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Why Your Accountant Isn’t a CFO & The Truth About Tax Myths (with Megan Robin) · Legal Late Night

• Jared Correia (00:00): Hello, everybody. We've got a show that promises to be at least mildly interesting for your listening and watching enjoyment. I'm your host, Jerry Correia. I'm the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. For the monologue, I'll be recapping my recent trip to Graceland. In the interview, we've got Megan Robin of Megan Robin Law. Megan helps business owners to reduce their tax liability. Now, who doesn't want that? On this counter program, we've got a new segment called Taxing Myths and Legends. Now, let's talk about the once, present, and future king of Memphis. Welcome to the next episode of our travel log series, Travels with Jared in Search of America. This is chapter 1977. Travels with Jared in Search of America heavy lies the Crown. Last week, I was at Memphis with my son for a basketball tournament. That's why this podcaster's releasing this week a day late, but I'm almost caught up. (01:07): Don't worry. Thank you for asking. Never having been to Memphis before and knowing there was a three hour break from basketball on Saturday, I wanted to go to Graceland, just like Paul Simon. I had no idea what to expect. And this is how you knew that I grew up without a smartphone or the internet, because I'm perfectly comfortable just rolling up somewhere and figuring things out. So sure, I could have researched everything there was to know about Graceland before I went, but where's the fun in that, people? What I did know before I arrived was the staggering cultural relevance, continued cultural relevance of the king of rock and roll, almost 50 years removed from his untimely death in 1977 at the age of just 42. I was born later that same year. I don't want to speculate, but maybe I am Elvis Presley incarnated. Think about it. (02:04): Anyway, everybody I talked to about my Elkomi trip knew who Elvis was. Even my kids who don't know anything that happened before 2022. They knew who Elvis was, even though they didn't know anything about him. One of the boys from my son's team actually wanted to go to Graceland with me. That did not happen, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. And everybody in or around my age that I told that I was going to Graceland was excited for me because they all basically said that Elvis was the man. An OG as it were. I remember when I was probably 10 that there was this kid in my class at school whose full name was Elvis Presley Lopes. I'm not making this up. And that was always staggering to me. Not only did this kid's mom name her son after Elvis. She made Elvis's last name, her son's middle name. (02:52): Now that's a dedicated fan base. Even now you can refer to Elvis without the use of his last name and everybody knows who you're talking about. He's on a one name basis. And the recognition for Elvis Presley has to be right up there with Santa or Jesus. Now, as I alluded to, I had no idea what to expect at Graceland. I thought it would be just the house. A boy was I wrong. Graceland, when you consider the entire state and not just the house, is almost 14 acres worth of property. I was totally unaware of this. So when I pulled up to the parking lot from the aptly named Elvis Presley Boulevard, I was kind of staggered by how big this compound is. I mean, don't get me wrong, the house is pretty fucking big, almost 18,000 square feet, but it looks kind of tiny sitting on this gargantuan property in a city. (03:42): Now, when you leave the parking lot, there's a big gate that leads you down a paved road to the ticketing center. There are shops and restaurants on either side and surrounding the ticketing center in a semi-circle. I swear to God, it's exactly like walking into Disney's Hollywood studios or whatever they call it now. It's Pixar Studios. I can't remember. Anyway, I can't keep up with corporate branding. So I'm walking down this paved road and that's when it hit me. I was in Renneck Disney World. And the thing about Graceland is that it is like a theme park with different lands. There's a Graceland house. There's the airplanes. Yes, there are airplanes. There's a car collection. There's the archives, lots of restaurants, multiple gift shops. It's an entire compound built to the God of capitalism for the king of rock and roll. I started with the house. (04:34): And I had to watch a film and take a shuttle over before I could get there because they don't let you simply walk across the street. The house at Graceland is a trip, man. It's like walking into a mid 1970s time capsule. It's like frozen in time. I look at my own home absent wallpaper and with basically two colors dominant, one of which is white. Whereas Graceland features rooms with one off themes. The living room is bright white with stained glass windows featuring peacocks, normal shit like that. It kind of looks like a church with a TV in it. The downstairs television room is fucking bright yellow and black. It's like watching TV while two bees try to populate in front of you. The jungle room did not let me down. Let me tell you. You probably heard of the jungle room. It was batshit crazy. (05:24): It literally looks like a jungle. There's a waterfall inside of it. And I can confirm that there are porcelain monkeys literally everywhere. In case you are unaware, Elvis famously collected porcelain monkeys of various sizes to the point at which Warren Zvon wrote a song about his habit called Healthfully Porcelain Monkey. Elvis also had horse stables in his backyard and randomly a racquetball court in an outbuilding with some pianos, which I was not aware of was a thing. Though one of the ladies on the tour with me insisted that lots of people have racquetball course at home. Okay. We're clearly not running in the same circles. But the biggest surprise for your boy was at the end of the tour. There's a very small pool at Graceland off the house, but as you walk past the pool to the exit, there are six graves circling a fountain. (06:12): And I was like, "Oh fuck. Elvis is buried at Graceland?" This was something that was unknown to me. And he has Elvis, his parents, his grandmother, his daughter, Lisa Marie, and his grandson are all buried on the grounds of his home right off the pool. This whole place was like a solid mind fuck. So I got back on the bus and the lady next to me asked if I had seen the new movie about Priscilla Presley, Elvis's wife. I had not. She said it was great and I should watch it. And then it addressed why she left Elvis, which was basically that he cheated on her