How To Maximize Self-Employed Tax Deductions?

How to maximize self-employed tax deductions. So there's a lot I have to say about this. Number one, you should never be self-employed. You should not be a sole proprietor. I'm going to tell you why at the end of this video. It's the worst thing you could do. It's the worst thing you've been doing to yourself. So let's talk about how do you transition from being self-employed to living corporate life as I teach. Number two, let's talk about the most overlooked deductions and how deductions typically just don't even get handled. It's shocking how few people know how to do it. And I can just tell you, if you're doing your own taxes on TurboTax or even going down H&R Block, they're not doing enough. There's 81,000 pages of tax code. TurboTax maybe gives you a couple pages. H&R Block will give you a few more pages, not the code. Why? Because the whole world makes taxes this big scary thing and you're going to get in trouble. So by law, yes, you have to file your taxes every year once you're 18 and older and as you're making money. So how you file and how you maximize also determines how much your overall tax basis is. Last thing I want to talk about is how do you really set your financial foundation and then a structure for the future so you actually do create a legacy? See, the companies that I have, they're never going to be taken down. They're going to pass to my kids, to their kids, ideally like my great grandkids and kids and kids. These are hundreds and hundreds of years old. Why are the Rockefellers the wealthiest in the world? Well, lots of reasons. The way they set up their entire financial world and their financial system, but for all of you, you can do the same. We call it living the Rockefeller life and it's available to every one of you. You just haven't leaned in and learned and you don't take classes to learn about this. My son has a master's in accounting. He's becoming a CPA and guess what? He said, Mom, of the six books you wrote, never did one thing ever look or breathe or taste or sound like what you teach because I teach a very common sense way to how to be a millionaire in three to five years and you have to live corporate life to start the game. Now you need to pay for these entities and if you go to legal Zoom, I can tell you you're going to end up overpaying because you had no help. You're just clicking buttons that you think you might know. You don't know how you should be taxed. You don't know if it's the right structure and you think it's cheaper because they're attracting you at like I call it the 99 cent store, but by the time you're done and you have all the documents of a full corporate binder, it's over $2,000 with no one-on-one help. Like ours are right at 2,000. You get one-on-one help and you get the whole corporate binder. You get the stock certificates. You get the corporate seal. You get the articles of incorporation. You get everything you need to do business. So just jump. If you're serious about being an entrepreneur and living corporate life, just do it and do it right from the beginning. The other thing I want to talk about living self-employed versus living corporate life is how if you are married, how do you file? If you're filing jointly, would be fine if there's no prenuptial. If you have a prenuptial, our opinion, our tax team's opinion, you should file separately. And then if you have a partnership, you're probably going to file your LLC through what's called a K-1 and that's what's actually going to come out on a 1065 form on that investment. So living corporate life as you grow from being you, a social security number, and maybe you have an LLC for investments, another LLC for investments. You have an S-corp for an operating company, a C-corp for a management company. Now you have five sources of credit. See, if you're a self-proprietor, you have yours and your business, social security number. And you wonder why can't I get any financing or money to grow? Like why won't they give me bigger credit card limits? Because you're not playing big enough. In a situation like I've been giving an example, you have five sources of income, inputs and spending, credit cards, debit cards, ideally just credit cards. And so what you're operating off of are five bank accounts, your personal bank account and your four others. One of these companies should pay you a tiny little salary under 47,000 is the key, many, many reasons. And then with that, you could activate the greatest deductions because this structure gives you the entire code. Now, if you just have one LLC, you're not going to activate 81,000 pages because you're not going to get the officer and director benefits. You're not going to get a certain set of tax code that are for corporations, not LLCs. Even if it's taxed as a corporation, it's still too small. It needs to be a full operating business. So some of you that are out there and you're employed and say, well, I don't have time to do all this. You do. You're probably already doing it as a hobby. You need to make the hobby a business. You need to take the things you love to do, whether that's flying, whether that's metal art, whether you love to weld, again, welder, we call that metal art. Whatever you like to do, you can make it a business. You just haven't thought about it like that because the most overlooked deductions as we go into the second part of this conversation are the obvious. Why are you paying for your phone? I don't have a phone. I don't have a vehicle. I don't have a home. I, Laurel Langmuir, my companies own it and my companies allow me through corporate resolutions to do business like that. I have a corporate resolution because of who I am and what I need to have a wardrobe, including jewelry. I have a home office. And some of you say, well, my CPA says I can't do a home office. I have triggers and audit. That was in 1970 and 80, not in 2025. So a lot of you, you have old stories, old narratives that are not true because how you make money in a company allows you to activate the greatest tax code and then how you invest for depreciation, which is losses against that income, that trifecta, how you make it, deductions and investing is what gives you a single digit tax basis. And you say, well, I can't get there. You can, your CPA won't. Most CPAs and bookkeepers are trained to record your history, not forecast your future. So we take that approach is what did you do in 2024? Well, it's a little late. There's nothing you really can