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Today, we have Mark Perlberg, a CPA, Certified Tax Planner and
founder of a Prosper CPA joining us to delve into the intricacies of leveraging tax strategies for growing and safeguarding wealth. Mark is a seasoned tax strategist with unparalleled expertise in helping high-income individuals and business owners maximize their tax savings and investment returns.
In this episode, Mark unpacks a variety of sophisticated tax strategies that go beyond the standard deductions. With a focus on proactive tax planning, he illustrates how understanding and implementing advanced tactics can substantially minimize tax liabilities and unlock additional capital for reinvestment.
Mark emphasizes the rarity of proactive planners in the CPA world, noting that less than 5% of CPAs engage in such forward-thinking strategies. He shares his wealth of knowledge on how strategic tax planning can become an invaluable investment, yielding returns that far exceed traditional investments by potentially 5 to 10 times.
Listeners will learn how to optimize their tax outcomes by aligning losses and income strategically, and hear captivating case studies illustrating real-world applications of these strategies, including a remarkable scenario where taxes on a $16 million transaction were eliminated.
Join us as Mark Perlberg provides actionable insights that can transform your approach to tax planning and wealth growth.
In This Episode
- Charitable tax deductions and solar tax strategies
- Effective planning and timing for tax efficiency
- Evaluating investments based on tax benefits and returns
- The impact of proper tax planning on long-term wealth building
Mark, welcome to the show.
Hey Dave, thanks for having me.
Yeah, you bet. Really grateful to have you on the show, Mark. I find that this area of tax planning can be so vexing for so many people and so many people really just don’t even understand the possibilities of proper tax planning, and you know, I think that that is the challenge, right, is you don’t know what you don’t know.
But, you know, before we kind of jump into your background and everything, why don’t we really start there, right? Help the audience really understand what is the difference from traditional tax planning versus proactive tax planning and talk to us a little bit about the industry.
Yeah. So, you know, I would say that most people are being underserved by their advisors or their peers. You know, most firms are what I call 10 40 factories and tell you what you owe and then if you decide to engage in tax planning, there’s a whole spectrum of opportunities and complexities here and I say, I would say that, you know, we say, we talk about proactive and basic tax planning here and what’s the difference in and what kinds of tax planning is there.
So, depending on your levels of complexity and how much income and potential tax liabilities we’re dealing with here is gonna impact what level of involvement and engagement are you gonna need from a tax advisor here. So let’s say you’re making like 100, 150 in an S-corp, yeah, you can have some conversations and do some basic tax planning and you know, maybe put some money into a retirement account or have some investments and some, more basic features.
But then when we move into seven figures of profit, now we start to see bigger tax problems to solve, which introduces more complex and more interesting and unique opportunities. So we move from a spectrum of well, if you’re, if you, know, at the low end, if you’re making like maybe 60,000 at your W two, there’s not really a whole lot of tax planning, you know, maybe some basic investment decisions to some, you know, foundational business ideas for entrepreneurs.
Then at the other side of the spectrum, when we have significant income or really big capital gain events or exits, now we have to have a fully immersive tax plan and we’re looking at all the different sources of income and how they all impact each other today in the past and in the future to diagnose a strategy that’s going to overall minimize your taxes now and in the future, prevent future taxation to protect yourself from over taxation and also your heirs and your family members.
Yeah and what would you say from an industry perspective? It maybe 5% of CPAs are really proactive tax planners?
You know, I would say less than that because it’s just the profession has, you know, you get your, you know, I worked my tail off from my CPA and I learned, you know, I learned a lot and I use it, but it taught me how to help clients stay out of trouble and stay compliant. You know, it helped, you know, the CPA profession and most firms are helping you understand what you owe in taxes and keeping you out of trouble and making your quarterly payments.
But you know, after the book is closed and the year is ended, there’s not a whole lot you can do. There are some things you can do, but you’re very limited and if you’re not designed to be proactive, if your model doesn’t allow for it, in the way you service clients and even how you charge for your services, you’re just at a certain income threshold, you’re just leaving so much opportunity on the table for the clients.