constantly. But the tour bus driver turned around and disagreed. And he said that Priscilla left because she got a touch of that feminism. Well, all right then. When he wasn't being misogynistic, the bus driver did take the time to explain where the Graceland proceeds go these days. (07:02): Apparently actress Riley Keough is the sole trustee of the trust that owns Graceland and also holds a 15% stake in all other Elvis related business interests. She's Lisa Marie's daughter. So I got off the bus, but I wasn't done yet. There was a whole last other group of exhibits on the other side of the street back by the ticketing center. There are two private jets that are in an enclosure by the street. One's named the Lisa Marie, and it's just fucking huge and was retrofitted by Elvis for tour travel, which he did a lot of touring in the 70s before he died. It features that dining room, living room, bedroom, and two bathrooms. I learned from my tour there that Elvis really liked Gatorade, apparently. He also had a smaller plane called Hound Dog two after one of his famous songs. No worry on what happened to Hound Dog One. (07:55): Elvis also had a metric shit ton of cars and the autumn museum itself is actually really impressive. Yes, the pink Cadillac is there. Elvis bought a Cadillac and repainted it pink. It's actually pretty striking. Elvis references it in his song, Baby Let's Play House. And Bruce Springsteen wrote a whole song about it. But this place has other cars, motorcycles, go- karts, boats. It's wild. They even restored this sweet-ass international scout, which the groundkeepers of Graceland had been using. There's a whole exhibit related to Elvis' costumes. He was very into jumpsuits, especially later in his career and during his life shows in Vegas and Hawaii. And probably the most popular image of Elvis now is like him in a sequin jumpsuit and how he's inspired other artists like Kiss. They had other people who dressed like Elvis. They had their memorabilia there. There's even a section of the Elvis Museum that references Lilo and Stitch. (08:51): If you haven't seen that Disney movie, you should. Lelo is a little girl from Hawaii who's trying to teach the Alien Stitch to be good. And she basically holds up Elvis who's famous there from his Aloha from Hawaii concert film as a paragon of human virtue. That's followed by a montage featuring the Elvis song, Devil in Disguise, which is quite appropriate for the movie. There was even a stitch as Elvis stuffed animal in the gift shop. He had the hair and the jumpsuit, which I brought home from my daughter. Maybe my favorite thing I learned about the Elvis verse from my trip was that his backup band from the 70s during his tours was called the TCB Band. Yes. The taking care of business band. And the logo for the band is fucking awesome. It's got a lightning bolt on it. Seriously, no notes. To quote Homer Simpson, "No new stuff. (09:43): Just taking care of business. I also found a nice sweatshirt for the TCB band that I bought for my daughter as well. And she said it was really quite soft and wore it to school the next day. Of course. I've been on an ongoing Elvis deep dive ever since I've been back. I didn't know this, but I found out that Kurt Russell is the voice of Elvis and Forrest Gump. Who knew? I guess I do now. I rewatched some of the tiny Elvis sketches from Saturday Night Live where Nicholas Cage mostly plays a miniature version of Elvis who jokes about how big things are and gets man when people say he's cute. Seriously. What an amazing to see. I've also been watching some videos about Elvis's singing style, which is singularly unique. Elvis was basically a self-taught singing prodigy who had crazy ranger and could make tonal shifts with ease. (10:31): I'm coupled that with his southern twang and nobody quite sounds like Elvis. And none of his shit was ever auto-tuned either. If you ever have a chance, you should go to Graceland too. I could have easily spent the entire day there in the valley of the King. The King is dead, but long-lived the King. Now, let's talk about the Queen of Tax Planning. That's right. Next up is Megan Robin of Megan Robin Law, who's going to talk with us about tax strategies for small and large business owners. Get out your abacuses. Friends, that's next. (11:11): Well, I've effectively run out of things to say, which is awkward because this is a podcast. So I'm simply going to now observe the maneuverings of my pet leopard gecko raptor for the next several moments. There he is. That cricket never had a chance. But that I can do later on my own time, observing the wonderful world of nature. We've got another great guest for you today, so let's get to it. Our guest today is Megan Robin, who's the owner of Appropriately Enough. Megan Robin Law. Megan, welcome to the show. Megan Robin (11:49): Thanks for having me. Jared Correia (11:51): Now, we heard in our pre-podcast conversation that this is your second effort podcast. I'm extremely proud that we got your second guest appearance. So when you blow up, we can be like, yeah, we had her early. So thank you. Megan Robin (12:05): The OG. Yeah. Jared Correia (12:09): Let's go way back. I usually like to do the origin story when I talk to people. So why did you get into law practice in the first place? What was appealing about being a lawyer for you? Megan Robin (12:22): Yeah, so I have to give the credit to this to my grandmother. So she was born in West Virginia on a farm. Her family was super poor. She was a female in the 1920s, so not tons of options. And so for her, she always wanted to be a doctor, but that was never in the cards based on her background and the times. So when she had grandkids and kids of her own, her whole thing was education. She said, stack as many degrees as humanly possible, get educated. It opens doors. And I have to say, she's right. It's opened so many doors in my life. I've always been really entrepreneurial as well. And so I think it's a great background. There's a lot of attorneys who practice law and then there's a lot that open their own businesses and go into other things as well. So she was the one that pushed me in that direction and I'm Jared Correia (13:09): Appreciative Megan Robin (13:09): Of that. Jared Correia (13:10): West Virginia. She's like Jerry West. You know Jerry West, basketball player. He's from West Virginia too. Megan Robin (13:16): Really? Oh, okay. Jared Correia (13:17): Yeah. His nickname was Zeke from Cabin Creek because he was from Cabin Creek, West Virginia. And they became the NBA logo. So look at that. That's really cool that your grandmother encouraged that. And you took her seriously