Taxes can have a significant impact on long-term wealth, especially as income and financial complexity increase. Proactive planning can help identify opportunities to preserve more of what you earn.
In this episode of The Agent of Wealth Podcast, co-host John Williams is joined by Chris Miller, Founder and CEO of One Atlanta Tax Solutions, to discuss the difference between reactive tax preparation and proactive tax planning. Chris explains how tax planning can work alongside a client’s existing CPA and financial advisor, how strategies are evaluated for legality and audit defense, and why understanding a client’s full financial picture is essential to creating an effective tax strategy.
In this episode, you will learn:
- The difference between tax preparation and proactive tax planning.
- Signs you may be missing tax-planning opportunities.
- How different types of income can require different tax strategies.
- What to consider when evaluating tax strategies and audit risk.
- Why tax savings can create greater financial flexibility.
- And more!
Tune in for a conversation about how proactive tax planning can help high earners and business owners identify opportunities before the tax year is over — and potentially put more cash back to work toward their broader financial goals.
Resources:
One Atlanta Tax Solutions: (470) 873-9940 | Bautis Financial: 8 Hillside Ave, Suite LL1 Montclair, New Jersey 07042 (862) 205-5000 | Schedule an Introductory Call
Disclosure: The transcript below has been edited for clarity and content. It is not a direct transcription of the full episode, which can be listened to above.
Welcome back to The Agent of Wealth Podcast, this is your co-host John Williams.
For many people, taxes are something they think about once a year. They gather their documents, meet with their accountant and hope for the best.
But as your income grows, your financial life becomes more complex or your business becomes more successful, that reactive approach may no longer be enough.
Today’s guest, Chris Miller, is the Founder and CEO of One Atlanta Tax Solutions. Chris works with high-income professionals, executives, entrepreneurs and business owners on proactive tax mitigation strategies designed to help identify planning opportunities before tax season arrives.
Today, we’ll explore the tax problems that can emerge when you outgrow basic advice and what a more proactive approach to tax planning can look like.
Chris, welcome to the show.
Hey, John. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I’m looking forward to it.
I actually, just at a personal level, love the tax side of the business across the board. I just think there’s so much opportunity and, as I’m sure you see, so much that people miss and take for granted.
I’m really interested in diving into your approach to that. To get started, I’d like to lay some groundwork. I mentioned in the introduction how, right around January or February, when those tax documents start rolling in, that’s when you start saying, “All right, I’ve got to file my taxes.” By then, when it comes to strategies, it’s a little too late.
I’d like to lay some groundwork and hear your approach to the difference between that reactive approach—just filing taxes—and a proactive approach, which is really going to be tax planning.
Yeah. We’re not here to replace CPAs personally. We would prefer to work alongside them and not replace them. Most of our clients already have them. Most successful people are already working with an accountant of some sort.
What we have seen, being that we’ve been doing this for a combined 30-plus years, is that most CPAs—and again, it’s not a knock on them; this is really how they’re trained—are focused on bookkeeping, payroll, filing returns, and those kinds of services.
And again, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s super important. I have two CPAs who do that kind of stuff for all my businesses myself. I certainly don’t want to do it myself.
But what we do see, just like you said, is that more often than not, they’re reactive. They’re not proactive. They’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then they want to clean up the mess.
With us, we’re saying, “Hey, Mr. Client, John, before the end of the year—preferably before December—we need to talk about your tax situation and see if there’s anything we can implement before year-end that could save you 30% to 60% of your tax liability. Is that worth the conversation?”
And absolutely it is.
But yeah, to your point, John, I tell clients all the time: If you find a CPA who really does proactive tax planning, it’s like a unicorn, and you need to hold onto them because that’s a really, really good person to have on your team.
Yeah. I mean, in our practice, we find the same thing. And again, I tread lightly because you never know who you’re going to be working for or who you’re going to meet, and it’s not a knock.
But even within the world of advisors, some advisors say they’re holistic in their approach. When you really sit down with them and talk to them, though, they’re investment managers, and maybe they’ll answer a question here or there. When you really, really get that advice, it can be eye-opening.
