to hide their head in the sand but get good help. Unfortunately the accountants are responsible today and they are scared to death, the accountants so that is not good for the taxpayer. Really because they don’t want to take – they don’t want making suggestions, they are afraid they’re going to be responsible for something, and I say hey if you have good staff, if you do good research, Inc. we do good review – we have a multiple review process then we don’t take that risk. I mean, a client comes in and says hey I want to write off 50,000 of this then hey we are not even going to sign the return because it is not correct but most accountants just hey, I’m busy; I want to go golfing October 15 so they don’t sit there and really do the planning.

Bill: No I agree and that’s a good place for us to take a little break and we will talk we come back Maury I would say definitely everybody listening get with your accountant, find out what is going on, and you know what if you don’t have a good accountant, if you have a timid accountant it is time to fire them because this is serious stuff. We need to take the deductions that we’ve got, we’ll be right back.

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Welcome back to Off the Grid Radio, better ideas for off the grid living.

Bill: We are back with Off the Grid Radio and we talk about being off the grid, one place where you do not want to be off the grid for anyone who is listening is with respect to taxes. You have to pay your taxes, you won’t to be on the grid their and there is horror story after horror story after horror story of people thinking that they have got some right to not pay taxes and maybe they don’t, I don’t know, I don’t understand it all, all I know is it’s brute force city if you don’t pay taxes and they will find you and you will probably go to jail or worse. And in that same vein Maury what I would like for you to talk about a little bit is the high cost of having a timid accountant because most accountants are going to just go along to get along and they are not actually going to be aggressive enough as we move forward into more and more bureaucracy, crazy tax schemes, this stuff the government giving you in 2010 in September of this year, giving you certain things and then taking them back away January 1 and all of this complex situation, you have to have a good accountant, don’t you agree?

Maury: Yeah, I agree. I find so many situations when we are reviewing tax returns, I have a client down in San Antonio because also have an office down that way and it’s a friend of my associate one of my employees and I am in there and they show me their tax return for this small Corporation, he repairs equipment, restaurant equipment. And so I look at it and I say G, you know I look at the books and then I look at the – there is something wrong with these books and the lady, the wife that funded this operation said oh it can’t be, I’ve got the best accountant. I said just a small test says something is wrong because he is not closing the books, he’s not using your books to prepare these tax returns and she is struggling, she’s sort of like in bankruptcy almost, you know she’s is gee we can’t meet our bills, we owe credit cards, we don’t know what to do. So she had a refund coming of $16,000 so she said yeah my accountant tells me that I have to leave that with the government until next year because I’m going to tax and I said well I’m looking at it and I believe you are going broke, I don’t think you owe any tax. And she said, well, wait a minute and she gets it on the phone and he doesn’t know I am listening and he goes through this process of well yeah you will is have $100,000 worth of income and you’ve got to pay Social Security and blah, blah, blah. And I finally convinced her because she put him on mute – I said take the money back and always pay estimated payments starting April 15, if we make money it should only happen. So then afterward we were looking and I said let me review the tax return and she gives me a stack of 10 years of tax returns, personal and business and she said here take them all so one of my young ladies who is very, very good, I gave it all to her and said look here’s the problem, I know there is something wrong, try to figure it out. Anyway, it ended up to be $100,000 that they had pay tax on that they pay tax of $100,000 because the fellow just didn’t get it as far as what real bookkeeping or tax-preparation was about. They are a cash basis taxpayer, they were paying all receivables, the bottom line is I got her the $16,000 back and now we are going to get – we’ve amended, you can’t go back, well you could but I wouldn’t go back too far but we amended three years, we got her about 50, $60,000 refund just by reviewing and seeing that there was a mistake. It just wasn’t good preparation, was a good review, and there were errors. And I mean she of course is ecstatic and this happens regularly, people tend, you know it’s the brother the cousin it’s the friend for 25 years and they tend to think hey, it’s got to be okay and you know the process has to be proper. The process is proper then you are going to get good preparation and you’re going to get a fair shake on the amount of tax you have to pay. You know there’s that bill that was passed on September 27 that most people do not even know past, in fact what my tax manager came in with it, I don’t know if this is a good place to talk about it…

Bill: It’s as good a time as any Maury.