because you were like, not only am I going to get a JD, I'm also going to go back and get an LLM in tax law, which sounds terrible. Why would you do that to yourself? Megan Robin (13:40): So it was interesting. So I did not go to law school knowing I was going to get into tax, but once I got there, I realized I like practical. I like real world, real consequences. So classes like constitutional law where it's very, it depends and squishy and fluid, that did not appeal to me. But I got this, it was timing or fate, I don't know. But the head general council of Chevron who had been there for 30 years, this guy named Thomas Shudish, who was the head of their tax department for decades, came and he had just retired when I was in law school. And he had gone to UC Davis Law, which is where I went. And he was like, "I'm just going to teach a class." Just randomly never taught anything before. Came in and I was like, "That sounds cool." So I took the class and I loved it because it was real world problems, messy, interesting, tons of money involved, tons of practical implications. (14:35): And I crushed it in that class and I realized that's what I want to do. I don't want to do the it depends. I want real world, real money, real businesses and see what happens. And the same thing happened when I got my LLM in tax law at Loyola. They had one class where real tax attorneys, practicing attorneys would bring in problems that were interesting and difficult to solve and we would get one a week and our job was to solve it. And by the end of the week, we had to present what we thought what they should do, research the tax law, figure out a plan. And I loved that intersection of not just theory, but apply it and make it really tangible. These are people's livelihoods, their businesses, their money, and that lights me up. I think that's interesting, at least personally. I know I'm a total nerd, but that's kind of what I have to say. (15:24): That's my fucking Jared Correia (15:25): Nightmare. I'm happy for you. Well, I think it's interesting because I feel like most lawyers are not that analytical and most of them love the it depends stuff because they're really good at bullshitting, but your stuff is like, you got to be right kind of. Megan Robin (15:45): Oh yeah. Yeah. Jared Correia (15:48): I took a federal income tax course in law school, which was a mistake. I did okay in school, but I think I got like a D minus in that class or something like that. It was tragic, like dumpster fire levels of bad. So you've now started, I guess I could describe it as like a tax consultancy. Is that fair to say? Tell people about the business you're operating in right now. I don't want to fuck it up. Megan Robin (16:15): Yeah. So I started the firm to fill a gap that I was seeing in the marketplace, a major gap. So most law firm owners have a ton of advisors. They have accountants, they have financial and investment advisors, real estate brokers, business and estate attorneys, all these different people. But what I saw was no one was looking at how all of these pieces fit together, especially from a tax optimization perspective. And what I do is kind of fusing the multidisciplinary approach that works in small businesses. So I have to look at not only the tax implications, but understanding personal finance, business finance, insurance, health and benefit plan design, all these different pieces that I think are fascinating because I'm naturally a very curious person. And so I get to pull that entrepreneurial side along with all these very interesting finance sides and then put them in this tax container. (17:07): So it's difficult to explain, but essentially I'm designing structure around your financial and business life. Yeah. Jared Correia (17:17): I mean, I thought you explained it pretty well. That makes sense. So now before you did this, had you launched a business previously? Did you run your own law firm or were you just like, I'm going to do it? Megan Robin (17:28): So I bounced around a lot. So I worked for a small firm for a while. I worked in state government and finance. I did some in- house counsel work and then did a stay-at-home mom stint. So I kind of bounced around because I didn't have that perfect idea. I was thinking about how will I design this? I think that journey was my figuring out, getting educated, getting experience, and then seeing what the landscape looked like and yeah, figuring out what my firm would look like. So it was a winding path. I think not always direct, but now I'm, I think, perfectly positioned to understand these issues. Jared Correia (18:12): Well, good for you. It's not easy to do that. I mean, it's one thing to have a great idea. It's another thing entirely to execute on it. So how are you enjoying the lifestyle of an entrepreneur? Megan Robin (18:24): I love it. So this has been, I'm kind of kicking myself for not doing it sooner. This has been who I am as a person. I remember I would get in trouble as a kid for ... Now it's really in to be entrepreneurial. There's this Silicon Valley and the hoodies, but back in the 80s and 90s, when I was growing up, that was not a thing. I remember in elementary school, I would get really good grades. And I had one teacher who, when you aced a test or whatever, she would give you a sheet of stickers or a strip of stickers. And I started using those as playground currencies. So here are five stickers and give me your gummy bears, et cetera. And I went to the principal's office for that. And there was several experiences like that where you would just get in trouble for being entrepreneurial or smart. (19:08): And so now I feel like- It's like the prison Jared Correia (19:11): Yard. I got 30 stickers for a pack of cigarettes. Megan Robin (19:17): Yeah. So I also think I'm unemployable in the sense that I will work night and day on an idea I think is interesting or a topic, but when I was working for other people, I always felt kind of this like, ugh, or I would do it this way or I would want to do ... I love having the creative control, picking my own clients, all of it. It's a perfect fit that I probably should have done a decade ago, but- Jared Correia (19:41): It's tough. Yeah. I mean, I think people have that personality and then ... Yeah, same. I'm unemployable also. I'm a fucking horrible employee, but I can run a business. So congratulations. That's great. So what does it look like in terms of niching down for you? What I think is interesting is you could have been a tax advisor for almost anybody, but you kind of have this niche of attorneys. Why'd you decide to do that? Megan Robin (20:15): I think part of the reason that