So with that said, I guess a lot of times you probably get this: You sit down with someone, and they have an accountant, and you might hear, “My CPA handles my taxes, so I must already have a tax strategy.”
Any color around that? Is there something you can leave with someone to maybe help them understand that? Because everyone has to be in that spot where they’re willing to consider the fact that maybe they could find something better, or that’s maybe a whole different conversation.
But are there signs that, A, maybe you could use more advice, and B, maybe you’re not getting as much advice as you think you are?
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I agree with your point that most financial advisors are not holistic. All they really care about is a big AUM book of business.
That’s what’s great about Bautis Financial: You guys do real financial planning, and that’s super important.
Just like in the tax business, it’s great to have someone file your returns who does a good job. Even having a CPA who’s really communicative is a positive because we’ve all had CPAs who are hard to get ahold of.
But ultimately, having someone in your corner who’s a part of your team and proactively doing tax planning is super important.
Again, I’m not here to knock CPAs at all. They’re super important. They have their place. Personally, I’m involved in a big CPA role right now where we’re going in and buying firms, and what we find more often than not is that because they’re not really proactive, they’re actually missing out on a ton of revenue they could be bringing into their firm if they were doing tax planning and charging a fee and things of that nature.
AI is going to be able to replace a lot of that minutia work that they do—the filings, the bookkeeping, that can be replaced by AI. And if they can learn how to free up that time to ask questions and listen to what the client really needs, there are so many different revenue streams they could generate just for their firms, which is, again, why we like that business model.
But yes, with clients, it’s really not a hard conversation, John, because here’s the thing. Just to give you a little background on our story, we actually used to be in the traditional financial space, selling securities, insurance, estate planning, that kind of stuff.
No one says, “Oh, I want to get into the financial industry and work with people making $200,000 a year.” No one says they want to do that, but you’ve got to start somewhere.
And what we learned is that, well, if you want to work with wealthier and more successful people, you’ve got to solve their problems. We’ve got to figure out what their pain points are and provide a solution to that.
For wealthy people, even on the low end—making $400,000 to $500,000 a year and up—what is typically their biggest pain point when it comes to finances?
It’s taxes.
So taxes are by far their greatest wealth eroder. And if you can create efficiencies, let’s just say a client pays $100,000 a year in taxes and we create a 30% amount of tax savings every year for that client. That’s a 30% ROI back in their pocket.
And if they take that $30,000 and invest it in a fund with you guys and make another 10%, they’ve effectively made 40% on their money. And it didn’t have to do with risk; it had to do with creating efficiencies.
And that’s really our main goal: to create efficiencies across the board. Ultimately, if they do that time and time again, one of the great benefits we have within the finance world is compounding interest. If they do that time and time again, it’s going to compound and grow bigger and bigger and bigger.
So we decided to shift into this space to focus on being a solution in the tax mitigation industry because we realized that a lot of these people just don’t know these things exist.
And it’s a real simple question if a client needs us or not. I can say, “Okay, well, what was your AGI last year?”
“Oh, well, we made a million dollars.”
“Okay, well, how much did you pay in taxes, just about?”
“We paid around $300,000 in taxes. I think our CPA did okay.”
And it’s like, “No, that’s just basic accounting.”
You paid a normal amount of taxes based on someone making the kind of money that you’ve made on the federal side.
And so we help them to see that’s not necessarily the case—that they are leaving money on the table. And that is huge. Over a 20-, 30-, or 40-year career, that’s millions and millions and millions of dollars that has gone out their back pocket in the form of profit to Uncle Sam.
And so, for us, we believe clients—including ourselves—should pay their fair share of taxes, but we shouldn’t be funding society. We all have clients who are funding society with their tax bills, and that’s what we want to help reduce and potentially eliminate.
Is that something you unpack for clients in the beginning when you first start talking to them—show them the savings and the long-term impact?