Maury: Yeah, president Obama signed – I don’t know why wasn’t publicized but it wasn’t because I read every day for a couple of hours on the treadmill but here it is a new small business tax cuts. I mean how many accountants out there know and how many accountants have told their clients? You know, to me you know without consulting anybody and maybe everybody knew except me but when I read this I said wow we better tell our clients to start buying equipment before the end of the year because they’ve extended a big tax break on accelerated depreciation. It’s important to make sure that you are dealing with people who have experience and not only in just preparing, you know I hate to say this but some of the bigger firms that prepare taxes turns out the people that are doing them are not accountants – even the IRS hires people who aren’t really accountants, they are intelligent and they can be trained to harass people and to try to tell them that their return is wrong but they have a mission and they are doing a good job of it. They look at something and they say hey, that’s got to be wrong, it’s on the wrong line, it’s the wrong description and so they come after the people. They are doing a lot of correspondence audits now where they just send out letters saying hey that $8000 round number for auto expenses, we want you to prove up what that is so that is what they are doing. So we have got to had good concentrated thought processes to make sure and we’ve got to make sure what is coming up on the pipe because what should we do this year and what should we do next year? People in our firm are planning, telling people okay you owe another 5000 or you’re getting a refund, you do not have to make your estimate and next year here is what we need to do, and let’s get planning, let’s hope for the best and you know make sure that next year we don’t get caught with an increase of four or 5% or 50% if we are in a low tax brackets. And you know people need to know this stuff, these tax increases, these little hidden quirks – there are things like the government is now on tax credits, foreign tax credits you can’t take foreign tax credits unless you picked up the transaction on the US, you just can’t take it even if it’s in the foreign country. They are going to start taxing transfers out of the country if you are not going to an institution that is part of the system, foreign governments are starting to say hey you tell us who is in your country and we will tell you who is in our country so there is a lot of things going on and you need to know and you need to be checking with your people. Penalties are huge and people who have foreign properties who have never reported them that they are in foreign trust or foreign corporations, the penalties are huge.

Bill: For not reporting that you’ve got property abroad?

Maury: Correct.

Bill: Okay, so there’s so many things Maury and when we wind it down, we’ve only got a few minutes left, how does somebody stay ahead of all – it almost seems to me like there’s no way an individual can stay ahead of this, you almost have to find somebody, a firm that really is on the cutting edge and is sort of gutsy enough to push the envelope, just the remaining couple of minutes…

Maury: Knowledge, just knowledge.

Bill: With knowledge, yes.

Maury: Because many people use TurboTax because it’s cheaper but truthfully using a professional is the way to go. I mean, at our firm we have 13 accountants here in Texas, 14 accountants and every one of our people, you know I go back and forth from San Antonio to here – I’ve actually moved up to Dallas more time now because we’re training, we’re starting to – all of my employees need to have better access, need to know this kind of thing so they can tell the clients. And some of the bigger firms I know because I have work for them you know have training classes and it works out pretty good but people really need to question, people really need to sort of like make sure that their professional knows what is going on and know that their tax returns are being prepared correctly, efficiently so that the IRS, I mean, we don’t you know, it’s more expensive to defend yourself that it is to do it right the first time. So and that is what I say all of the time, people complain I say hey, that $500 you spent is well worthwhile because if you God forbid you did it wrong, it’s going to cost you more.

Bill: Well Maury, if someone wants to contact your firm as I look through the tax bracket area you probably don’t want someone making 0 – $8500 calling because there’s probably not a whole lot you can do better can you help? We’ve got a minute or so left, who can you help most in what brackets, at what do you start to be able to work some of your magic on this…

Maury: Well actually, we don’t ever turn down anyone. If you know, people are you know need help, I want them to call, okay so just to tell you I have a lot of resident doctors who owe big money and don’t make money until 5 or 10 years and they are in debt up there, we take on anybody it doesn’t matter.

Bill: So you would take a call from anybody listening to this show, you would take their call?

Maury: Correct, because there are all kinds I find people who don’t make much money but on the other hand their parents have a lot of money or you know so there’s inter-reactions of things that could be done.

Bill: So you are looking to network with people and you are looking to sort of work your business that way, one person talks to another person. What, because I know that you know what you are doing, I won’t anybody listening to this that has got tax issues really to give you a call Maury and I think as complicated as some of the stuff gets you may have $100,000 coming that you don’t know you’ve got coming or that you have to pay in, you may be able to defer and actually get money back, you won’t know with all the new laws unless you call somebody on Maury. Maury as we close out here why don’t you give them the information that they can contact you own and we will close our show that way.

Maury: Okay, my number that I can be reached on is 800-999-8931 and everybody can look at my website, glazerfinancial.com and everybody can e-mail me at [email protected]. And you know I realize that a lot of people my you know might not have money or whatever but there are always issues, you know it’s just a shorter answer we don’t bill for most of the consulting unless we get into some big situation but for the most part we don’t turn around and bill you so you do not have to worry about that it’s more important to get you the answer. Every one of my clients, my son and I started this 20 some years ago and we have 3000 clients, we do a couple of thousands of tax returns year with the pensions and everything and it’s important. People need to be planning, people need to be thinking about what they are doing and like I say to everybody who says hey I am leaving the country, why don’t you just get out and vote and let’s make sure things are done the correct way.

Bill: Pay your taxes, get your deductions and let’s move on.

Maury: Thank you Bill.

Bill: You bet, thanks again to you Maury for being on the show today and just advise the listeners take Maury up on his offer, he’ll listen to what your situation is if you give him a call and as we close out 2010 there has never been a better time to give him a call. So that is it, thanks again for listening to Off the Grid News, I’m Bill Heid.