actually is kind of the better answer to why it took so long to open the firm is that I love tax law. I did not like how it's being currently practiced. So most tax attorneys in my LLM program went to big law. There's just Chevrons and all of this or in- house counsel, like a Chevron type thing. Or the sole practitioners I was aware of were all doing audit defense, like IRS audit defense, that kind of thing, and neither of those areas interested me. And so I came in with all this gusto, I love taxes, this is exciting and interesting. And then I could not find a job that made sense. And the kind of firm that I've built today did not exist and still really doesn't exist at all. And so I think that's why it took so long to find my place is because I couldn't find a job that fit what I was trying to do. (21:05): And then the longer that I worked for other people, the more gaps and issues and fragmentation of advice I was seeing. And finally, I put all the pieces together where I found a way to practice tax and not be an auditor, not in big law, not an in- house counsel, and working with small business owners, which scratches the entrepreneurial itch and the kind of people I like. I think entrepreneurs in general have a really different personality and mindset than employees. They're interesting, they're creative, they take risks, and I wanted that type of client. So it took me a while, and I finally just had to build something that's never existed to do it. Jared Correia (21:42): Okay. So talk to me a little bit about that then, because it's a relatively new thing. So how do people engage with you? What does your process look like? What should people be expecting if they hire somebody like you? Megan Robin (21:53): Yeah. So the first thing I do is your classic discovery call, and that's just fit. Are they normal? Do they have reasonable expectations? What is going on? One of the biggest things is tax law in general is incentive based. And so the tax code incentivizes certain behaviors. So it incentivizes opening a small business, investing real estate, donating to charity, et cetera. If you come to me and even if you're making $10 million a year in your W2 job, there's not a ton I can do for you because there's not a lot of tax code provisions. Jared Correia (22:26): I said I was unemployable before, but I'd like to retract that if someone can get me a $10 million W2 job. Go ahead. Megan Robin (22:31): They exist. So yeah, I think people, you have to understand if you're not doing things that the tax code incentivizes, you're not going to say ... A W2 is a W2. You can't write off anything. There's just not a lot. So pretty much the first call is that. We make sure that it makes sense, there's something I can help you with. And then if it seems like it makes sense, the first thing I have people do is send me their prior year tax return and a P&L from their business so I can see what's going on. And then I assess whether there's opportunities there. If they're in perfect shape and everything's good, I'll send them on their way. That almost never happens. Most of the time there's a lot going on or there's tangential things going on like benefit plan design, issues on wanting to seller by real estate, problems with a current advisor where they're getting advice that they don't think is correct. (23:26): And so it's very individualized. There's no template per se. There's not like everyone does this, that, or the other. Pretty much I look at what's going on, I talk to them, and then I build out what I think they need. Jared Correia (23:37): Gotcha. And I would imagine in a practice like that, you get a lot of opportunities to spin people off to other vendors, right? Because if somebody needs an estate plan, if somebody needs tax prep work, that's easy. And then I would imagine that helps you build out a referral network too. Am I guessing correctly on all those things? Megan Robin (23:56): Yeah, because some people come and I say, all you need is a good accountant. You don't need a tax, you're fine. Go on your way. Other times it's more complicated than that. And I'm a small boutique practice, so I'm low volume. I only take really good fit. I'm not going to take a ton of ... I don't do hourly little projects. I do either full tax plan or not at all, and so it's very nuanced. Yeah. Jared Correia (24:20): So I've noticed you've been talking a little bit about this notion of tax myths for small business owners. What are some tax myths that they should be aware of? Megan Robin (24:31): I mean, obviously TikTok and YouTube and all of the social media, anyone can say anything. And so that creates- Jared Correia (24:39): It's very true. Megan Robin (24:40): Yeah. A world where someone who looks competent can say something and then it's off base, but sometimes it's more subtle than that. Even really classic advice, like save really aggressively for retirement in a post or a pre-tax vehicle. So the thing that I see sometimes, which surprises people is they'll put things in, save money today, get that big deduction and save money in a pre-tax situation. And when you take the money out later from a 401k or Roth IRA, then it's taxable. And conventional wisdom, if you follow the normal flow of you retire and then your income drops and you live off the retirement. But what I see sometimes, not always, but sometimes is that that doesn't happen, especially with my really entrepreneurial clients who have a lot going on. So they have multiple businesses, they have real estate investments, their income never drops. If anything, it goes up, especially for knowledge workers who kind of peak later, they're making the most later in life when they're really experts and they're on boards and they're being asked to speak and all of this. (25:50): And so a lot of times I'll talk to my clients about when do you want to retire, if at all, and what does that look like? And what else do you have going on? Because a really conventional piece of advice of squirrel away money now may not make sense. We may want to find other ways to start pulling money out or do Roth conversions or things where it's not going to be taxable later because you're going to be wealthier later as opposed to- Jared Correia (26:14): That's a good point. Megan Robin (26:16): Yeah. So there's interesting little subtle nuances. Jared Correia (26:20): Yeah. I don't know. The conventional retirement seems to be less and less appealing for people as they live longer. And like you said, knowledge workers, if I wanted to quote unquote retire and live, oh, I don't know, in Yale, in Hawaii, that'd be great. But if I'm a knowledge worker, I could still get a laptop and work if I wanted to. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. And you're probably better and Megan Robin (26:44): Better because you have more and more Jared Correia (26:46): Experience. Yes. Megan Robin (26:47): Yeah. Jared Correia (26:48): All right. Any other myths you want to highlight? Megan Robin (26:51): Let's see. What's a good one? Is there a topic specifically that you're curious about? There's so many different areas that could go. Jared Correia (27:02): I'm just interested in myths. Give me your next best one, your favorite. Megan Robin (27:10): I think there's a lot of confusion around the different roles that each advisor plays. So I think a lot of people think that they can hand off all of their box or digital these days, but their box of receipts, they're accountant and they're covered and that their account is doing proactive tax strategy. Some will do it, some will not. Usually if you're not paying some extra fee, if you're paying just like, I don't know, 500 bucks for your tax return to be done, don't expect that they're doing any additional work. But I think that people assume that. And then if they find out, well, why did my accountant not get this deduction or why did he not do this or this other thing? I think there's a lot of confusion also about the breadth of education. So some accountants are incredible. I've met some of the most incredible, highly educated, expert level, but others don't have that additional training. (28:02): It's almost like their version of MCLE. Some of them take it upon themselves to learn more and others kind of just put all the numbers in the right box and move on. And it's really difficult to know what you're getting because it's not in your wheelhouse for most people. So they don't know if their accountant is good because they don't have a way to assess that. Jared Correia (28:23): I think that's a good point. I think there's a lot of expectations from lawyers I talk to at least that the accountant they hire is going to be more like a CFO and the vast majority of them do not want to do that. It's supposed to be for them a transactional annual practice. So I think that's a really good one. Let me ask you this. Government's kind of fucked up right now. I would say disarray would be a kind way to describe the federal government right now. So what is tax filing that process going to look like this year? Are people asking about that? Is it going to be crazy? What's going on with that? Megan Robin (29:04): Yeah, so there's no way to know. I mean, it is crazy like the IRS getting defunded and then all of the changes and efficiency- Jared Correia (29:11): It's fucking Megan Robin (29:11): Nuts. Yeah. I think we have, as practitioners and the accountants that I talk to is we act as if things are normal. So we turn things in on time, we follow the law. I'm personally very conservative. So if you're one of ... I've had people call me saying, "I want to move to Puerto Rico to avoid taxes." I'm like, "I'm not that guy." I do the kind of strategy where you sleep well at night, you're building long-term wealth, boring, long-term, tried and true strategies that are effective. That's my jam. I don't do the weird hide money over here, register your car in a weird state, move to Porto Vera. I don't know. I'm not doing all that. And so what I tell my clients is follow the law as we see it now, do things on time and hope for the best. I think we can expect Delays and things, so refund delays. (30:03): I was just Jared Correia (30:03): Talking- Oh, there's definitely going to be refund delays. I can promise you that. Megan Robin (30:08): Yeah. Getting things done is really hard. I was just talking to an accountant and I gave him a call and he had his phone on his desk and he'd been on hold eight hours or something. And so it's just patience and do your best at this point. Jared Correia (30:24): So if you're engaged with somebody, I know we talked about that doesn't mean that they don't have an accountant anymore. They're still going to engage with that person. They may have other advisors as well. Do you engage with those various vendors also? Or is this more like they get a document from you and then go on your way and go forth and save money? Megan Robin (30:46): Yeah. Jared Correia (30:46): Is there a continuing relationship here? Yeah, go ahead. Megan Robin (30:49): Oh yeah. I absolutely work with their existing advisors because I'm a tax attorney, so I'm not an accountant. I don't have in- house accounting. Some firms do and they'll bundle that together. I don't. So whoever your accountant is, we kind of assess how competent they are. Once I've seen the return, I can kind of sense what level your accountant's operating at. If I think they're doing a good job, we stick with them. I'll let them know if there's changes that need to be made or if there's marching orders, I'll let them know, "Hey, I want to see this. I want to see that. " And usually they're great to work with. If their accountant's on the struggle bus, then I'll recommend some alternative options that they can work Jared Correia (31:25): With. But they're not afraid to work with you, it doesn't sound like. They'll get you documentation, they'll have conversations with you, the accountants Megan Robin (31:32): I'm Jared Correia (31:32): Talking about. Megan Robin (31:32): And they shouldn't be. I don't have a competing line of business. I don't offer accounting. I don't do accounting. I don't touch that at all. If anything, I've had some really nice ones where they feel like they can ask me questions like, "Hey, what would you do with this? " Because Jared Correia (31:47): They're Megan Robin (31:47): Not attorneys. So I like to have a really good relationship where we help each other. If there's something even I don't see that's a very more accounting focused or form focused thing, they can tell me. And if I see something that's in my wheelhouse, I'll let them know. So I like to see us as complimenting each other. Jared Correia (32:07): For the small business owners you work with or larger business owners you work with, what do you like to see from them in terms of organizational principles? Are some people doing crazy shit like dropping a box off a paper at your house or is everybody using QuickBooks? What do you see? Have there been any horror stories? And then how do you want people to engage with you in terms of their business management? Megan Robin (32:33): There has not been any horror stories. Oh, Jared Correia (32:36): That's good. Megan Robin (32:37): Yeah. I kind of weed that out a little bit in the discovery call. If someone seems a little