Absolutely. Because I can show someone, like I told you, John, a lot of our referrals come from CFPs and financial advisors. So it’s really a perfect marriage because we’re freeing up money so the advisor doesn’t have to go and beg the client or ask the client to reinvest.
The client is already like, “Oh, they just saved us $100,000 in taxes. John, Chris told me I need to talk to you about where to put this because we don’t want to just absorb that into our lifestyle.”
And you can literally map out over a five- to seven-year window. If you continue to save that same amount in taxes—which, in reality, their taxes are probably going to go up because they’re probably going to make more money every year, so that savings is going to grow—but if they do that same thing and then reinvest those tax dollars over a five- to seven-year window, their net worth will increase tremendously.
And that’s the goal. The goal is to have options.
You primarily work with high earners, executives, business owners, and you believe someone earning $400,000 or more can run into a tax problem, such that a basic tax preparation relationship may not be adequate.
Is there a reason why $400,000 comes into play? Any color around that?
Yeah, it’s just math. We try to lean on math because math doesn’t lie.
Mathematically, it just makes the most sense for a client making that kind of money or above to utilize these strategies because the savings is worth the squeeze. The juice is worth the squeeze. That saying—it’s the same thing.
So at $400,000, and for listeners who may or may not know, that client is paying at least $100,000 in taxes on the federal side. So we know if we come in with a solution to create, let’s say, a $400,000 depreciation strategy or negative K-1, we’re going to save them enough in taxes, between the cost of the strategy and everything they have to do plus their net savings, that it’s going to be worth it for them to do that.
And so we just believe that person is going to save around $30,000 per year working with us.
I don’t know anybody who would say no to an extra $30,000, especially in this high-inflation market.
Yeah, that’s for sure.
Could we work with people at lower income levels? Yes. We actually have solutions that go back and provide a tax credit through basically a solar battery strategy. It allows them to go back the last three years, recapture their previous tax dollars, and get them as a credit.
Then they take that credit and basically invest it in a solar battery company that provides batteries for data centers and things like that.
So someone who only makes $250,000 or $300,000 a year could utilize that strategy and save a decent amount in taxes. That’s just not our target audience. We’re not going after those people.
Just like with investments, everyone has a different tolerance for risk, and I find the same thing to be true with regard to taxes.
And quite frankly, I find there to be a large scope of accountants who will—I don’t want to say they’re doing anything illegal—but they’re saying, “Eh.”
And let’s be honest, the tax laws were written in a lot of ways with a lot of gray area and a lot of room for interpretation.
With that, do you ever get to, “Is this legal? Is this legitimate tax planning?” Is there some trepidation when it comes to the idea that we’re trying to find loopholes and so on and so forth?
Yes. I mean, keep in mind, there’s what, over 70,000 pages in the tax code. Nobody’s an expert on it. It’s super complex for a reason, so that people get confused and get stuck in the weeds.
So we do get that a lot of times. A lot of times it’s just like, “Wow, I had no idea that these existed,” or, “Oh, wow, that sounds too good to be true.”
And that’s okay because we don’t want blind trust. We want to earn our client’s business and prove to them through the tax code how this strategy is 100% legitimate and above board.
Every strategy that we offer—we have over 15 different solutions depending on your tax need or problem, the type of income you make, or the type of taxable income it is—they’re all different.
But that’s a very common response that we get. Every single one of our strategies we’ve vetted, and we run them through tax attorneys.
I think all of them have opinion letters. For your audience, that’s where a reputable tax law firm writes an opinion letter on a tax strategy saying, “This is how we would defend this in the event that it gets audited or reviewed.”
And to say that the strategies we do and implement are never going to get audited would just be foolish talk because you can randomly get audited.
I mean, we have one incredible strategy for long-term capital gains of a million dollars or more. So clients selling real estate, selling a business, selling stocks, crypto—we stay very busy just with this strategy because we have so many people right now selling things for north of seven figures in long-term capital gains.
But once they see, “Oh, this thing’s already been randomly audited 14 times in the past,” and since its inception—it’s been around for 14 or 15 years—that’s not a bad thing. That’s actually a good thing. It’s a positive.
