EP #2 | Using Trusts and Corporations to Protect Your Money: Full Video and Transcription
Mark Lewis, founder of Mark’s Money Secrets, shares his journey from being a film composer to becoming a finance expert. He emphasizes the importance of corporate structure for tax reduction, asset protection, and legacy preservation. Mark explains how he discovered a unique combination of corporate structures that provide maximum benefits. He also discusses the concept of sovereignty and the risks associated with it. Mark highlights the limitations of CPAs and tax professionals in providing innovative tax strategies and encourages individuals to educate themselves about tax laws and deductions. In this conversation, Chris Hall and Mark Kohler discuss various strategies for minimizing taxes and maximizing wealth through the use of corporate structures, trusts, and other legal entities. They cover topics such as paying children tax-free, the benefits of using LLCs and C Corps, the advantages of stacking different entities, and the importance of asset protection. Mark emphasizes the need for individuals to take advantage of the flexibility in the tax code and customize their structures to fit their specific circumstances. He also highlights the importance of educating oneself and working with professionals to optimize tax planning and wealth preservation.
Transcription
Mark: 00:00
My mission now is very different than what it ever was when I got out of college. My mission now is to expose as many Americans to the idea of corporate structure to help them with tax reduction, asset protection, legacy preservation. Even if it’s just a little side hustle, it can still make a big difference because within the corporate structure creation, there’s maximum benefits in those three big pillars I just mentioned, and it it’s really the best way to create generational wealth and keep profits.
Chris: 00:37
Well, hello there. This is Chris Hall with Redding Financial Advisors, and we are doing our podcast. And I am super excited to let you guys know that I have a really cool guest here today, Mark Lewis with Mark’s Money Secrets. He has a half a 1000000 followers online, and he makes a lot of really cool content around the idea of taxes, corporate structure, etcetera. And so I found him online.
Chris: 01:03
I reached out to him, and he was gracious enough to attend my podcast. So with no further ado, thank you so much for being here, Mark.
Mark: 01:10
Thank you, Chris. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Chris: 01:13
So I appreciate you being here. I know you’re, traveling right now. And so appreciate you, you know, sneaking this in for me. 1st and foremost, tell the folks a little bit about your background because to me, that was, like, really part of the interest in, like, wow. This guy’s really doing something completely different than I’m seeing in the normal, you know, online genre.
Chris: 01:33
So
Mark: 01:34
Yeah. Well, you know, my mission now is very different than what it ever was when I got out of college. My mission now is to expose as many Americans to the idea of corporate structure to help them with tax reduction, asset protection, legacy preservation. Even if it’s just a little side hustle, it can still make a big difference because within the corporate structure creation, there’s maximum benefits in those 3 big pillars I just mentioned, and it is really the best way to create generational wealth and keep profits. But it’s yeah.
Mark: 02:06
It didn’t start that way. I all of my degrees are in music, music for film, music composition, commercial music. My mom said my first language was piano. That’s my main instrument. I play cello, guitar.
Mark: 02:17
I mean, I was gonna be John Williams, and I was well on my way. And my score of my first film at 17, and, you know, throughout my twenties, I did all kinds of things. You can go look up my IMDB and go, oh, wow. You did a lot of Huawei. How does this make any sense?
Mark: 02:29
How does a film guy turn into a finance guy? And, you know, I also got involved with all kinds of postproduction things and worked on a bunch of Star Trek projects. And, anyway, so that was cool. But somewhere around the early aughts, you know, the 2000, my best friend’s family had me over and they said, hey. So do you know that the Federal Reserve and the IRS is really an illegal, nonconstitutional agencies?
Mark: 02:55
And I was like, what? And they’re like, yeah. Yeah. It was illegal to pay tax. You shouldn’t be paying tax at all.
Mark: 03:01
Like, wow. And I go, well, there’s a few 1,000 of us, and we’re gonna rise up. And we’re gonna bring those things down and return us to the gold and silver standard and back to the way the founding fathers. I’m like, this sounds great. Let’s do it.
Mark: 03:13
And so, you know, I jumped in both feet like I kinda do with everything, and and it was a deep dive. And if you’ve ever tried to expose the federal government, the very first thing they do is try to take your stuff, because they are right in thinking that if they take your stuff, then you’re on the street and it’s very hard to fight. And it was a very dark time for the rebellion as we like to say. So, we didn’t know what to do. We tried LLCs.
Mark: 03:35
We tried trusts, foundations. I mean, any kind of stuff to kinda keep the the wolves at bay as they were putting liens and levies on bank accounts and people were going to jail. And so because I was working in Hollywood and I was exposed to some of the, we’ll call it financial files as fate or God would have it one day at a print shop. I discovered a 6 by 4 foot poster that had in big red letters, confidential stamped all over it. And I was like while I was waiting for one of my prints for a different project, I was like, I think I’m gonna go indulge myself.
Mark: 04:15
What is this? I thought I was gonna see an architectural drawing, and, you know, and be entertained for about 20 seconds. But what I saw was the entire corporate structure of 2 of the largest mega global film distributors, and they had just merged at the time. And some of you can figure out who it is. We’re talking about 2,007.
Mark: 04:33
And I was like, what I saw was 100 and 100 of companies all around the globe, but a combination of c corps and LLCs and trusts. C corps and LLCs put together in 3 giant columns. And when I took this back to my buddies, we’re like, we’re doing this wrong. Nobody’s talking about a combination of structure. We talk about an LLC or an s election, the c corp, maybe even a trust, and maybe kind of putting 1 or 2 together.
Mark: 04:59
But what if we take the esoteric nature of each one of those, combine them into a very simple but complex I mean, a simple but, important structure that removes, which is what we didn’t quite know what they were doing. But when we kinda thought it through, we’re like, they’re taking the worst parts of an LLC, the bad taxation, the pass through nature, the worst part of an s corporation, which is the w two requirement, the horrible part of a c corporation, which is the double taxation and the limited ability to move assets around, stripping that by putting them together so you get the best of all of them, and then put trust in the middle of it. Specific kinds. And we’re like, let’s do this. So within about 6 months of us incorporating, if you will, those strut those kinds of ideas, they couldn’t touch us anymore.
Mark: 05:46
And then, obviously, the the great plan failed. There’s still an IRS. There’s still the Federal Reserve, but the lessons that we learned were inescapable. And I it turned out through all of our process, I ended up being what’s called a some people call a sovereign. You’re a sovereign citizen.
Mark: 06:01
For about 10 years, you know, you can’t
Chris: 06:04
Oh, you achieved that. I did. You were able to keep the sovereign citizenship.