eccentric, then it may not be a good fit. What I see a lot actually is right around the million dollar mark in a law firm size is where old systems start breaking. So things that worked when you were smaller no longer work. And for the first time- Yeah. For the first time, some of these firms, they have extra cash that they don't know what to do with. So they have questions like, should I reinvest it back in the business? Should I put it in my retirement plan? Is my retirement plan structured correctly? Things like that. There's this moment right in that range where I get a lot of my clients are. And I think to get to that level, it weeds out a lot of the messier situation. (33:23): So I'm probably not seeing that as much because those people who can't use a computer, et cetera, they're probably not going to call me. So I don't think I have an accurate view of the world, but what I see coming into my office by the time they make it to me or the kinds of people who call me are pretty together. Jared Correia (33:42): So it sounds like some of the attributes you're looking for from clients, and feel free to add to this list, organized, tech savvy, kind of on top of their business. Anything else you're looking for if someone's interested in working with you? Megan Robin (34:00): I think open-minded and curious and just ready to optimize what they're working with. I think money can be a really interesting and vulnerable area. And I think as attorneys, we're used to being experts and having all the answers. So it can be really difficult to come to someone and admit that they don't know the difference between a stock and a bond or what's a capital gain. I've had attorneys, it's later in the engagement, they'll say, "I actually don't know what this is. " And tell me, I will tell you, I'm here for that. You're not born out of the womb knowing the difference between a high yield savings account. And so I think just that ability to be a little vulnerable is great if possible to say, "These are the areas in my practice where I'm not sure. This is the areas in my finances where I need help." Being honest about what they see their career. (34:55): If you do want to retire at 55, no shame. Well, let's see if we can make that happen. Just tell me- Jared Correia (35:01): No shame. That sounds fucking great. Megan Robin (35:05): Yeah. It's interesting. Everyone comes in with their own kind of history about money and their own insecurities or strengths or weaknesses. And so being able to open up with me about that helps me make a better tax plan because I can build it against what you're really optimizing, not what you think might look good on paper or what people expect you to optimize. Jared Correia (35:28): So attorneys generally are pretty risk averse. So you mentioned this before, you're like, "I want to play by the rules. I want to do the legal thing." Do you ever find that attorneys that you work with are too risk averse for your liking or are you ever pushing somebody and being like, "Hey, we can do this. You're not going to get Megan Robin (35:49): Audited." I never really push. I just lay out the risks. And so I'll say, "Okay, this is a ... " Because there are gray areas in tax, lots of them. It's not a cut and dry. And so I'll lay out, if you do this, this is the risk, this is the reward, this is what could happen. So I just lay it out in a clean ... Because I think education is power, information is power. So if they see that, there's one area I think that if I could push a little more is I see in a lot of healthier financial portfolios, what I'll see first is they'll max out retirement plans, get those really full, and then a lot of them will go into real estate and do that. And then the last order is taxable brokerage accounts because those don't have advantages. And I do see some nervousness around real estate and I'm a big fan of real estate. (36:35): I might be biased because I'm in California where property values have appreciated over time really aggressively. I personally made money in real estate. I just see it as a really great way to balance out your portfolio. So if I could push a little bit, I think that's where sometimes attorneys get nervous about that and rightfully so. Every kind of investment, whether that's stock and bond investments or real estate have risk associated. But I think sometimes they underplay the risk in Wall Street investments and overplay the risk in real estate investments because both are risky. And I think I'm pushing against the grain a little too is because most of them have financial advisors, so investment advisors. And those advisors are really trying to convince them not to do real estate because most of them are compensated using AUM fees, which should I explain what those are or ... Please, Jared Correia (37:26): Yes. Okay. Remember I got a D minus in federal income taxation. Let me bring that back to the four. Go ahead. Megan Robin (37:33): So an AUM fee is what's called an assets under management fee. And so it's usually a percentage and it sounds really small. Usually it's around 1%, 1.5%, somewhere in there. And so if someone says, most of financial advisors operate like this, and so they'll say, "We charge 1.5% of the assets that we manage for you. " So if you manage a million dollars, 1.5% of that is 15 grand a year. So it's substantial. Most people don't do the math and they don't realize, oh, 1.5%, that's nothing. And I think the reason it goes unchecked is because you never receive a bill. You never get a bill from anyone. It's just siphoned out of your account. It's slowly taken out of your investment portfolio. And so a lot of times I think that creates a conflict of interest because the advisor operating under this model, if I come to you and I have a $10 million portfolio, I want to take a million and buy a building, then they'll say, "No, you shouldn't do that. (38:28): That's risky. Leave it here," because he doesn't want to lose the 15 grand a year if I pull that little portion out. So it creates issues sometimes. And I think it becomes an invisible, especially we've been in a bull market for a really long time, so these fees don't go noticed. I think people start asking more questions in bear markets when they're saying, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's going down a lot and you're pulling out a fee and people kind of pay more attention." Jared Correia (38:55): Right. That's a great point. All right. So I think this episode is going to release probably, Evan's going to kill me because I'm doing this now, probably like sometime in early March, which means that people are going to have like five, six weeks before