do now, but really aggressively take the deductions you could have, should have, would have taken. In 2025, the first thing you do when you walk through these doors is either meet with the corporate team, the compliance team, or the tax team. Those are usually one of the first three places you start. If you've really screwed up your credit, you might be in the credit and the funding departments. So depending on what you've done, because you've all done interesting stuff to your life, depends where you start. And I call that sequencing. And we have an expert in every category, just for you to talk to. And you have to pick up the phone and talk to them and have an engagement with them. And I'm teaching you how to fish. I'm not fishing for you. Even though I have this beautiful magic wand, it doesn't work without your right action. You say, well, do I get the right action? How do I do it? You follow my lead and I'm gonna tell you. And you'll say, well, what do I have to pay for another company? Well, if it's gonna save you $10,000, $20,000 in taxes every year, wouldn't it be worth paying a couple grand for a company? Wouldn't it be worth getting your compliance right of a client right now? She came with four companies. She did it all herself. She did her taxes herself. Didn't even have P&Ls or balance sheets. And she wrote a bad review and said, oh, I cannot believe because you didn't do it for me. It's like, you have to give us the documents to actually start the tax review. You have no documentation. You didn't document it right. The companies were the cheap ones that we said not to do online, that you did online. And now you've got a big fix. And it's actually more expensive to fix your mess that you created because you're not an expert. You are a whatever you are. You're a dentist. You're a lawyer. You're a doctor. You're a firefighter, tax strategist. The way we talk about them, the way I talk about them, that is their profession. That is what they do. They have spent five to six years to become that. So these are experts, just like you're an expert in whatever you became an expert in. So you hire experts to be on your team. I know it's a novel concept, but it was shocking to me as I started learning the financial services world, how disconnected everybody is. Nobody talks. So you stand in the middle hoping to put it together, right? And most of you didn't. So let us integrate and help you fix it. So the deductions are enormous. If you have a dog documented properly, could be home security. It could be your traveling security. If you have guns or ammo, that could also be part of a business write-off. If you take clients to sporting events, I ski all the time. I get to write a lot of that off because I'm usually taking a client. I'm 99% of the time, I don't just ski for me to ski. I'm skiing because it's part of our marketing. It's part of our relationship. It's part of our high touch. So let us let the experts do it. Let me guide you as your mentor. Now, before I go to some last points, I want you to subscribe to the channel. Click that notification button. I want you here five days a week. Get your kids involved in this. When they're 18, you should give them an LLC for their birthday. Now, will they activate it fully? No, my daughter has it. She turned 18 last October and we're filming this in February of 2025. She will be getting into it, but she does have credit cards. We're starting to move into that. As she goes to school, she will have more. And then we'll be moving into living corporate life because that's how you set it up. You set up your kids. So they need to be in this channel five years and up. And if you really want to engage and get excited about financial literacy in your family, get my MakeYourKidsMillionaires.com book. So go to MakeYourKidsMillionaires.com, grab my game. It's great to put around the kitchen table so you can actually play it at your leisure whenever you want. But it makes Monopoly look like a baby game because it is. And this is the game. Every component of what it takes to be a millionaire is in the game and in the P&Ls and the balance sheets. So the last point was, how do you actually build that financial foundation structure for a legacy? Well, you need to have your own family business. So that way your kids, the kids' vehicles, the kids' phones, so your household and the employment of those kids gets to be inside of it. Now, if you have a partner, they need their own family business. So if you and I decided to partner my family business and your family business, which is legitimate business, mine is real estate for my family, and we have aviation for my family. Integrated wealth systems is its own thing. But my kids are in the real estate. They are in aviation. They both have taken pilot's lessons. My daughter will probably beat my son to becoming a full-fledged pilot by the time she goes to college this year. All of that's deductible because the company needs to get another private aircraft. So that's what we do. If we do business with you, your company and my company would have a company to do business. See, a lot of you, you want to have the wealth, but you want to do it cheap. You don't want to pay the extra corporate fees, the trust fees, life insurance on a regular basis. Like these are vehicles to take care of and set up your wealth for a legacy of a lifetime. We know how to do it. I've made over 10,000 millionaires. We know what we're doing. We have the teams. We're always here. Do you let fear move you away? Or I'm scared, I'm not ready. You're ready. If you want the results, say yes. And in the description below, I'm giving you three chapters of my Millionaire Maker book, a gap analysis, fill it out, and then call our office, have a one-on-one conversation with one of our lead strategists and lean in. Make this an important part of your life. Every day, you are dealing with money. You're doing anywhere between 15 to 25 transactions a day with money, whether that's buying coffee. Well, how did you buy it? Did you buy it cash or a debit card? Why not a credit card? And which business bought it? If you buy anything, I mean, gosh, you take someone out for lunch. Could it be a business write-off? I want you to learn to use business trips, not vacations, because vacations are not deductible. So those of you who are serious, call our office, 775-588-9200. If you're just leaning in, you have some questions, go to asklaural.com, A-S-K-L-A-U-R-A-L, ask a question, make a request. We'll be back tomorrow.