So it actually provides comfort for people to do that.
And I think, too, back to your point, we really want to work alongside the CPAs and get them to be more open-minded.
Because you alluded to it earlier: The client will get our information and pass it on to the CPA, which is fine. But what we like to follow that up with is, “Okay, well, your CPA, after they review the information, needs to meet with us. We need to discuss this.”
Because they’re not an expert on this. And as we already discussed, nobody’s an expert on the entire tax code.
What happens more times than not, though, is because CPAs are conservative by nature—it’s just who they are—they typically will just throw stuff against the wall to create enough fear and doubt for the client that they just back out of it altogether.
And so what we really like is for them to say, “Okay, this is interesting. I’m trying to understand how it’s legal and legitimate. Let’s meet with the tax team so your CPA and our tax team can hash it out.”
They can fully understand the structure of it, how it follows the code to the T, and how there’s not anything happening here that’s funny or illegal.
And when that happens, when we go down that path, I would say 99% of the time the clients move forward and we have success.
The CPA just has to be open-minded enough to hear it out and understand the structure.
Yeah, I imagine in those instances, when it comes to qualified business, there’s a lot of boxes to check. And it’s just the IRS. There’s a fine line between the IRS doing their due diligence and the IRS seeing a clear red flag.
And look, no one wants to get a letter from the IRS in the mail. You see that letterhead come in, and your stomach just drops. You’re like, “Oh man, what did I do?”
I feel like we’ve all been there. More times than not, it’s nothing serious or just something minor. But when you see it, you’re like, “Oh, the IRS. They’re coming and they’re knocking at the door.”
When you talk about proactive tax planning, I’d like to give the listeners a little bit of an idea of what that looks like just from a nuts-and-bolts perspective.
Let’s say someone decides, “Hey, I really like Chris and what they’re doing and what he has to say. I want to move forward.” What does tax planning look like?
Good question.
Typically, I’ll have a client who is, let’s just say, a business owner, and they make seven figures a year of ordinary business income.
What we’re going to do is, number one, we want to understand everything that their money touches that has tax implications. So we’re not just focused on the taxable income for the current tax year, but also: Is there going to be a large tax bill coming up in the near future?
A client I met with last week, their company’s going to sell for $400 million next year to private equity. He has, I think, a 1% equity stake in the company, but he’s going to end up making $4 million to $6 million. So he’s going to have the largest tax bill he’s ever had to date.
We want to know that so we can plan ahead for it.
Or is the client sitting on a bunch of SpaceX stock and they want to sell a couple million dollars of it?
We want to know all those things that have tax implications so that we can create a plan around them.
Because it’s not one-size-fits-all. It’s not at all.
Every tax situation is going to have potentially a different solution or a better solution. Whether it’s ordinary income, W-2, long-term capital gains, or all the different types that it can be, they’re all handled differently.
So we want to assess all that upfront to create the plan.
And then, like I told you earlier, we want to show them good, better, best. Here’s the three top strategies.
We’re not going to look into all of them because just to have one meeting on one strategy takes about 45 minutes, sometimes an hour. So we obviously don’t have time to discuss every strategy.
We’re going to go ahead and tell them, “These are the three best strategies for you based on this. This one is going to create the biggest amount of tax savings, but you might see it as riskier.”
“This one’s going to create middle-of-the-road savings, and you may see it as a simpler strategy to comprehend and be more comfortable with.”
It’s really the comfort level of the client.
So we’re going to recommend those good, better, best options and let them pick based on that.
But we prefer them to be educated because we think an educated client is the best kind of client.
Just like you would say for Bautis Financial, an educated client is a better billboard for what we do. If they understand the inner workings and how it all works, they can go and tell all their friends who are in the same situation because we tend to flock together.
I mean, I don’t know about you, but I don’t hang out with a lot of people making $100,000 a year. It’s just not the reality of it.
And so they can be a better advertisement for what we do and lead to a lot more referrals.