Mark: 06:07
For about 10 years, you know, they pull you over and they can’t give you a ticket, and the IRS sends you big big, you know, big you owe us and you just serve put certain words on the coupons and send them back. And then, yeah, it it was a pretty crazy thing. I don’t tell people to do it. About every week, somebody says, can you show me how to do that? Like, no.
Mark: 06:26
You you don’t want to do that. We’ll talk about that. But, about 2018, we were starting to make money hand over fist in crypto, like, many of your listeners probably were. But I was because I had this structure, I was paying about 19% tax. I was living in California paying 19% tax total on my capital gains.
Mark: 06:44
And everybody’s like, wait. What? Because they’re doing 50%. And Right. And, so I started helping them, and then the word got out.
Mark: 06:49
And then other businesses started wanting to find out my phone stopped wouldn’t stop ringing. And, you know, now we have over half a 1000000 followers. I do this full time. You know, I also in the process got married, moved to Tennessee, kind of said goodbye to the media thing because we wanted a homestead and, you know, I love chickens. So, anyway, that’s that’s the story.
Mark: 07:08
Yeah. Nice. That’s awesome. Yeah.
Chris: 07:12
Yeah. That’s really I mean, what a complete transformation, you know, to go from, like, being in the Hollywood system to, like, being, like, you know, on a farm in Tennessee with chickens. You know?
Mark: 07:21
Yeah.
Chris: 07:22
But, like but to me, it’s, you know, like, one of the one of my favorite movies is the matrix. And it’s like it’s part of, like it feels like that unplugging from the matrix and going like, wow. There’s just so much more that I’m not seeing in my daily grind. You know?
Mark: 07:35
Yeah. It’s it’s a really good analogy, and I didn’t understand it in 1999 when I first saw it. But once the sovereignty element started showing up, we were all heralding that as, you know, sort of a prophecy. You know, that the Wachowski now sisters, you know, are they were telling us something we didn’t know. And I have to say and this is what I tell to people who wanna jump down that white rabbit hole.
Mark: 08:02
And that is if you would take that as a maxim, the idea, the concepts in the matrix, and we say, if we get unplugged, the big thing in the back of your skull, the autonomic nervous system unplugged, and you fall down a big chute, what is your life like after? Well, if we look, if we’re taking that as a maxim, then you’re in a cold metal ship wearing torn clothes, eating sludge, living on a cot with no possibility of economic benefit. You’re gonna live underground with a bunch of guys half naked. Just Do whatever you want, and it’s free, but you’re in fear for your life every day because the sentinels will be coming for you. And, like Cypher who said, I’d like to eat steak, please.
Mark: 08:45
I’d like to go back in.
Chris: 08:47
Just gonna mention that.
Mark: 08:48
I did the same because I got tired of the sentinels at my door, and come they would in various three letter versions from IRS to DEA to we didn’t have any FBI, but we had a few other three letter versions show up and investigate and and and, interrogate of a sort. And we had to do no small amount of training to know how to respond. Some folks didn’t respond well, and now even now are having federally paid vacations. So I’m like, you know, this is not something that anybody should be doing unless you have a very specific reason to do it, and most people don’t have that reason. Most people just wanna get money for free and and all that.
Mark: 09:27
So I find that it’s much easier now having very happy to be back in the matrix, but remembering it all, eating steak, to tell to be able to train people on the system instead of saying, here’s how you get out. Don’t do that. That’s that doesn’t actually help anybody. If we’re here to link arms as Americans, we need to stay in the system people to use those powers, which we some might suggest that the republic is found in the corporations. And if we can use corporate structure to sort of act like a agent Smith, then what are we worried about?
Mark: 10:09
We can do business. We can keep far more of our profits, and we can benefit the system and anybody who benefits the system. We say, makers always get the best tax deductions and asset protection from takers. So if you’re making the economy, then you’re gonna find the best breaks. Everybody says, oh, the rich, you know, the rich, they don’t pay any tax.
Mark: 10:29
Au contraire. I’ve got a contract I’ve got a I’ve got a a, a client. He he’s getting about 800,000 in w two right now. I I promise you, he’s paying more than 60% tax. Wow.
Mark: 10:43
He’s got no way to go. He’s it’s w 2. He he gets the same deductions that we get, and that’s about it. So, you know, it’s it’s the it’s the fact that if he had been, and we’ve worked with him obviously to transform some of that into making the economy, then he gets the qualified business income deduction, the business use of his home, the mileage deduction. He’s getting depreciation on the business home the business the companies he’s using for business and all the other stuff that bring his income way down.
Mark: 11:10
And even better if he starts to use banking money to fund his making, then he can kinda start living tax free of a sort. So that’s what we’re always helping people doing, and the the idea of the matrix is a really great way to get people kinda woken up about, do we wanna just try to slave away or would we rather I mean, agent Smith wasn’t that bad of a guy. He just you know? You know? He just he lived pretty well.
Chris: 11:34
He knew how to navigate. I mean, really at the end too, that was part of the whole scenario was that Neo learned how to navigate the system. He learned how to, like, avoid the bullets. You know? It’s not that the bullets were coming.
Chris: 11:46
It’s just that he wasn’t actually getting them. So yeah.
Mark: 11:49
And when you understand commerce as well, understanding the uniform commercial code, the nature of this whole not just the United States, but all the western nations are all built on commercial laws. How we respond in contract, how we, respond to negotiation. And, really, you could suggest that Neo simply learned how to negotiate the bullets, the matter, the energy, and go, oh, here it is. Well, now it’s gonna be this to me, or now I’m gonna stop its velocity, or I’m gonna tank the spoon or I’m gonna float around, whatever that is. And that, as, again, as a maxim in commerce works very well.
Chris: 12:23
Yeah. And, I mean, the the question that I kinda keep asking myself is, you know, I have a CPA, and and I think he’s a very nice gentleman, extremely intelligent. But, like, you know, one of the ways I found you was on one of your short clips about the Augusta rule. And so, you know, it was one of those things where I listened to it a couple of times where I was like, you know, I have a structure that could probably benefit from this Augusta rule. So I literally shot an email off to my CPA.
Chris: 12:50
I’m like, hey, man. Can we use the Augusta rule? And he was like, sure. But, you know, there’s there’s limitations and there’s this you know, like and he kinda like almost was like, I don’t know if you want to, you can. You know?
Chris: 13:01
But he wasn’t like, absolutely. Let’s totally do it. I feel like in the community, tax, you know, tax community, I feel like they’re not willing to do much of anything outside the box. They’re mostly like, hey, listen. I’m just gonna help you fill out your forms.