Yeah, Yeah, it’s, I think it’s really all starts with education, which is what, you know, we talk about a lot here and, you know, this really wasn’t taught to us anywhere in schools or no matter, you know, what, what your profession is, they don’t really talk about tax planning.
They don’t talk about wealth creation, you know, the way it should be done and, you know, sadly, a lot of us, especially me, I have so many war wounds with tax planning and having to pay very large, you know, six figure tax bills for years and then just trying to, yeah, just trying to, you know, figure out, you know, what is the solution and luckily I had enough persistence to know that there was a solution out there and there were people like you, proactive tax planners that could kind of help to do that, and why this is so important is because so many of us investors, right?
See you at all time.
We’re always trying to think about how can we grow our wealth, right? And where can we get access to additional capital?, and I find that this is one of the biggest areas, right, with low hanging fruit that you can tap, untapped potential, right, of free capital that instead of paying to Uncle Sam, right, you could divert into proper tax strategy.
You know, the way I kind of got into this was, I was really bored at my corporate job, and I wanted to use real estate to get out of it originally. I hung out with real estate investors, was a CPA, and they were like, “How can you, you know, help me with my taxes? Why am I paying so much?” And I was like, “I’ve got to know this. There’s no way I’m hiring anyone else to do my taxes if I busted my tail to get that license.” So, I researched and obsessed over the tax code and tax planning.
And I realized that, before even real estate, the best investment for a high income is tax planning. Because when you, like with real estate, sure, you know, a good cap rate, you know, IRR might be 20%, right? That’s a really good rate. But a tax plan is going to save you any decent tax plan is going to save you typically anywhere from five to ten times your investment.
So, I don’t know too many vehicles where you can invest $10,000 to save $50,000, or, you know, $100,000 to save half a million dollars in taxes. And tax savings are untaxed. So if you save $50,000 in taxes, for most people listening, that’s the equivalent of earning, after taxes, $70,000 to $75,000 of income.
It is incredibly crucial. Then, what do you do with your tax savings? You invest into real estate, IOLs, alternative assets, life insurance, you know, all these other vehicles, private placements, and all this exciting stuff with the tax savings to grow in a tax-advantaged manner. But certainly, that’s going to be some of your lowest-hanging fruit because it’s predictable. A lot of these vehicles are incredible in how they can cut off years from your goals to retire, quit your job, or whatever your goal is that’s going to require capital.
Yeah, well said. I think a lot of this is mindset too, right? You made a really key distinction there, right? Which is, if I can get a 5 or 10x return on the amount of tax planning I do, right? That’s really huge. But we don’t typically look at tax planning as an investment opportunity. Most people see it as an expense.
Many of those out there, especially those doing this DIY, even doing your own taxes are just leaving money on the table. You have to start seeing things as investments, and when you can invest in those, you can get a higher ROI. In addition to that, I think what’s powerful from what you said, Mark, is that 5 or 10x return you were talking about is only annually.
What I love about creating an actual strategy is that it really compounds on itself, right? Because when you have that strategy in place, it’s going to be in place for subsequent years.
Absolutely. And that’s why you want to have that strong initial foundation. You know, you need the right person with whom you invest in a relationship, and you’ve really captured everything possible—not just some of the things you’ll see online, like cost segregation, but also other opportunities, like advanced entity structuring and lesser-known options like alternative investments and other features. This way, you can maximize savings, and it’ll really compound year after year.
If you have the right person who you invest in your relationship with and you really capture everything possible.. you can maximize your savings and it will compound year after year.
Sometimes you take your tax savings and reinvest them into other things that further drive down your taxes. So, we see a snowballing effect, where we put our money into things that reduce our taxes, take our savings, and put them into other things that further drive down taxes while generating revenue, profit, and wealth. It’s amazing how this can all compound and snowball over time to impact the lives of people looking to build wealth.