No, no, I agree 100%.
And also, it’s just the right thing to do, too—letting the client know what’s going on. It really just clears anything up.
Because essentially, even when it comes to something like an audit, if you push a strategy on somebody and they move forward and they really didn’t understand it, then when the audit comes through, you’re really opening yourself up to some confusion.
Laying it all out there and helping the client understand is, I 100% agree, super important.
I bet we have some listeners, and when it comes to tax, like you said, there’s 70,000 pages. There’s a lot of different directions.
But where the rubber meets the road is where the money is coming from.
So if you’re a business owner, obviously you could be filing 1120, maybe there’s some strategies there that you can do as an S Corp before the money passes through to you and all that, without even getting into the weeds of all that stuff…
There’s also the W-2 earner who gets a pay stub, maxes out their 401(k), and then has a massive tax bill. I just want to touch on that, and those who maybe have businesses and have some high W-2 income. Is there hope for them as well?
Yeah, absolutely.
First off, just as you said earlier, every strategy we do comes with built-in audit defense. So in the event that something like that does happen, the team we work with for that particular strategy is going to hold the client’s hand through the whole process and guide them through it.
That’s super important because if you’ve ever been through an audit, it’s very nerve-racking. Anything that involves our government just scares the crap out of most of us, even if we really don’t need to be worried about it. So I think that’s important to note.
We can help with what we call layered tax strategies. Let’s say it’s a business owner who makes a certain amount of W-2 income. We may have a solution for that, and then they have a large K-1. We may have a solution for that as well.
So we’ll often layer two strategies to create the largest amount of net savings.
Plus, not every strategy is accepted in every state. Or they may live in a state like you do, in Florida, where there is no state income tax.
Sometimes it’s, “Hey, this is a great strategy. It’s going to save you a lot on the federal side, but we also want to marry it with this strategy because this strategy is going to help you on the state side.”
If you’re a client living in California, where the state tax is significant, we definitely want to reduce that tax bill because it’s going to be large.
So what I really try to help people understand is what differentiates us from our competition—what’s different about our solutions compared to all the other options out there.
It just seems like on the internet now, everybody and their brother who’s in the financial space says they do tax planning. It’s like, “Where did you come from?” And it’s not necessarily true.
I think they just learned that it’s a good thing to market and advertise because it’s going to lead to big clients. But they’re not going to be in this business very long if they’re not actually creating real solutions that create large tax savings.
Our number one goal, as we were discussing prior to jumping on, John, is to create the largest amount of net cash savings for the client.
We’re not trying to say, “Okay, the client owes $400,000 in taxes. Let’s shift this money into this other box so they pay less in taxes.” But the money’s still gone because it’s sitting in that certain structure creating the deduction, and they’re not necessarily going to see it again.
What we want to say is, “Here’s a strategy that’s going to cost you X amount out of pocket to implement, but it’s going to create $200,000 in net cash savings for you.”
I’ll give you an example.
I have a client who’s worth about $15 million—a real estate guy. What his CPA team has him doing every year, because he’s in the real estate business, is cost segregation studies.
People don’t always understand what those are. Basically, you buy an asset. Literally last year, he bought a $900,000-plus multifamily apartment complex. They hire a company—there are firms we work with that do nothing but cost segregation studies—and they go in there and differentiate all the things that you can depreciate and write off right away.
They were allowed to do all that in year one, so it can create a large amount of tax savings.
That client was making around $1.1 or $1.2 million of passive income and did a cost segregation study. They were able to get his AGI down to $180,000, which is great. That’s the same result that we want to achieve.
But then I tell the client, “Mr. Client, what did that strategy really cost you?”
And I realize, obviously, he owns an asset now. But he’s also repeatedly told me through numerous meetings that he doesn’t want to keep buying more real estate.
Just like a business owner doesn’t necessarily want to keep buying more equipment to write off, at some point, enough is enough.
So I said, “Mr. Client, what did that really cost you?”