Chris: 13:16
And if you get caught, you know, with your hand in the cookie till or something like that, like, I’ll sit next to you. You know? But you better have all your receipts. Maybe. True.
Chris: 13:25
True. True. Depending on who they are. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: 13:27
But I just I just I don’t know. To me, it was like I started thinking, like, you know, these guys make pretty good money. You know? Not, you know, I’m not saying that they’re charging too much or anything like that. But to me, it’s like, I just my attitude is just like, if I’m charging people a couple $1,000, like, they’re gonna they’re gonna already know about the guster rule.
Chris: 13:46
There’s gonna be, like, 6 things that every single one of them gets It depends on structure and stuff like that. But, like, why do you think that that is not the case with most, tax professionals?
Mark: 13:57
Well, it’s that’s such a great question, and this is sort of my soapbox. So if I get a little too loud, just go, hey. Hey. Hey. Just calm down.
Mark: 14:04
Because I hear so many people that come to me from CPAs damaged. Damaged. Not just, oh, we didn’t quite get all the information, but we lost $40,000 because our CPA set us up with an s corporation. It didn’t tell us that we needed to have a w two payment to us for every shareholder. We didn’t no one ever said that to us.
Mark: 14:23
And when the IRS showed up, it was they acted like it was, you know, antitrust withholding, and then we had to go back 10 year I mean, unbelievable. Yeah. County 101. We we have to take a look at the fundamental nature of not only CPAs, but attorneys as well. And some would say doctors and other things.
Mark: 14:39
But since we’re talking finance, let’s just stick with CPAs. They’re not accountants by trade. They’re entrepreneurs.
Chris: 14:48
Yes.
Mark: 14:49
An entrepreneur’s primary aim is not public service. A policeman is. Fireman is. You know, you could suggest a doctor or a nurse primarily, but public servants are bonded to serve the public. A CPA has a certification, and some have a bond because they have other certifications too, but their job is primarily entrepreneurism.
Mark: 15:11
And an entrepreneur knows that the less work I do for the more money, the better off I get. I’m about making profit. So service is not anywhere near the top five things of which they’re required, sort of not required to be a part of. And so if that’s the case, imagine a CPA world where it was payment was based on performance. So you’re gonna pay 2 you said $2,000 to your CPA whether they do a good job or not, whether they save you 10% in taxes or not.
Mark: 15:40
But imagine a world where they get a base pay of $500 and for every 2% of tax that they save you, you’re gonna pay them an extra $25100.
Chris: 15:50
That’d be really cool.
Mark: 15:51
Yeah. Transform everything. Transform everything. And then your CPA now having made $15,000 due to your taxes, but saved you 40, you’re like, I tell you what. And then the CPA who’s smart is gonna be like, I’ll tell you what, for an extra $5, no matter what happens, I’ll back you in an audit, or I’ll back you in in an everybody would hire that guy.
Chris: 16:13
Right.
Mark: 16:14
I mean, that would be revolutionary, but nobody wants to do that because CPAs are not tax experts. If they were tax experts, it wouldn’t be CPA. It’d be CPTE.
Chris: 16:25
Oh, okay.
Mark: 16:26
They’re certified accountants. Accountants are for bean counting. Now they’ll balance your ledgers, and they can do all that stuff. I mean, I’m not an accountant. You know what I mean to do your taxes?
Mark: 16:36
I can, but I I that’s the bean counting part. That’s what they got a 4 year degree in. Do they know tax law? Yeah. Of course.
Mark: 16:43
But they only know they a small part of it. Now, again, I’m please. I’m speaking generally. There are guys who really understand corporate law and contract law and all that. But I’m speaking in general terms.
Mark: 16:54
If you say to them, you walk in and you’re like, hey. So I’m gonna I want you to help me connect this c corp with an LLC. I want the the income to come from a contract to a sole proprietor s corp election in Wyoming, and I want you to figure out how to do all this so that I get blah blah blah. They’re gonna go, you’re fired. You’re not my client anymore.
Mark: 17:11
They’re not trained to do that, and most CPAs, they’re the ones that hate me the most or the ones that don’t realize that accounting takes you to a certain place, and then tax code turns over and accounting doesn’t work the same way. Accounting doesn’t solve the tax code problems. So they’re entrepreneurs. They’re not tax experts, and their primary aim is to make money worse. The worst one is we don’t realize, but in my enrolled agent training, it says very clearly from the IRS, and and it’s the same for CPAs and tax accountants, don’t tell your clients the best deductions.
Mark: 17:48
Please do not disclose those to them if it requires a strong burden of proof. For example, most people didn’t realize that they can deduct up to $10,000 of their sales tax on anything that they’ve purchased every year. Most people have never heard of such a thing. Like, what? Well, don’t it have to be a business?
Mark: 18:06
Nope. But you do have to have all receipts, every last one of them. Credit card ain’t gonna credit card bill ain’t gonna do it. Why don’t they tell you about that? Well, because it’s a lot of work for them.
Mark: 18:16
Yeah. So and the IRS says, don’t worry about that. Just give them the minimum. Most CPAs don’t realize most people don’t realize that for your business use of your home, your CPA just give giving you the basic form at the bottom of the schedule c instead of filling out the 8829, which includes your depreciation, the inter the interest on your loan, in addition to your personal interest, the as a deduction, your, insurance on your home, the repairs on your home, all a part of that percentage that you’re using for the business, business use of your home. Could be 1,000 more than what usually we’re seeing on people’s schedule c.
Mark: 18:50
So we have to understand the best use. If you’re in real estate, you know, it’s always the highest and best use. What’s the highest and best use of a certified public accountant? And we may not find that tax preparation and perhaps at all tax future planning is their best use.
Chris: 19:08
Yeah. Yeah. I would say that, like, it feels like most, of the time I’ve ever wanted to do, like, a home office type of a thing or or things like that. I mean, they’re always, like, you know, like, you can use your office and that’s it. Like, you know, you can’t like, you know, it’s like, what if I’m in my living room?
Chris: 19:25
What if I hang out in my kitchen? What if I’m you know what I mean? Like, nowadays with a laptop and a Wi Fi connection, like, the whole house is really your office.
Mark: 19:32
Yeah. It and obviously, you have to be careful. I mean, we can’t just go hog wild. I like to say, hey. Nobody cares if you’ve got a pound of heroin in your trunk.
Mark: 19:40
Nobody cares. You can drive it across state lines, put it in whatever until you get pulled over, and they search your car. Then it’s bad news. But Right. We can do whatever we want.
