Tom Wheelwright Talks Tax Free Wealth

Tom Wheelwright sits down with Alan Olsen, Host of the American Dreams show to discuss tax free wealth.

Transcript:
Alan Olsen
Welcome to America Dreams. My guest today is Tom wheelwright CPA, Tom, welcome to today’s show.

Tom Wheelwright
Thanks, Alan. It’s really always good to be with you.

Alan Olsen
I am really excited for this episode here. It’s you know, you have a very unique background, book author, also some your clientele, but I’d like you to kind of walk us through how you got to where you are today.

Tom Wheelwright
No, I appreciate that. So I grew up in a family business. And we had six kids. My dad was a printer, and we all worked in the family business. I worked in the accounting department, and I really liked it really enjoyed the numbers. Turned out I really enjoyed law. And taxes are a really nice combination of numbers and law. So my one of my very first classes at the University of Utah when I was doing my undergraduate was tax, and I and I had a terrific professor. I was hooked immediately.

So I went heavy into tax got my master’s degree at the University of Texas and Austin. I spent seven years with Ernst and Young three years in the national tax office in Washington, DC. I spent four years in house tax advisor for a fortune 1000 company, and, and 14 years as an adjunct professor in the Masters of tax program at Arizona State and then 25 years building, buying selling CPA firms, and the last five years developing what is now one of the first tax advisory CPA franchises in the country.

So we have franchise we have franchisees all over the country now. So that is pretty much what I’ve done. And in the meantime, I written some unusually successful books, beginning with tax free wealth, I know we’re gonna talk about today and been able to travel the world with Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame, teaching people in 30 over 30 countries about tax and finance.

 

Alan Olsen

You know this, it’s quite a relationship with Robert Kiyosaki and Rich Dad, Poor Dad. But let’s let’s talk about how your relationship with working with him has influenced your perspective on tax and building?

 

Tom Wheelwright

Well you know, what I love about Robert is and and of course, you and I experienced this with Strategic Coach is that there are some people that just open your mind. And it’s not that they’re giving you any content, or even a thought process necessarily. It’s just that they are so expansive, that they’re thinking that they force you to be expansive in your thinking.

And so working with Robert is it was while I was actually teaching with Robert, that the idea for tax free wealth, and the idea that the tax law is a series of incentives really came into focus, because I’m just going okay, how does the tax law really work? What’s really important to the average person, and there was nobody ever explained it to the average person. Nobody ever explained why the tax law benefits some people and not others. And so I thought, you know, let’s make it simple. But let’s make it fun.

Let’s make it easy. And, and let’s go at it from the perspective that what the tax law really is, which is a series of incentives for primarily business owners and investors.

 

Alan Olsen

You know, you said in the book, the tax code is designed to get people rich. Can you explain that concept?

 

Tom Wheelwright

Yeah, let me know. Thank you. Thank you so much for asking that, Alan, because that’s actually the key to what we do at my company wealth ability is that what we’re looking at is it’s not about just reducing taxes. I don’t think tax reductions that hard, seriously, in Gone Amazon by tax free wealth. And we’ve had people that have come up to me all over the world, say, but tax free wealth saved me. Hundreds of 1000s of dollars from millions of dollars in taxes. I don’t think that’s that hard.

What’s much more difficult is actually building wealth. But what the tax law is, and that people don’t typically focus on is it’s actually a roadmap for building wealth. So by following these incentives by following what the government wants you to do, you actually build more wealth than if you do what Wall Street or somebody else might want you to do.

 

Alan Olsen

Why do you investors and entrepreneurs receive the special tax advantages?

 

Tom Wheelwright

Well, you think about what does the government want to do? Right? What are they trying to accomplish? First thing they want is they want jobs. Right? So entrepreneurs create jobs. Second of all, they want innovation. Entrepreneurs are the most innovative people as you know. We hang out with entrepreneurs on fears most innovative people in the world. They’re pretty much the only innovative people in the world.

And so that’s what government government needs innovation. They want innovation and What else does government want? Well, they need housing, they need energy, they need food, to feed the people. So those are things by the way that are all incentivized through the tax law. This is what the government wants. And so whatever the government wants, they try to get it by providing a small incentive in the tax law. And that actually, what happens is both sides win. So the government actually makes more money.

It’s like, it’s like having an in Insight investment opportunity on every single entrepreneur in the US. I mean, that would be pretty cool. Well, the government has that. And they do that. Right. And they’re, and the, the result is that when the entrepreneur successful, the government takes a piece, and the entrepreneur takes their piece. So it’s a partnership. That’s all it is just a partnership between the entrepreneurs on the government.

 

Alan Olsen

You know, it sounds so easy, but what is it that prevents people from actually taking full advantage of leveraging that to their benefit?