Yep. Can you give us some examples of some of the most impactful strategies?
Yeah. So, you know, I’m wondering here now what kind of audience we’re looking, we’re talking to here because there’s some stuff that is very well known, but I’ll tell you, you know, short-term rental investing or real estate professional tax status has been very impactful for a lot of our clients. Especially when we had bonus depreciation at a hundred percent, and we may get it again, there were clients who were putting 10% down on these short-term rentals.
They were buying these furnished cabins, and because the cabins were furnished, there was a lot of depreciation we could take upfront on, you know, the furniture and the TVs and the linens. Imagine paying eighty thousand dollars on an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar short-term rental and getting a tax deduction of a quarter million. So, the savings would cover your down payment.
Then, you get cash flow and appreciation offset by future depreciation, and you take your tax savings, and that can serve as another down payment on another rental. So, we’ve seen a lot of clients just do amazing things by taking advantage of the available real estate tax planning opportunities.
Now, they’ve become a little commoditized and popularized by people who came a little bit after, you know, when we started doing this in 2019, but then all the dentists and doctors caught on, and now these things became a little overpriced, and bonuses phased down. They’re still really powerful, and we love it, we do it all the time, but now a lot of our clients are taking a lot of interest in oil and gas because they realize they don’t want to be landlords anymore.
So, oil and gas, and then we also have a lot of clients doing that and also some more sophisticated charitable deduction vehicles where there are different ways by which the charitable deduction is in excess. The savings from the vehicle is in excess of the cost to create the savings. So, there are instances where we can create massive charitable tax deductions as well.
Yeah, no, appreciate those, Mark, and I’ll put out a shameless plug here. We actually just launched a new oil and gas opportunity, really to help investors manage some of those taxes. But I think this is really a new asset class to many people.
So, can you help kind of break down how IDCs work and tangible drilling costs? And really, how does that work in the tax code for people who aren’t familiar with it?
Yeah, so I’m very enthusiastic about oil and gas investing and the tax savings opportunities. And it goes really well with real estate as well; it’s a really cool combination here. But when you invest in the working interests into these wells, typically you’ll get an intangible drilling cost deduction of 80 to 90 percent of your contribution into the fund.
Now, there are other funds that will give you less and other funds that give you higher amounts, but we ballpark it at 80 to 90% of the money that leaves your pocket to invest in this oil and gas project. That’s going to be an ordinary loss, meaning a non-passive loss, meaning it can offset your W-2 income or your business income. It can offset as much as $610,000 if you’re married, filing jointly, or half of that amount—$305,000, I believe—right around that amount for 2024. It sometimes changes if you are single, so we can really take a big chunk out of your taxable income and potentially eliminate all of your business income. We can even chip away at your FICA taxes with oil and gas.
The thing that I also really like about this is that, compared to real estate, the cash flow can be very rapid. We see clients getting their money back in the form of cash flow a little faster than with real estate. You can’t do cash-out refis, but we see the money coming in relatively quickly on these things.
So, when you combine the initial tax savings and the cash flow, clients are getting a lot of their money back pretty quickly from these investments, so they can reinvest. When you actually start receiving the cash flow from these oil and gas investments, it’s treated as passive income. So, we have the best of both worlds.
We can offset our FICA and federal taxes and use that to offset W-2 income and business income. But when the money starts coming in, it’s passive, so we don’t pay FICA taxes. We also can use real estate rental losses to offset it as well. So, there’s a lot of cool stuff going on with oil and gas, and then there are some really advanced strategies. So, we love looking at oil and gas as an additional feature for our clients.
Yeah, and I think it can be confusing for investors looking at multiple opportunities across different asset classes, too. So, talk to us a little bit about how an investor should really interpret, right, like, say, on an IRR basis with the tax savings into something like oil and gas.
How do you, let’s say, if you were to invest $100,000 into an opportunity and you got that 80 to 90% tax offset, quantify that even back of the napkin for people evaluating an investment?