Mark: 19:49
I just don’t think that tax fraud is a really great plan.
Chris: 19:53
No. True. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark: 19:55
And what makes it tricky is that the tax code is intentionally broad. Not when it comes to you have to report your income. Even you crypto people, you have to report your income. But that part’s clear, but everything else is intentionally broad. I had a client ask me a couple months ago.
Mark: 20:11
They’re like, can you just make a list of me for me for all the deductions that I can take? Like, no. That’s like 1,000,000,000, millions of I mean, as thousands of pages as the IRC is, they keep it broad because the fundamental maximum for that is if you can defend it, you can keep it from a deduction standpoint. And CPAs are trained in school, if we can imagine, like, railroad tracks. They’re trained to go down the very middle of those tracks.
Mark: 20:40
And if you if you go off the tracks and you’re in tax fraud or some other thing, that’s not cool. But, really, as long as you’re within the tracks, anywhere in that track is perfectly fine. Your CPA and your accountant’s gonna keep you right in the middle because that’s safer for them. Because, hey, you know, through CPA’s, if something goes wrong, they get a pretty hefty fee assessed against them from the IRS, and then all of their clients get audited, and then they find out. So, you know, they have to be very careful.
Mark: 21:07
I get that. But it doesn’t
Chris: 21:08
ensure I was aware of that.
Mark: 21:10
Yeah. It’s not pleasant. I is it it’s 100 of dollars per incident.
Chris: 21:16
Oh, okay.
Mark: 21:17
So you can you can appreciate that if that’s all they know how to do, if they couldn’t paint and they couldn’t play the piano and they couldn’t sing and they couldn’t, you know, run a marathon and running numbers and counting beads is all they could do. They’re they’re gonna clutch it. This is their whole thing. They spent 4 years in school. I mean, who could blame them?
Mark: 21:33
So I get it, but that doesn’t shirk our responsibility as citizens to know more. To be able to say, well, the Augusta rule, can you should we do that? I got a structure for that. I got a family in my c corp or my LLC. It’s a multi member.
Mark: 21:47
I don’t use my house for the headquarters of my business. Or if I do, I’m married filing separately, so I take that deduction and my wife or my spouse doesn’t so that that a gust rule could happen over there. Why don’t I take the august rule? The CPA is gonna go, oh, well, you know, that a lot of people get sued. I mean, a lot of them
Chris: 22:03
are not sued. A lot
Mark: 22:04
of people get audited for that. Well, yeah, that’s because most CPAs file their forms electronically and don’t realize that one of the caveats for doing the Augusta rule is some of the the dilemma that happens, like the the code in question just to bring up Augusta is the, is 28 a 280 a in the internal revenue code, and you can go look it up. It basically says it it’s misnamed. It’s not called the Augusta rule. I mean, we call it that because they use it in Augusta, Georgia for the golf tournament.
Mark: 22:31
But it’s been there way before that, And it was like, anytime you have a house that is not professionally rented, you don’t have also, you don’t have somebody in the grandma house renting for renting something in the back. It’s just your personal domicile. 1st or second home. Either one will do. Could be a boat.
Mark: 22:46
Could be you know, as long as you live there. And you don’t rent it out professionally, from that point, you can rent it up to 15 days. Don’t have to be consecutive days per year, which is 14 nights. The market has to or the rents have to be market reasonable. And whatever you include in that rental, it could be entertainment, it could be furniture, it could be food, it could be hey.
Mark: 23:11
It’s also we’re going 5 x on the rents because it’s the, law the Long Beach Grand Prix, you know, when everybody else is 5 x ing. Hey. That’s legit.
Chris: 23:20
Okay.
Mark: 23:21
So that’s cool, but there also now has to be a real contract. It has to be you can’t be just you and me in a handshake. No. There has to be evidence, and there has to be money moved. And the other one is, I know it’s kinda common sense, but for your listeners, I gotta say, you all can’t stay there when you’re renting the house.
Mark: 23:38
And, otherwise, it’s a sleepover, and that ain’t not that’s not the same thing. So you gotta go into the RV or go to the hotel or you gotta leave the house when you’re there or or when you rent for the nights that you’re renting. If you cover the majority of that, the IRS then says, hey. Cool. You don’t have to report.
Mark: 23:56
That’s tax free to you. In fact, it’s one of the few places in the Internal Revenue Code where it says, we don’t wanna hear about it. Please don’t report it to us. Do not report. In fact, if you report, you may fall prey to another kind of unknown little code called the 6702 violation, which is the frivolous violation, which is a $5,000 fee.
Mark: 24:18
If you waste the IRS’s time and resources to have to go over a form that you shouldn’t have had to send in. So that’s the Augusta rule where people wanna kinda double dip is okay. Well, I can do that. I have a house, and I don’t do a business out of it. That’s fine.
Mark: 24:36
My business is just at an office in town or whatever. But I have a company, and my family’s in there, And, you know, we all have independent shares, and it’s a real business making real money, then they make a lot. What if I have a conference every quarter, 3 days, that’s 12 days, plus a couple days somewhere in the year, and then we have a conference. It’s for the purpose of the business to make members and and to to have benefits. We have a maybe we’ll have somebody like Mark or Chris go Zoom with us and give us some cool information.
Mark: 25:03
We’ll write that down. We’ll do a journal. And now the business can pay my me to rent my house for this conference. It’s tax free to me, and the business can write it off. And all everything we just said right there makes CPAs generally down the middle of the railroad tracks go,
Chris: 25:22
ah, woah.
Mark: 25:23
Woah. Woah. What are you talking about? They never told us this in school. That sounds very risky.
Mark: 25:30
Why is it risky? What’s risky about it? Well, what you’re really saying, good sir, is that you weren’t taught it in school. You’ve never done it yourself, and you’ve heard that people have been audited. Well, the reason that most people get audited is because they violated one of those rules.
Mark: 25:45
And worse, in order for the company to report the deduction, they have to do what? Send a 10.99. To who? Me. But I thought the IRS said I wasn’t supposed to report the income.
Mark: 25:58
Yes. That’s true. But now this the company is squealing on me saying we paid you this income. And now the IRS looks at my tax return and goes there’s $10,000 of income I know you got because they we got your 10.90 nines from that other company. Why isn’t it here on your 10:40?
Mark: 26:13
You don’t think you’re gonna get audited for that? Oh, yeah. So what’s the solution? Well, this is where as long as you stay within the rails, you’re good. And a CPA is not gonna understand.
Mark: 26:24
God bless them. They’re not gonna understand that the simple solution is don’t electronically file that year. Send it in on paper. And with your personal paper return, you send a letter with it going, hi. Yeah.
