On this week's episode: how a D in religion, a Corvette on a first-job salary and getting fired from audit led one CPA to tax strategy.

You'll hear why Kevin Schneider took a significant pay cut to join Revo, why no client ever thanked him for an audit but every client remembers a strategy that saves them money, and the client he sent to Mike Pine before he'd even signed on. Kevin also opens up about the diagnosis that finally explained how his brain works, and why Mike calls it his superpower.

From Ticking Boxes to Finding Money:

1. Nobody thanks you for an audit. Audit keeps the bank and the investors safe, and in audit, thinking outside the box gets you in trouble. Kevin could tick and tie every workpaper and the client didn't care. Bring that same client a tax strategy that saves them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you're their favorite person.
2. The standard playbook saves money. It rarely moves the needle. As an assistant tax manager, Kevin's go-to moves were the Augusta rule and paying your kids. Then, before he'd signed with Revo, he sent a well-known client to Mike instead of his own firm. Mike's question, "What if we did a defined benefit cash balance plan?", led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax savings Kevin says he wouldn't have thought of.
3. Knowing the rules isn't the same as using them. Kevin's first job paid about $48,000 to $50,000. He rented a $1,500-a-month high-rise across the street from the Dallas aquarium's penguin tank, bought a Corvette and lived paycheck to paycheck, without even maxing out his 401(k) match. If a CPA can leave free money on the table, anyone can.
4. The tax strategist's tax strategist. Mike Pine runs a tax strategy firm, and he still hands his own tax planning to Kevin. Mike calls him the best tax CPA he's ever worked with ("next to myself") and says Kevin sees the bigger picture in ways Mike often doesn't.

Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ep-35-get-to-know-kevin&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1

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Chapters
[00:00] Cold open, then two weeks off tax and why tax is your biggest expense
[03:02] The LinkedIn message and the pay cut that brought Kevin to Revo
[08:02] Baseball, a D in religion and the roommate who picked Kevin’s major
[14:42] First job in audit, a Dallas high-rise and a Corvette
[18:37] Fired from audit, and the moment tax started clicking
[22:27] 75-hour weeks, and why Revo caps tax season at 50
[23:38] Thinking outside the box: the client Kevin sent to Mike
[25:47] What makes Kevin different, and why Mike calls it a superpower
[32:53] Why Kevin got fired (coming on Unleashed), and who does Mike’s taxes

On this week's episode: how a kid who got kicked out of school for demanding fairness grew up to build a tax firm on the same fight.

You'll hear how a PwC internship Mike Pine talked his way into turned him on to partnership tax, why he told every partner he worked for that the CPA model was broken, and what it cost him to build a firm with time for proactive tax planning. Mike also shares the story of buying a bookkeeping firm and amending most of its clients' prior-year returns for free, and the one fact about him nobody knew.

The Fight Behind the Firm:
1. Tax is law, not accounting. Mike nearly dropped his accounting major six months before graduating, on his third try at Advanced Accounting. Then PwC's venture capital and private equity group turned him down for his grades, he hounded the managers and a partner until they gave him a three-week shot, and he landed in partnership tax for billion-dollar funds. A 2.87 undergrad became a 3.9 in his master's, once he could see how the law applied.
2. The model is broken, so he built another one. Mike told partner after partner to hire more staff than they needed, so CPAs had time for proactive planning instead of grinding out returns at 70 to 80 hours a week. They laughed him out of the room. He built Revo that way anyway, with no income for four or five years, payroll made on 0% credit card offers and his 401(k) funding the firm.
3. A few hundred returns, most of them amended for free. When Mike bought a bookkeeping firm, its tax returns had been built by running the QuickBooks categories through consumer tax software. So many opportunities had been missed that Revo amended roughly 70 to 80 percent of those clients' prior-year returns at no charge, and a lot of them are still clients today.
4. Fairness was always the fight. Kicked out of elementary school three times, Mike was told life isn't fair. His answer: "No, we're gonna make it fair." Today that's the mission: as long as there's death and taxes, nobody should pay a dollar more than they're legally obligated.

Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ep-34-get-to-know-mike&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1

Connect With Us
• Website: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/revotaxpayer/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/revotaxpayer/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/revo-taxpayer-advocacy
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenMoneyPodcast

Chapters
[00:00] Intro, then Kevin puts Mike in the hot seat
[02:41] Football scholarships, shin splints and a move to Montana sight unseen
[09:43] The accounting major Mike almost dropped, and his grandfather's advice
[11:22] Talking his way into PwC's venture capital and private equity group
[13:44] "Tax is not accounting"
[15:14] Office politics and rebelling against the widget model
[17:46] Starting Revo: credit cards, payroll and the excess-capacity bet
[22:30] Buying a bookkeeping firm and amending returns for free
[26:36] What Mike first thought of Kevin, and what he'd do if Revo disappeared
[31:11] Kicked out three times: where the fight for fairness began

This week we go unscripted, with three recent tax stories that caught our attention.

First, the fine print on "no tax on overtime": why only the premium part of time-and-a-half pay qualifies for the new deduction, and what that means for a $300 overtime check.

Then Kevin tells the story of a new client with a 2,000-square-foot basement full of bourbon, and how one question turned a hobby into a business worth documenting.

We finish with a Wall Street Journal story about a man with Florida paperwork whose estate is fighting Connecticut over more than $13 million in estate tax, and why states are getting more aggressive with people who move away.

Dig a little deeper:
1. $300 of overtime, $100 deductible. Earn $20 an hour, work a 50-hour week and get time and a half for the last 10 hours, and you've made $300 in overtime. Only the $10-an-hour premium counts toward the new overtime deduction, so $100 qualifies and the other $200 is taxed like the rest of your paycheck. The deduction is capped at $12,500 ($25,000 for joint filers), phases out above $150,000 of income ($300,000 joint), and Social Security and Medicare still apply.
2. A basement full of bourbon can be a business. A new client had thousands of bottles in a finished 2,000-square-foot basement. He wrote paid reviews of bottles people sent him, bought inventory and sold bottles. "You do not have a hobby, you have a business," Kevin told him. Hobby expenses generally aren't deductible, but a business run like a business is treated differently, so step one is an inventory of the bottles, the revenue and how he sells.
3. A $100 client gift is a $25 deduction. Send 20 clients a $100 gift and only $25 of each is deductible as a business gift. The other $75 per client gets added back. Personal gifts follow a different rule entirely, with a $19,000 annual exclusion per recipient.
4. Florida paperwork didn't settle a $13 million question. Jack Anderson had a Florida driver's license, voter registration and declaration of domicile. Connecticut still assessed his estate more than $13 million in estate tax, pointing to his three condos there, and a trial court found he spent about five and a half months a year in Connecticut versus three and a half in Florida. The case is headed back for a new trial. If you plan to retire somewhere with no income tax, where you spend your time matters as much as your paperwork.

Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ep-33-the-variety-hour&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1

Chapters
[00:00] Going unscripted: the 10 PM tax article
[02:43] "No tax on overtime": what the IRS guidance actually allows
[05:30] The math: $300 of overtime, $100 deductible
[07:34] Kevin's client and the 2,000-square-foot bourbon basement
[10:05] "You don't have a hobby, you have a business"
[12:27] Client gifts: the $25 rule vs. the $19,000 exclusion
[14:03] Connecticut's $13.2 million estate tax claim
[16:30] States chasing people who leave, and retiring to a no-income-tax state
[18:40] Gulf Shores, South Padre and a SpaceX retirement plan