they actually file their taxes. Other than buying a big ass building, anything anybody can do in the last month to prep for that, to look for things that they can tell their accountant about. Megan Robin (39:24): There's not a ton in the last minute, which is why proactive planning is the most effective type of planning because you want to get retirement contributions in, get deductions before the end of the year and bigger structure things like, are you the right entity type? Are your benefit plans structured correctly? All of those things take time and they're not going to show up on your tax return immediately. So that one's kind of tricky. There's not the last minute thing. I would also say if you want your accountant to do a good job, don't give it to him last minute because that's when he's the peak stressed out. The sooner that you can get your stuff to your accountant, the better result you're going to get and the more responsiveness you're going to get and you'll be their favorite. So if that's abouter- I Jared Correia (40:08): See what you did there. Talk to your accountant early. Talk to Megan early. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the interview segment, but now we're going to have you more fun. Will you come back for another segment before we finish up? Megan Robin (40:21): Yeah, let's do this. All Jared Correia (40:22): Right, everybody. We'll be right back. Welcome back everybody. That's right. It's a counter program. It's a podcast within a podcast. This is a conversational space where we can address usually unrelated topics that I want to explore at a greater depth with my guests. Expect no rhyme and very little reason. Megan, welcome back. How are you doing? Feel nervous at all or are you good? Megan Robin (40:50): A little because I've listened to some of the questions that you've asked people in the past. I don't know. It could be anything. Jared Correia (41:00): I did something just for you, given your proclivity for tax. I put together a game that I'm calling taxing myths and legends. You can be a taxing legend in this instance. I called it this because in part it was taxing to put together this list. See what I did there. Anyway- Megan Robin (41:19): I love a Jared Correia (41:19): Good time. I'm here all day for that. Good. So I'm going to tell you about some historical vagaries of various tax codes throughout the entire timeline of Western Eastern civilization. And all you have to do is tell me whether they're real taxes or if I'm entirely full of shit. Are you ready? Megan Robin (41:48): I'm ready. Jared Correia (41:50): So I will give you a short description. I'll tell you the name of the tax, I'll tell you the period of time, and then you can take it from there. So let's start with number one. Renaissance, Venice, Italy, the shadow tax. Sunlight was defined as a communal resource such that owners of buildings with overhanging balconies were charge of tax based on the size of the shadow cast by the balcony. Was there a shadow tax in Renaissance Italy for overhanging balconies in Venice? Is it real or did I just make it up? Megan Robin (42:35): I'm going to go with real. That sounds legit. I don't know. Jared Correia (42:39): It's a good guess, but- Megan Robin (42:41): Is it fake? Jared Correia (42:42): It is not real. I have to say I should take a break. Megan Robin (42:47): About that kind of stuff. Like building high- Jared Correia (42:48): Well, I should take a break here. Yes. One thing, I'm not a tax person, as you know. I feel like I made that abundantly clear throughout the course of the show, but there are a lot of fucking weird tax angles historically. Some of the stuff is crazy. It is. So they're all believable, really. Okay. So that's a Euro for one, but that's all right. We got time left. Are you ready for the next one? Megan Robin (43:12): All right, let's do it. Jared Correia (43:14): All right. Now we're moving to revolutionary France. The grand hat levy is what I'm calling this one. Citizens wearing popular in that era, bicorn or tricorn hats were taxed by the total surface area of the hats brim. Large hat brims were considered a canopy of the ego and thus taxable. Was there a levy for big ass hats in revolutionary France? Is this real? Megan Robin (43:52): Oh my goodness. I want to say no because I got the last one wrong. I don't know. Were they imported? Were there tarret? Oh, Jared Correia (44:00): Good. I tell people all the time, this is why I love doing this with lawyers because they really think about it and try to get the logic behind it. So go ahead. Work through the machinations in your head. What do you think? Megan Robin (44:12): Oh my goodness. I'm going to say no because that's a hard one. I think ... No. No on that one. Jared Correia (44:20): The answer is no, is it's fake tax. I totally made it up. Megan Robin (44:25): However- Jared Correia (44:26): I Megan Robin (44:26): Feel like there would be human rights things like, "My head is big and that's not fair. Her head is small." Jared Correia (44:35): There was a real hat tax in Great Britain in 1784, and you had to have a special stamp inside every hat that was sold. And if you had a stamplest hat, you were fined. And there was even a death penalty related to not paying the hat tax. Megan Robin (44:54): Oh, wow. Well, I could see that. I could see it on certain products. I did a short stint at the Board of Equalization, which is the state California tax entity. And you have to have certain stamps on cigarettes and other things at convenience stores. So product-based taxes are very real, but taxes are deeply political more than people think. They're really political. And so something where it's like how someone looks or their body, I have to rule out, oh, the size or anything that could get you in political hot water. A lot of times the market taxes as this is going to help our community or save firefighters or whatever. Jared Correia (45:32): I'm so glad you brought up bodily functions because that is directly related to our next tax. Roman Empire, let's travel back to the Roman Empire, the urine tax. Emperor of Vespasian taxed the collection of urine from public toilets used by tanners and launderers because it contained ammonia. Is this a real tax? Megan Robin (45:57): Well, there are taxes on chemicals and various products like that. I think no though, because- Jared Correia (46:07): This is real. This is real. Yes. Interesting. This was a thing in ancient Rome. That was the best way for them to get ammonia easily. Megan Robin (46:17): That's so fast. That reminds me. I read this news story once. This is a tangent, but about- Jared Correia (46:22): Go