Mark: 26:36
It’s me, taxpayer. I invoked the 2.80 a deduction with the money that I was paid from what I know you got from this company, EIN 1099. As far as I know, I’ve been told to not report it based on the internal revenue code. If I’m wrong, let me know, and I’ll fix that. But this income is not on our forms because we also don’t wanna fall prey to the 6702 frivolous filing.
Mark: 26:59
So if we’ve done it wrong, let us know. Otherwise, please note we know we made the income, but according to your code, we don’t report it. That’s what’s happening. Thanks so much for keeping the company safe out of the country safe. Right?
Mark: 27:11
Solved.
Chris: 27:12
Yeah. I don’t I don’t I don’t know, if people know, but, like, this is, like, solid gold. Like, this is like if you’re if you’re gonna listen to anything else on this podcast, like, most business owners should be implementing this. And it’s it’s really like once you get through the navigation, which you almost pretty much gave us a step by step thing.
Mark: 27:33
Yeah. Yeah. But, I
Chris: 27:34
mean, it’s once you get through the navigation of it, it is it is like, it’s it’s law. It’s not like we’re fudging things. It’s the truly the law.
Mark: 27:42
Yeah. It’s it’s difficult for I understand the plight that accountants are in. I mean, they’re under high scrutiny. There’s severe penalties if they mess up. I get it.
Mark: 27:54
That doesn’t mean I like what they do because I think some out of the box thinking is warranted to help citizens, but I also understand that their job is not to help citizens. It’s to make money. But what we have to understand is, there’s a there’s a maxim in law that’s I won’t get to the maximum of it. But, basically, it says, if it doesn’t say you can’t do it, it doesn’t mean you can’t. So if it says you can’t do it, don’t do that.
Mark: 28:18
But if it doesn’t say you can’t, you might probably okay to do it. And the internal revenue code we I said earlier is intentionally vague, not just because of a deductional standpoint, but some of you heard and you’ve probably heard, Chris, about, oh, well, you can pay your kids from your company, and they can get the money and not have to pay tax, and you get to deduct it. Right? You’ve heard that?
Chris: 28:39
Right. Sure. Yeah.
Mark: 28:41
Are you aware that’s not in the tax code at all?
Chris: 28:44
Oh, no. I didn’t know that. No.
Mark: 28:46
Can’t find that. That there’s not the oh, the the child tax deduction. No. No. This doesn’t exist.
Chris: 28:51
Oh.
Mark: 28:52
But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t doable. Why? Well, because there are things that are in the tax code that if you logically put them together, give you a pretty good understanding that this is doable. Like, have a standard deduction, you and I for 2024 singly, if we were single, have a $14,600 standard deduction. The IRS says, if you don’t make that much as an employee and you send in a form, $5,000 fine, 6702 violation.
Mark: 29:20
You are wasting our time. Do not send in tax forms. If it’s less than 146, that’s your standard deduction. I mean, why would you do that anyway? I mean, unless you had a job and you had to, you know, get the money back, but, hey.
Mark: 29:31
It says don’t do that. So you’re like, well, wait a minute. What about so I could pay my kids? Yeah. If they make less than 146, you in your business could make them an employee.
Mark: 29:43
And there’s another rule that says, if they’re your kids and 17 years old or less or 22 year old and left as a full time student, then you don’t have to fill out FICA, no Medicare, None of that nonsense. No unemployment insurance because they’re your kids. And you can employ them from your company and not have to fill out any of that nonsense. So you pay them as a w two, but you don’t have to work about the pay, the the the paper or anything like that, 941 forms and nonsense, write them a check, and because it’s below their standard deduction, they don’t have to fill out the taxes. Now does that mean that they get paid tax free?
Mark: 30:16
Not really. Not technically. No. But functionally, what’s happening? They don’t have to file.
Mark: 30:21
There’s no taxes, and no state, no FICA, no social security, nothing. So is that in the tax code? No. But if we combine to very much in the tax code things, we realize with some logic, we can pay our kids tax free. The Augusta one is
Chris: 30:37
the same way. Go ahead. Heard about that you could pay your kids, and that was the thing that kinda stuck in my mind was like, I’m still gonna have to pay payroll taxes. Right?
Mark: 30:45
You do out of an s corporation, but not out of an LLC partnership or sole prop. I don’t think you should do out of a sole prop. But partnership, c corp,
Chris: 30:51
nope. Okay.
Mark: 30:53
Because there’s some special rules with s corporations, you know, because they the IRS gave us the s corp, which for which we’re thankful, but it comes with some significant provisos, not just the fact that you have to get paid a w two wage as a active shareholder, but even underage must that yeah. You gotta get ain’t no benefit there.
Chris: 31:13
Got it. Which, again, kinda sort of actually sort of leads into, you know, one of the things I’ve seen you talk about often, which is, like, stacking things, like having multiple things working towards your advantage. You know, like, I personally I have most of my real estate is inside of a trust. Mhmm. Because that’s what I was told
Mark: 31:30
to do.
Chris: 31:30
You know, I was told you put all your stuff, all your rentals and things like that go into a trust. Your house is going to trust. And then that way, when you pass away, your kids can get it, you know, with a new stepped up basis. So if you have, like, $1,000,000 to real estate, they get to inherit it. No taxes.
Mark: 31:45
No. Undercurrent.
Chris: 31:47
Yeah. But now, like, I’ve seen like, a lot of your stuff talks about, like, putting stuff in an LLC or a c corp instead. And so if you could kinda elaborate on that, that’d be cool.
Mark: 31:56
Sure. I mean, we love trust. I have I argue with my trust attorney friends all the time. We have a great time. But we both of us and them and me, we do kind of the same thing.
Mark: 32:08
We want tax reduction, asset protection, legacy preservation. They just have a different bias. I happen to think they’re wrong, but they happen to think I’m wrong. But we all use each other’s stuff in different biases. I have a book that’s out and a course that shows you how to build your own trust.
Mark: 32:23
And in that course and in that book, I said there’s only three reasons to set up a trust. 1, you have a $5,000,000 net worth or more. Protects you from the coming estate tax exemption reduction, which is gonna be cut in half January 1, 2026 unless something happens in congress, probably not. 2, you have any single kind of asset like Bitcoin, diamond stones, furniture, gold that’s greater than $250,000, you probably wanna put that into a non grantor spendthrift trust within a corporate structure. 3, you have aging parents that’ll probably pass, and you don’t want their stuff or that house to go to probate.