I guess the thing is, it cost you $900,000 to buy the piece of real estate. What if I could show you a strategy that would create the same net result, get you to the same AGI, but it would only take about $200,000 in out-of-pocket cash from you?
“Would you be interested in seeing that?”
Therefore, freeing up significantly more cash for that client to diversify into some other investments, which is what they really want to do.
They’re all in real estate, and you and I would both agree that’s probably not the wisest thing—to be 100% in any one asset.
That’s a perfect example of where we’re able to implement a strategy where the client only had to put way less in. In that example, they freed up $700,000 that year that otherwise they would have spent.
Our goal with our strategies is that they all have a multiple. On our low end, it’s a five-to-one, up to our best strategy, which is a 10-to-one, and everything in between.
A lot of times, there’s a non-recourse loan involved. So it may be that it’s equipment worth $500,000, but you’ve only got to put $100,000 down, and there’s a non-recourse loan, which really has no impact on the client.
Then, through their own system that they create, they’re able to put that equipment to work and cover the note, so there’s no cost going forward to the client. But the client gets to take advantage of the full depreciation upfront.
That would’ve saved well over $50,000 for that client in that example if they were making $500,000 and it only cost them $100,000 to mitigate their taxes.
Yeah, I love the idea of that. And again, you would’ve never known that, and you couldn’t have told him that unless you actually got in there and got into the weeds a little bit.
I always talk about, as an advisor, I have some friends who are in the business, and my other friends will say, “You’re hanging out with him? Isn’t he your competition?”
I don’t see other advisors as competition. I honestly think my biggest competition is people’s indifference and their openness to the idea that maybe there is opportunity out there.
I really hope that folks will listen to this and reach out to you, and hopefully to us, with that idea.
And look, I get it. There are relationships. “Hey, I’ve been working with so-and-so. He’s my CPA. He’s at my son’s baptism.” I get that part of it.
But I like the idea that you work with CPAs and you’re working with advisors. I’d love for you to just share a little bit about how people can reach out to you, potentially work with you in the future, learn a little bit more about you, and just give us a little bit of how they can stay in touch.
Yeah, no, thanks again, John.
First of all, if you’re paying six figures in taxes, you’re probably overpaying. There’s probably something we can do to help you out.
Now, if you’re making millions and only paying six figures in taxes, obviously you’re doing great. You’ve got a great tax-planning CPA who’s helping you.
But just like you said, John, we’re not in competition with the CPAs.
What we’re saying to your listeners is, what if a 15- to 30-minute call could ultimately save you 30% or more of your tax bill? Is that worth it?
Is that amount of tax savings back in your pocket every year something you can reinvest or do whatever you want with? I mean, buy a toy with it if you want to—we would advise against that.
But the whole point is, you have options.
That’s all we’re trying to say. When you work with us, you have significantly more cash at your disposal because of our planning. Therefore, you have more options.
Just like cash is king—who had the most cash after the 2008–09 crash reaped the biggest benefit? They got to ride the wave up.
So that’s really important in our planning process for our clients to understand.
It doesn’t hurt to have a conversation because what if we’re able to save you a tremendous amount in taxes?
So, for your listeners, first of all, we wanted to make an offer: If they’ll reach out by, let’s just say, the end of the month and schedule a discovery call with us, where we discuss their tax situation, we’re going to waive our annual planning fee for the first year.
For any of your listeners who call in, schedule, and tell us they came from The Agent of Wealth podcast, we’ll waive that fee.
As far as reaching us, our website is OneAtlantaTaxSolutions.com. That’s O-N-E, spelled out, one, Atlanta Tax Solutions dot com.
Our phone number is 470-873-9940.
So they can reach out either through the website or by calling us and leaving a message, and we’ll get something scheduled and see if we can be a solution.
We’ll share all of that in the show notes here to make sure that people have a reference to it.
And this is a great conversation, Chris. I honestly think we could go on forever and talk about this stuff.
We’ll leave it at that, but hopefully you guys will reach out to Chris. Chris, great having you, and thanks again.
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Bautis Financial LLC is a registered investment advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.
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