Yeah, so these are conversations we have with our clients, and no, we’re not financial advisors. We can’t say with absolute certainty that they’re going to get X number of returns. Some of that is going to be their analysis, and they’re going to work with people whom they trust and who have integrity and a good background.
We can help clients sometimes make some of those introductions, but we help them understand what the impact of this tax deduction is. So, we have this initial tax savings that’s going to be money that returns to you immediately, and that has to be factored into the return on investment in the form of tax savings on top of the cash flow.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Any other strategies that you can share that have been some of the most impactful, especially, you know, where we are, I guess, we’re not really sure what’s going to happen with depreciation with 1031 kind of going into next year. But any any thoughts there?
Yeah, so with bonus depreciation phase-outs, we’ve structured our practice in anticipation of these phase-outs for the past few years because we knew that if all we were counting on were cost segregation and bonus depreciation, we would run out of ideas for our clients.
Once we’ve attacked that AGI, sometimes we’ll look at other ways to strategize on how we can create sources of bonus depreciation. Buying equipment and renting it out has been a very popular strategy for a few of our higher-income clients, where you can finance equipment and rent it out, and we can facilitate that. Imagine writing off six times your costs to buy and rent out equipment.
Once we’ve explored those types of ways to reduce your taxable income and create losses, then we advance to some more complex or unique vehicles, past the oil and gas. There are ways in which our clients are investing in real estate that actually create charitable tax deductions. You can invest in real estate with something called a historical preservation easement. This is an instance where you can write off two and a half times your contribution into the real estate as a charitable tax deduction and still see some cash flow and depreciation.
There are charitable land donations, and this stuff has to be done right; you have to work with people who understand the law, but those are effective ways to create charitable deductions. We are also exploring solar tax strategies where you’re using leverage to access solar equipment you rent out, and then you get tax credits, bonus depreciation, and the tax credit can actually be used to carry back and offset prior year taxes in certain circumstances.
So, you’re using other people’s money and leveraging that to get an immediate tax credit and depreciation. There are also other ways we can create charitable deductions using leverage that are very appealing to some of our clients in the high brackets.
Yeah, all right. You just brought up two points that also I think can be confusing for investors and should be key considerations to keep in mind. So one of them is recapture and can you kind of explain at a high level how recapture really works for some of these investments and how are people just really supposed to kind of you know, keep that, you know, in terms of their planning and forecasting and modeling.
Yeah, absolutely. Now, if you are using the losses and we most often discuss this with real estate because you get a lot of depreciation, you should be able to use those losses as non-passive to offset your ordinary income. So, if you have rep status or short-term rentals, eventually, when you sell this, you’re going to sell it for more than you purchased most of the time.
It’s like the IRS says, “Well, you wrote all this stuff off, but then you sell it for a higher price.” So, you have to recapture these losses and treat them as income, essentially reversing these tax deductions. Imagine a cost segregation study created $300,000 of tax deductions. Well, you’re going to create an additional $300,000 of taxable income when it’s sold in a capital gain event if there’s no planning.
Any amount of tax deductions created from those cost segregation studies will be taxed at your ordinary rate, so it could be a major tax hit if we don’t plan. Now, the recapture of the regular depreciation isn’t taxed as much. The depreciation of the building is also recaptured, but it’s capped at 25 percent, so it’s not as bad. However, it can still be quite a tax trap if we don’t plan for it.
Yeah. And then also, can you explain to people about how to carry forward losses work, both on the active and passive side, so people are clear with that?
Yeah. So, if we have a camera that is a little wanky, but if we have losses that are unused and carry forward for any reason, they can, if they’re passive losses from real estate—which we see a lot of when people are investing in syndications and things of that nature—carry forward and only offset other passive income.
By the way, oil and gas, if it’s operating at a profit, is considered passive income. But it will offset passive income and can also offset real estate capital gains. Now, let’s say we have ordinary losses or non-passive losses. Your business operates at a loss, maybe because you have access to lots of equipment purchases or perhaps you just had an unprofitable year.