Mark: 33:00
That’s you wanna put that stuff into a revocable trust so that it doesn’t go to probate. But to me, everything else, corporate. If we look at the primary purpose of a trust, it’s to hold things, to get from one person or thing over time, and then ultimately to be given to another person or thing. Holding in trust. Now John d Rockefeller is to be believed when he said that we wanna own nothing but control it all, then a trust doesn’t really fit that for a couple of reasons.
Mark: 33:32
1, we’re handing assets, the actual ownership of them. When the trust is done, that house goes to somebody. They get the deed or they hold it in trust, the possessory lien. But the second thing it to me is very important, and trusts are valuable. Don’t get me wrong.
Mark: 33:48
Now I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong because, you know, especially if it’s something that you’re not renting, it’s like it’s my family property or it’s my family home. Trusts are fine. But the second thing is we have about I don’t know, we have to 88 trusts now in America, different types of trusts. I mean, there’s there’s, like, a new one popping up every week. It’s crazy.
Mark: 34:06
But they all colonize into 2 types, revocable, irrevocable. Revocable trust mean, really, it’s still my stuff. I have it all under control. I even have to pay the tax at any money it makes on my own 10.40. I it’s all kinda me.
Mark: 34:23
I can pull it back to me if I need to. It just keeps it it keeps certain instructions, like, for my retirement. If I have a retirement plan trust or anything like that, it helps with that, and it didn’t go to probate. But there’s 0 asset protection, and that’s not great if there was a lawsuit as couple of my people call a couple called me from San Francisco back in September, and they were like, can you help us? Can you help us?
Mark: 34:45
I’m like, what’s happening? And they were about to retire. They were educators. Again, Alameda County, they had some rental properties, and they went to a estate planning attorney. And they said, we wanna make sure that our all of our assets and our rental properties are able to pass to our daughter without any probate.
Mark: 35:02
He goes, oh, no problem. We’ll put them in revoke revocable trust. And, they didn’t do their due diligence with one of their renters, ambulance chaser. They got into a lawsuit. They’re still in the lawsuit, and they’re calling me going, you gotta help us.
Mark: 35:14
You gotta help us because they put all the rental properties from the trust. Everything in the trust is included under discovery. Can what can you do? I’m like, and you’ve been through discovery? Like, yeah.
Mark: 35:21
What are we doing? Like, I mean, I could put it into an LLC, but then you’re gonna go to jail and so am I because that’s fraudulent conveyance.
Chris: 35:28
Exactly. If you had done it beforehand,
Mark: 35:31
stupid. Had put it
Chris: 35:32
into some kind
Mark: 35:33
of, yeah, some kind of structure, but a revocable trust means you still own it. Now you still control it. That’s a value. But, again, to a Rockefeller’s maxim, that’s like saying, own everything, control everything. That’s not what he’s talking about.
Mark: 35:49
Yeah. The second column is irrevocable trust. Irrevocable trusts are yeah. You take your stuff. You put it in there, but you gotta walk away.
Mark: 35:58
They are the number one way to protect assets in America. There can be they can be private, and you put that stuff in there. You gotta walk away, which means it ain’t yours. It gets its own EIN. It’s so not you.
Mark: 36:08
It pays its own taxes on a 10 41 form. Very bad taxes, the 2nd worst taxes in the code, but, nevertheless, it’s not you. Somebody goes, hey. You better disclose that stuff. It was not mine.
Mark: 36:18
I don’t have anything to do with it. I can’t materially participate. I can’t get paid, and I can’t control it up to 5%. They just changed the rules on that, the IRS last year on March 29th, making them very, very difficult to keep because a lot of people playing fast and loose. But that doesn’t work for Rockefeller either because that’s own nothing, control nothing.
Chris: 36:39
Right.
Mark: 36:39
So the only way that if we’re gonna align with what he was saying, the richest man to arguably ever live, is to have a corporate structure where it’s you and me and your sister and my brother, and we’re in a I’m making it up, multi member LLC. We’ve conveyed our stuff into that LLC. It’s not ours anymore because we corporately own it. If you get into a personal lawsuit, they’re gonna go, well, you gotta disclose everything in that company. No.
Mark: 37:04
I don’t. Don’t. It’s not mine. Now I’ll disclose that I have x ownership in that company, and I’ll have to disclose that I make x money from that company. But you don’t get Mark’s stuff, you don’t get Susie’s stuff, and you don’t get John’s stuff if you win.
Mark: 37:18
Better than that, there are 6 states in the union that are called noncharging states that even if you won against that company, your cause of action or your, your claims are limited to a lien against the company so that you would get your stuff once it was sold. And, any monies that might filter down to the members, but you can never take control, you can never get shares, and you can never force liquidation. There’s 6 states that do that. And, you know, this is if you’re in a situation where you’re in a risk hotel or a high risk lawsuit potential like, you know, you’re a doctor or you’re real estate renting real estate’s a thing, then it becomes real advantageous to hold your assets offshore in one of these states in which you may not live because it’s very, very extremely difficult for somebody to get more than one jurisdiction in which to sue you. I mean, unless you shot somebody, don’t do that.
Mark: 38:11
Don’t commit a capital crime. But, you know, if they’re like, well, it was mold in play. Yeah. No message. 2 people.
Mark: 38:16
Avoid that. So but I was mold in the house, and
Chris: 38:19
we’re gonna
Mark: 38:20
sue you and take the house. Well, okay. Except the house is owned here in Florida where you think you’re suing me, but our rental agreement’s in Wyoming.
Chris: 38:28
Oh, k.
Mark: 38:29
And now you gotta sue me in Wyoming. Okay. You won in Wyoming? Great. There’s no assets there.
Mark: 38:35
The house is in Florida. Okay.
Chris: 38:40
So now how how how does that work? I mean, you’re a former California resident. Mhmm. You know, I’ve always been so I have rentals here in California. And so how how can a Wyoming corporation or California rental?
Chris: 38:53
Doesn’t doesn’t California gonna get very upset that there’s assets not that they can’t tax and get a hold of? Or how does that work?
Mark: 39:00
Well, that’s great. Yeah. That’s the big question. And it it that became sort of our quest once we got the federal government kinda calm down, and, you know, we were figuring this out. And then I realized, wait.
Mark: 39:10
So if I got houses in California, and if I had it all my way, I would not have to pay California tax on the rents for those properties. California tax being 10 to 30%. I mean, gross. Now granted rents mean you don’t have self employment tax because they’re passive, but still, ugh, gross.
Chris: 39:28
Yeah.