 

Tom Wheelwright

You know, Alan, I think the most of it is fear. But fear is the strongest emotion we have. And people are afraid of the tax law, they’re afraid of, I don’t want the IRS to come after me, I don’t want to be thought of as a tax cheat. And, you know, our message, and my message is really, there’s no need to be a tax cheat. Interestingly enough, the IRS has been auditing, high net worth taxpayers recently.

And there was a report recently recently came out this show that high net worth taxpayers actually cheat only, they cheat less than half as much as the average taxpayer. And the reason is, they don’t need to, they have better advisors, they understand the law, who understand the law, and they actually are applying the law.

So the reason that they end up, you know, people are afraid of it, because they don’t understand it. And and really the goal of both my company weldability and our franchisees, and the goal of tax free wealth and winwin, wealth, my two books, the goal is to give people a choice, if we’re not educated, if we don’t have the information, we have no choice.

 

Alan Olsen

How do you recommend people use your tax savings to build wealth?

 

Tom Wheelwright

So I think there’s two sides of that. The first is, you can’t build massive amounts of wealth, and pay high, high amounts of taxes, it’s practically impossible, the numbers just don’t work. If you’re paying 40 to 50% of your, your wealth, your if you’re paying your income 40 50% If you’re paying in taxes, how are you ever going to build wealth, you’re constantly behind taxes, a drag, it’s a weight weighing you down on that on your wealth. So the first thing you have to do is you do have to reduce that tax.

But I think that more importantly, is recognizing that the same investments that produce tax savings also produce higher returns, as long as you stay focused. One of the biggest challenges I think people have is that they get distracted. And so I love the old saying and niche will make you rich.

And what I found, as I’ve had, you know, I’ve dealt with 1000s of entrepreneurs over the years, and I find that all successful entrepreneurs find a niche, they go after that niche that basically entrepreneur means enter in and take control of a market. And that’s what they’re doing. So the same thing is true with investing.

If you focus on investment, I mean, I’m not suggesting anybody go out, buy real estate, do energy, do agriculture, you know, invest in the stock market, don’t do all those things, choose one, choose one and focus on that. And then what happens is, then look at the tax incentives that go along with whatever investment you’re choosing.

 

Alan Olsen

All right, let’s jump into a tax incentive here. So what I did was a simple strategy that you can implement to protect your assets and your family.

 

Tom Wheelwright

Well, so so we take a wealth building, we take a very holistic approach. So actually, I think you espouse this a lot yourself, from what I’ve, I’ve learned from you. And so we look at not just how do you make your money? So you got to start with how do you make your money? Because how you make your money has an impact on how much tax you pay. Employees have a different tax rate than business owners, and they have a different tax rate than investors. Okay, so you start with how do you make your money?

The second thing you have to do is think about, okay, what am I going to do with my money? I’m not going to put it am I going to spend it? Am I going to save it in the bank? Am I going to buy bitcoin? Am I going to invest in the stock market? What am I gonna do with my money? Because what you do with your money has a bigger impact on your tax than how you make your money. And the third thing you have to do is you have to look at what do I want to have happen? What am I gonna do with my money when I die?

because there are actual tax benefits that come from doing your planning now while you’re alive, instead of waiting until just before you die to do your planning, because there are income tax benefits that come from good doing good estate planning. So really, it’s, it’s, it takes a holistic approach, and it takes a team, you know, investing, business team sports, right? These are not individual sports, these are team sports.

And so it takes financial advisors, it takes, it takes CPAs it takes bankers and attorneys, it takes all of that team, and then somebody to bring it together. So I think that that is is really when you think about a strategy now There are tactics, you know, their tactics to, you know, I show in my book, Win win World strategy, Chapter Nine is how to get the government to pay for your Ferrari. This was a true story. It’s a true story.

I the I have a client who got the government to pay for his Ferrari completely legitimately through real estate investing. And so you can use the tactics, but more importantly is the bigger strategy. How am I thinking about taxes? How am I thinking about building wealth? And what kind and how do I bring that all together with the right team?

 

Alan Olsen

I love it. Well, Tom, this is a lot of really good content here today and in person wants more information, how they how they go about reaching your or your organization?

 

Tom Wheelwright

Well, best way is go to WealthAbility.com It’s very easy, because we’re all about you know, creating your wealth ability. Remember, we want we want to be offensive, not defensive. We don’t want to be just protecting ourselves from the taxman. We want to be offensively, reducing our taxes and building wealth. And so what what we offer on our website is a free second opinion on your tax return. So just click give us call. Let us have a conversation with you look at your tax return, and we’ll let you know how you’re doing.

 

Alan Olsen

Well, they love it. Well, Tom, it’s been a pleasure having you with us today here on American Dreams.

 

Tom Wheelwright

Thanks, Alan.

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