Those ordinary losses will carry forward, and those non-passive losses will be a little easier to use because they are treated as regular non-passive losses to offset your other sources of income. However, it’s going to be capped at 80 percent of your AGI.
Got it. Yeah, no, I think that’s really helpful for people to understand. In my experience, it’s very beneficial to have this proactive planning in place, especially when you have different liquidity events from different investments.
Different things are happening, and you can align those losses, carrying them forward to that liquidity event. Or the opposite, which is in a year that you don’t have much income, those are the times that you want to take that capital gains hit because you don’t have as much income.
Yeah. So, you know, you heard me talk about it a couple of weeks ago. It’s all about timing when we want these expense and revenue events to happen here to optimize your tax savings. We love taking advantage of the $0 long-term capital gains bracket if we can drive it that low.
Also, let’s say you can’t take advantage of all of these exciting reduction strategies for real estate, but you still want to invest in real estate. You could still build up this reserve of losses that are going to be activated, so you can offset and maybe have a tax-free capital gain from some syndication investments or your own investments without having to worry about 1031 exchanges or any other vehicles.
There’s still a lot of value in understanding and having these loss carry forwards.
Yeah. Now you mentioned that, Mark, and I was able to see Mark’s fantastic presentation in one of the mastermind groups that we’re members of. Are there any case studies from that presentation or anything else that you think would be helpful for people to impart to them?
Yeah, you know, so I think that, well, I’m trying to think what would be most applicable. We talked about exit planning, and we eliminated like the taxes on a $16 million transaction with some planning and timing of expenses.
The other topics I think would be relevant here is we had a loss for a client, and we took advantage of that loss by doing a Roth conversion. So we took an IRA that would have been taxed in the future. We converted it into the Roth, and now it’s going to grow tax-free. Eventually, it’s going to compound year after year and potentially create millions of dollars in untaxed wealth by just taking advantage of that low tax bracket.
So I think if we can ever do that for the audience, that’s fantastic. And then we also talked about a client where there were some timing strategies where the client needed to create some tax deductions. So we strategized on how we can purchase some equipment, did some cost segregation studies as well, and we opened up some opportunities with tax deductions and asset purchases to actually create new sources of revenue.
Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s really a fantastic explanation of, you know, what I would call stacking all of these tax moves, right, together. And again, that compounding, you know, effect of all of those things, all of these moves, one on top of the other, on top of the other.
Again, we have to keep, you know, in our minds, right, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep is what’s you know, what’s really important. So where do you think, in your opinion are the biggest mistakes that business owners and investors make when it comes to tax planning?
We have to keep in mind that it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep it’s what’s really important.
You know, I think that that’s a good question. I think that I think just lack of education and, you know, not having the right team behind them.
If we’re making a high income here, you got to understand when you’ve outgrown your account. So most of us start with rather modest beginnings, and maybe we don’t need tax planning. Maybe what we really need is just an extra credit card to cover our overhead when we’re starting off.
But when you reach certain thresholds, your needs increase, and that also means you gotta start increasing the qualities in your investments into the right tax services. So your account may have been wonderful for you, and maybe they were a great fit when you were netting 150,000, half a million a year.
But now you’re netting a million, 2 million, 3 million, and this accountant is not really designed to give you the type of support and tax planning you need at this new level. So it’s really about making sure. Yes, I think education is incredibly important and is, you know, listening to shows like yourself can educate yourself on, I can reduce my taxes with oil and gas.
But having someone who’s dedicated their life and put thousands of hours into reducing people’s taxes just like you is going to create such an impact. And that’s really what I see a lot of people missing because they just haven’t had the opportunity to be exposed to the resources of tax professionals that can share these ideas.
Yeah, that’s such a great point, right? There’s really this period, you know, I would say of leveling, right? As your wealth increases, some of the strategies and things that you’re doing just, you know, continue to grow, right? You really outpace some of your existing advisors, right, that are supporting you.