Mark: 39:28
How do we do that? Well, I first thought, well, that way what we do is from a lawsuit asset protection standpoint, we don’t wanna have rental properties backwards. Like, well, then how would they sue you? There’s no jurisdiction that couldn’t sue you. Well, I’ve actually personally witnessed that that I I’m just gonna show long story short, that goes wrong because courts are meant to support sovereign citizens first.
Mark: 39:51
And if a sovereign citizen is renting a house from you in California and they sue you, but the house is owned by Wyoming, that court, when they stop playing rent to you and you wanna evict them, means now you’re back in California trying to sue them. That court’s gonna go, and why aren’t you paying your rent? Well, because they broke I broke my leg. They didn’t fix the deck. And I try here’s all my things, and I can’t sue them.
Mark: 40:13
And that judge is gonna go, this is a sovereign citizen. You gotta make this right before we tear it. And by the way, since you’re in my court and I know you have California assets, I’ll let them sue you right here. How’s that gonna go for you? Yeah.
Mark: 40:24
Remember, judges don’t have to abide by the law. They just don’t. It’s what they feel moment to moment. Don’t get that wrong. They don’t wanna be in court.
Mark: 40:33
So instead, have the house owned in California by an LLC, multimember LLC in California.
Chris: 40:39
Then all that LLC
Mark: 40:40
is doing is holding. California, then all that LLC is doing is holding. There’s no money that exchanges hands. The renters don’t interact with that house except that they live in it. You You’ll have, and I’m making this up, but as an example, Wyoming LLC that is a property management firm that you hold.
Mark: 40:57
You and your wife and your kid is in that, and maybe you will hold multiple LLCs around the United States that each hold properties that you’re renting. But this California one, because it’s an LLC, and it doesn’t make any money. There’s no taxes. Like a house sitting there, how would California assess tax against you? There’s no money.
Mark: 41:20
Well, yeah, but they’re renting. Well, but renting to whom? Not to California. Well, with their California residents. Well but the contract is in Wyoming.
Mark: 41:29
And they’re like, well, wait a minute. But California is I’ve I’ve had that happen, and California still wants its tax. Well, there is this thing in all 50 states have it called apportioning, and it’s ugly, but I get it. Everybody’s gonna get their pound of flesh. Apportioning means that if you have 2 out of the 3 of the deadly sins, even though the LLC, even though the rents in the the guys renting have a contract in Wyoming, the fact that they’re in California means that they’ll still take their part of the rent.
Mark: 41:57
Even though there’s no California contract, they’ll still come in and go, you still owe to Wyoming, believe it or not. And those 3 deadly sins are property, employment, contract payments. So if you kill 2 of those, any 2 of those so, like, for example, if somebody came from Wyoming to work at your company, that’s not there’s no apportioning there. They’re just an employee. There’s no property.
Mark: 42:21
There’s no actual payments. If they show up as an independent contractor to you, no. That doesn’t work. Similarly, if all there is is a property sitting there and there’s no California contract and there’s no payments happening, it doesn’t count. And in some states like Texas, a portioning doesn’t apply to anything but sales tax.
Mark: 42:39
So real estate in Texas is completely devoid of any of that, which means that they can pay up to a half a $1,000,000 and same with California, a half a $1,000,000 doing this before they’ll before they have the I mean, they might try it, but they don’t have the legal jurisdiction to suck out that 10% tax from the rents that are going to Wyoming. And that also benefits you from a lawsuit, like we said earlier, because, hey. At that point, who are they gonna sue? Well, Wyoming.
Chris: 43:05
Yeah. Wow. That’s I mean, that really is fast thing. I feel like, you know, I’ve been doing this. I’ve been a financial adviser for
Mark: 43:13
8 years.
Chris: 43:13
Mhmm. I’ve been interested in finance since I was probably 12. I started collecting 20 ounces of silver when I was 12 years old.
Mark: 43:19
Amazing. Yeah.
Chris: 43:21
I mean, it’s just like to think that, you know, I’ve been playing, in my opinion, at an elevated set of rules, you know, with trust and LLCs and things like that. And to realize that now now they go, oh, man. I’m, like, literally in high school, and there’s still professionals playing the same game I’m playing. And that’s that’s what’s real that’s where I wanna get with me personally, but I also wanna do it for my clients as well. You know?
Chris: 43:43
Because one of the things that I’m running into with my clients is, you know, the people who have, you know, the bigger, you know, investment accounts also tend to also have, you know, big corporations that they own and, you know, pieces of real estate that they own. And, you know, and it’s like all of a sudden, I’m maybe it’s just because, you know, I hit 52 and that just, you know, clicked on me. I’ve always been adverse to paying taxes, but probably never more so than now because now I’m like, okay. Listen. I’ll give you what you’re due and no more.
Chris: 44:13
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s what that level that I’m trying now. I feel like I’m gonna go to pro level. Right?
Chris: 44:18
Because I need to learn all these things and stuff like that. So
Mark: 44:20
It really comes down to, like I said in the beginning, how much of a maker in the economy are you? And how much are we benefiting the United States corporation, we’ll call it? If if you’re putting things, widgets out there, creating jobs, taking loans, making loans, you’re gonna get tax benefits, but it does require a little research. And I don’t find, I guess, I find more arguments with CPAs about what I’m talking about because they can’t go point right to the code and go, that’s where he’s wrong. Well, because what I’m saying, this is where it’s right is because for the most part, we take that which we know is true, this which we know is true, and we put them together and we go, well, then this also must be true.
Mark: 45:02
So there’s a certain logic that we have to face because it’s not in the code. Here’s another great one for you. I know you love trust. You’ve heard of the the intentionally defective grantor trust?
Chris: 45:14
I have heard of that. Yes. Where you do a purpose. Yeah. You’re do do go ahead.
Chris: 45:18
You go ahead.
Mark: 45:19
Yeah. It’s it’s a it’s a it’s a horrible name, but it’s, a cousin to the non grantor trust. And we use it specifically to try to help people out who have they’ve they’ve lost their gift exemption or the things that they need to put into their trust are greater than their gift exemption. Because there’s a gift tax, everybody, if you’d you’d listen to know that. So if you start cracking over 12,000,000 or whatever it is, then everything that you give to somebody, you gotta pay 40% tax on it.
Mark: 45:44
Most people don’t realize that. It’s horrific.
Chris: 45:47
But if
Mark: 45:47
you had a $35,000,000 farm and you wanna gift it into a trust, it ain’t gonna be no irrevocable non grantor trust because if you do, you’re you’re gonna have to pay whatever the 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars are to gift it in there. So your only other option is to sell it to the trust, which is fine. But if you sell it on a note first of all, the trust has to have 10% of the value in it. But if you sell it on a note and then you make one payment and you die the next day, heaven forbid, only the part that you made the payment on is protected from the estate tax. However, in the in the intentionally defective grantor trust, the note captures the whole thing even if there’s only been one payment.