ahead. We take tangents here, as you can see. Megan Robin (46:25): It reminds Jared Correia (46:26): Me of what we do. People Megan Robin (46:26): Are incredibly creative. And I read this story about a guy who was taking all the leftover food from buffets in Vegas and using his feed for pigs. And his pigs were huge. They were just ... I was like, that is such a beer thing. Jared Correia (46:42): We'll come back to cooking. It's like you're anticipating everything I'm going to ask. All right. To get back to 500, two for four, let's talk about the Russian empire and its beard tax, which may or may not have existed. Peter the great forced men to pay for facial hair. Payers carried a mandatory beard token that they could show people to show that they paid the beard tax. To him, the long flowing beards of Russian nobility represented a backward medieval Russia and he wanted to eradicate beards. The only way he could have a beard is if you had a beard token that you could pull out and show people. Was there actually a beard tax in the Russian empire under Peter the Great? Megan Robin (47:30): Oh, this one's close because like we were talking about before, tax incentivized behavior and it's very political. So this could go on a yes on that Jared Correia (47:38): Side. Right into your wavelength. Yeah. Megan Robin (47:41): I know. But on the flip side, it sounds crazy. Oh, do I go yes or no? The pressure. I'm going to go with no. Jared Correia (47:52): Yes. Megan Robin (47:52): Is it no? Jared Correia (47:53): It was a real tax. No, it was real tax. Megan Robin (47:56): Wow. I should have got ... My first thought was Jared Correia (47:58): That- Go with your instincts. Megan Robin (48:00): I know. I should follow my instincts. Goodness. Jared Correia (48:04): All right. Let's keep going. This is a good one. Let's move over to the kingdom of Prussia, which is now mostly Germany. They had a single lady's tax, maybe. In 1712, a tax was proposed on unmarried women to fund the military, essentially penalizing women for remaining single. Did the kingdom of Prussia have a single lady's tax? Probably greatly angering Beyonce. Megan Robin (48:31): Yeah. I'm going to go with yes. I'm just going to all try. Jared Correia (48:35): Correct. Megan Robin (48:35): Oh, Jared Correia (48:37): Nice. Correct. Correct. Well done. Wow. You're back in it. I got three more weird ones for you. Let's do 19th century America and the squirrel scalp tax. Megan Robin (48:51): Ooh, gross. Okay. Jared Correia (48:53): The state of Ohio required residents to submit a certain number of squirrel scalps along with their regular tax payments because squirrels were so destructive to the crops in the region. In 1800s, Ohio, did you have to submit squirrel scalps along with your standard tax payments? I'm going Megan Robin (49:12): To go no. Just because of the Jared Correia (49:14): Growth. That was a real thing. Megan Robin (49:15): Really? Oh. Yeah. Jared Correia (49:17): Yeah. Megan Robin (49:18): Wow. Jared Correia (49:18): Trying to root those squirrels out of the community. Megan Robin (49:22): Wow. Did it work? Jared Correia (49:23): I think it's kind of fucked up that you would scalp a squirrel. I know you go about doing that. Yeah. Just like, can I just donate the entire squirrel without scalping it? Yeah. I don't think it worked tremendously well because it hasn't been on the books for hundreds of years. All right. Two more. Medieval England. The window tax. To avoid income disclosure, officials taxed the number of windows in homes. Citizens responded by bricking them up to save money. Was there a window tax in medieval England and did people use the tax dodge of bricking up their windows? Megan Robin (50:07): I'm going to go with yes. Jared Correia (50:09): That Megan Robin (50:09): Is true. Jared Correia (50:10): That Megan Robin (50:10): Is true. Yeah. Okay. If that one Jared Correia (50:13): Felt- Well, back in the day, in medieval England, people ... It was not a thing that you would disclose your income to the government. It was kind of viewed as a massive privacy infraction. So they were just like, "Well, just count the windows on the houses." And the more windows you have, the more money you have, obviously. So if you look at all these Megan Robin (50:35): Old English houses. Some of it though, just for daylight. I love sunshine. I don't know. It'd be worth the cost just to have some sunshine. Jared Correia (50:44): So if people listen, go on Google and you can see some of these houses in Medieval England where they bricked up the windows and they would do like ... It was like tic-tac-toe. They'd do three windows across or they'd do one set of windows on the right side of the house, so they still had sunshine coming in the other side. But yeah, this was unpopular because people viewed it as a daylight tax. Exactly. Megan Robin (51:08): Yeah. Jared Correia (51:08): Okay. Last one. Ancient Egypt, the cooking oil tax. Pharaohs employed oil searchers to ensure that citizens didn't reuse old fat to cook with, forcing them to buy fresh, heavily taxed, state monopoly oil. Did the pharaohs have a monopoly on oil for cooking in ancient Egypt? Is that real? Megan Robin (51:39): I could see that being possible. I'm going to go with you. Jared Correia (51:42): Yeah, you got it. Yeah. It's real. That's a real thing. Megan Robin (51:46): I'm getting Jared Correia (51:46): Better. Unfortunately, that's the last one I have, but you really warmed up to this. I think you got five, which is totally commendable given what we do here. Megan Robin (51:59): Yeah. Cool. Jared Correia (52:01): Megan, you were great. Please come back sometime. Megan Robin (52:03): Yeah, sounds good. This was fun. Thank you for having me. Jared Correia (52:06): Thanks for our guest, Megan Robin, the owner of Megan Robin Law. To learn more about Megan, visit MeganRobin.com. Now, because I'll always be a '90s kid who constantly broke his Transformer's toys, trying to transform them. I still remember when I broke Iron Hide, devastating, but whose true passion is burning CDs for anyone who would listen? I'm now just doing the modern version of that, which is creating Spotify playlist for every podcast episode that I record where the songs are tangentially related to an episode topic. For this week's playlist, of course, it's an Elvis retrospective and is sponsored by the 1992 film, Honeymoon in Vegas, starring Bruno Mars. No, it's not. And you could probably have guessed that 30 plus year old movies have expended their marketing budget and does sponsor podcasts, so it would be pretty dope if they did. Join us next time when I feel my temperature rising.