And we often see that so many times where I’ve had a relationship with my CPA for 20 years, and they go golfing together. You’ve got a great relationship. But you really have to keep in mind that some of these advanced strategies, right, you’re not going to be able to access, you know, with, you know, some of those legacy type relationships, right?
And you want to be working with people that are going to take you to the next level, that have the experience really to do that.
Yeah, and it’s hard for people because this is a very important relationship here. It’s not a commodity. Like, these people are going to know all about your stuff and your family and your money, and they make decisions that are going to shape the rest of your life.
You may really trust and like this person, and maybe this accountant is your family friend or a friend of your spouse or whatever, and this is a close and important relationship. And then we get to the point. So we have all, we have, we really like these people, and they’re great people.
And then it’s hard to realize that because of this, we’re losing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in taxes because it’s just not an effective relationship anymore. You know, you gotta think clearly and critically about these relationships when it comes to tax planning.
What’s the best for you and your family long term?
What’s the most challenging tax scenario you helped a client navigate and what made it so complex?
Well, I think we didn’t exit where there was like an F reorg. There were all these different moving pieces going on, so we had a restructuring and an F reorg. We had all this real estate being purchased at the same time, and we had like a month and a half to plan for it. So that’s one example. I mean, there were all these other, you know, challenging intercompany transactions we had to make sense of in like a month and a half.
So that was probably an example of where we were just thrown into the fire and had to come up with a solution right away by doing projections and really collaborating with the client and expediting some meetings to make sure we could do anything possible to eliminate taxes before year-end.
I would say that would probably be one of our more complicated situations because exit planning is just when someone sells their business. There are just so many variables to consider in different directions you can go, and with capital gains planning.
Yeah, that is such a great one. I experienced such a similar challenge when I went through exit planning previously. If anyone out there has an exit at any point in the future, this is one more reason it is so critical to have a great advisor on your team.
Because again, the people that you get referred to in the traditional, you know, circumstances are sure your financial advisor is going to say, yeah, I’ve got a CPA; he’s done, you know, lots of exit planning, right? But all I can tell you is 98% of the industry is based on this conventional thinking, right, which is all more of that Wall Street type thinking.
They’re going to give you basically the, you know, standardized type of approach, and they’re not going to be thinking around alternative assets, alternative strategies, just like you were talking about.
So I was really lucky and fortunate enough to have had a relationship in place with my CPA, you know, in advance, and he was a very key member of that, you know, entire negotiation.
Yeah. It’s so important. Also, here’s you want to talk about a missed opportunity here that a lot of people miss: they don’t do tax planning before the negotiations and sales of their businesses.
It’s like there’s so much that could have been done and should have been done. I mean, as soon as you think about selling it and have those conversations, the CPA has to be right next to you and involved in these conversations because there’s just so much.
There are so many variables to consider with timing and expenses and structuring. You know, it’s just such a critical part of this to make sure that you can actually keep the funds from the sale of your business.
Yeah. Mark, we had the opportunity to sit down with Tom Wheelwright, actually just a few weeks ago, talk about the impact of taxes with the upcoming election. Do you have any thoughts either way from a bipartisan standpoint in terms of what either party would bring to the table? What should investors be thinking about right now?
Yeah. So I think a lot of this, it’s all speculative here. I did a whole webinar when Joe Biden was elected to talk about planning for his tax changes. I would say maybe five to ten percent of the content was useful looking back because none of it happened. You know, they were in talks of getting rid of QBI deductions and 1031s, and he didn’t really get a whole lot done.
I mean, there was the Inflation Reduction Act, but you know, so we’re just speculating here. I think that the stuff we hear from Kamala Harris about taxing unrealized gains is never, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. It’s going to be impractical. Even if it does, there are going to be so many workarounds that it’s going to be ineffective.
Now, there were discussions of us bringing back bonus depreciation, but the bill was shot down. A lot of people suspect that it was the Republicans who didn’t want to give the Democrats a victory, which is why we didn’t get that beautiful bonus depreciation. They didn’t want to give a victory outright before an election year.
So there’s speculation that there’s no more reason not to bring back bonus depreciation if Trump wins or even if Kamala Harris wins. Some other things I’m thinking about here are qualified opportunities. Those are going to be back and they’re going to be stronger because they’re nonpartisan. I think a lot of people overlook all of this. I think it’s an underappreciated strategy. My thoughts and hopes are that it’s going to be really powerful in the future.
Yeah. Yeah, no good point. You know, I think it is all speculative, right? And, you know, they use it as fodder really between the parties and a lot of things have to happen for it really to be instantiated in the law, right? And be changed. Are there any other things, you know, that again, investors really should be aware of right, especially if you’re considering some type of investment right now You know be at year end or going into next year or you’re considering, you know retirement or exit planning You know any other changes in the tax law that we want to keep on our horizon
Yeah. So, you know, we’re going to see, at least the way we see it projected now, is bonus depreciation is going to phase down to 40%. A lot of these investment vehicles where your depreciation is such a big component of it will be a little less valuable. Still, at the same time, if you get five-year life property, depreciating is still pretty good.
So, if you’re looking at things like ATMs and equipment for depreciation, they’re still going to be pretty good, not as good, but pretty good. You’ll still get that future depreciation. In the following years, with real estate, those cost segs create 15-year life property. So losing the bonus on that is going to be a little more painful for real estate bonus depreciation.
Now, there’s a lot of talk. I think both parties are discussing strategies to increase fracking, which will, in efforts to drive down prices of oil and gas. So I’m curious to see how that may impact oil and gas investing. I don’t know; I’m just curious to see what we’re thinking about here.
But also, with all this turmoil internationally and in Russia and Ukraine, that’s going to increase the price of oil, and it would be favorable for oil and gas investing. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in that environment as well.
At the end of the day, you want to be proactive, have the right people around you. If you work with people with experience and integrity and use foundational investing decisions in the long run, regardless of economic factors and things you can’t control, you should be able to make out all right.
Yeah. Mark, if you could give just one piece of advice to the listeners about how they could accelerate their own wealth trajectory, what would it be?
So this is not financial, but I think you want to surround yourself with people who inspire you and have a mentor. The best investment you’re going to make—now, I love talking about, I’m very enthusiastic about real estate, oil and gas, and all these other vehicles out there—but the best investment I’ve ever made, and you can ever make, is in your own development and education.
Having a mentor and someone who you aspire to be like is going to grow. That’s going to create an ROI, maybe even greater than a lot of the tax planning strategies out there, if you have a really good mentor.
Outstanding. Well, really appreciate you coming in today, Mark. It’s been a wealth of wisdom and we can never get enough learning about taxes. So appreciate you sharing that and know you guys are always busy, constantly busy, but this education is needed, right?
Again, we weren’t really taught about taxes, tax law and when investors really understand that the tax code is actually a series of incentives for business owners and investors, right? Then we can understand how to deploy our capital most efficiently and then like you said, if you can get a five to 10 X return through proper tax planning, there’s some low hanging fruit there.
So again, really appreciate your time and where, if people wanna reach out to you, Mark, and connect with you guys to learn more, what is the best place?
Yeah. So you can find me anywhere. If you just type Mark Pearlberg CPA, but the best place to find our resources and learn more about us is our website, prosperlcpa.com. We have lots of free resources, we have courses, we even give a free custom video. If you fill out a survey that takes a couple of seconds and we’ll actually answer your questions.
We have all these, we have free open calls as well right now going on Wednesday at 3pm. You can just hop on in no sales pitches. just like geeking out on taxes. gives us content for the YouTube page. So we love engaging with people interested in this stuff, answering questions and hearing your ideas and sharing ideas.
Awesome. Thanks so much, Mark. Appreciate it.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Dave.