Mark: 46:31
And now it all goes into the trust and granted the trust would still have to make payments even after you died to make sure that was okay. But you’re not gonna find that anywhere in the regulations of any state. Yeah. But it’s there if you go, well, that’s true, this is true, and this is true, and we put them together. And it’s one of the reasons why congress is or, the IRS is trying to get rid of it as fast as possible, but congress won’t let it because they all using it y’all.
Chris: 46:55
Yeah. Right. That’s right. That’s right. And I found that to be the case with most of these, you know, laws that we’re looking at, these sort of, like I wouldn’t call them loopholes because, like you’re saying, they’re not really, like, not in the code.
Chris: 47:06
They’re just it’s just a way to structure. You know what I mean? To play within the rules. But I feel like that’s one of the reasons that those things haven’t really been closed up is because most of those people are using them.
Mark: 47:17
Yeah. Because if you were to close like, how would you close the child tax deduction? So called child tax deduction. Well, you’d have to close that, you you shouldn’t file if you don’t make more than your standard deduction. You’d have to close that if they’re your children, you don’t have to pay them fy you don’t have to pay FICA or file w two forms or anything like that.
Mark: 47:36
Well, who’s doing that? Why would anybody think that was a good idea? No one would vote in congress for that. They’d be like, that’s dumb. But what we’re really trying to do is close this child tax session.
Mark: 47:43
Yeah. But you have to kill the 2 things that are so obviously clear. So, you know, it’s it’s it’s I was gonna say America, as much as we hate our taxes. Yes. And as much as taxes, and I know I’m saying this from a very unique perspective, taxes were never a part of our founding fathers.
Mark: 48:02
In fact, we dumped tea in Boston Harbor for a 2% tax increase Right. And went to war against the country 10 times more powerful than we did over taxes. Some people say it’s religion. I like to believe it was actually over to overtaxation without representation. But here we are.
Mark: 48:19
I have my head of marketing is in Australia, and he’s always doing emails for us and trying to figure out how we do it and to get people to, you know, think it’s interesting to get an email from us. And he one day he said, y’all complaining about how much tax you pay. And he said and he’s pulled up the Australian tax code, and he goes, $190,000 47%. And he goes, and there’s no special IUL, a, you know, a w x y z that’s gonna save me from this. I just gotta pay it.
Mark: 48:48
K. So America’s still we have so much flexibility, and I wanna drill down to get the most of it as possible while we can because taxes are only ever going up. And, if I can get the word out to as many Americans as possible, that’s what I’m all about and why I’m really grateful that you’ve had me on your show here, to hopefully get more interest into people finding out for themselves. Hey. Well, how how would I how do I do this?
Mark: 49:17
How do I help my CPA help me?
Chris: 49:21
Yeah. Which actually that leads me to my question. Like, can you tell us a little bit more about what that process looks like? Obviously, you know, people can contact you, and they’re gonna be able to, like, get a lot of information out of you. Is is that, is that the next logical step in what we’re doing here?
Mark: 49:39
You mean to get in touch with me? Yes. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I’m sure that you you’ll be able to furnish them with contact from information, Mark’s Money Secrets without the apostrophe.
Mark: 49:50
Mark’s Money Secrets
Chris: 49:51
definitely have a link for you for sure.
Mark: 49:53
I appreciate that. Yeah. Mark’s Money Secrets, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook. We go live on Instagram every weekday at 4 PM Pacific. So if you wanna hang out and and listen to some more crazy talk like this, that’s great.
Mark: 50:06
And then we have a battery of classes that you can take at your own leisure, and packages as you might imagine. And then kind of our flagship program is a mastermind where we walk people through in groups for 12 weeks, the entire process of setting up a customized corporate structure for them, bylaws, minutes, compliance, the taxes, contracts, the structures, and how it all works, in a very intensive. And, we love that because we get to work with a lot of really great people who are, you know, up to not just saving money, but creating generational wealth.
Chris: 50:38
And that and that’s to me, that’s when you take the when you take the taxes part out of it. You know, I’m sure that some people can construe that as, like, you know, that’s well, that’s greedy or whatever. Mhmm. And and, you know, that that’s not my mind set. But my mindset is if I can take the taxes out of it, then that’s more wealth for the next generation down.
Chris: 50:56
And I
Mark: 50:56
think that we all that.
Chris: 50:57
We all want for our children, to have more than we have. You know, we want them to grow up. And, you know, I I always say, you know, we need to teach our kids the fish as much as we need to give them fish. But in the same respect, it’s like, I’d rather give the fish to my kid than I would the government.
Mark: 51:12
If I’ve got the fish, what am I just gonna throw them back in? I mean, maybe from a, you know, environmentally protective position, but really, hey. My fish kids, here you go. Yeah. And I’m gonna I’m also gonna hand them my poll with my secret lures and my special ingredients for luring the fish.
Chris: 51:29
Yeah. I I don’t I don’t Yeah. I don’t know, if we really covered this, but, you know, one of the things that I’ve noticed with your stuff is that you’re, you like to stack things. Like, do you like to have a stat you like to have a stack of an LLC and a trust and an s corp and a c corp and things like that. Is there kind of like a a general structure, or is that kind of more of that 12 week course?
Chris: 51:49
It’s like, hey. Listen. We’re gonna customize this. Not everybody’s gonna get an s corp. Not everybody’s gonna leave a c corp.
Chris: 51:54
But, like, in general, we’re gonna walk you through the process of what’s best for you.
Mark: 51:58
Yeah. There’s a kind of a primer structure that everybody kind of begins with, you know, like, sort of on a piano playing a scale, you know, you kinda start with. It’s not very exciting, but everybody, if you can get that part done, then we’re we’re on the right track. So we always start with a c corp that owns everything, underneath of which is the LLC that is majority owned by the c corp. C corp does no business.
Mark: 52:22
It just holds. That holds the assets of whatever you wanna pass down for the next 500 years. The control of it, not the things, just the control. The LLC takes all the risk in the marketplace, does all the business, and potentially is the thing that could be sued, but also is the thing that generates the profit from which we all get paid and we have all the tax breaks. It’s also where we put the properties and those kinds of things.
Mark: 52:43
And from that point, depending that’s kind of the basics that everybody starts from. And then from there, we scale up and we scale down and out. Like, we’ll set up that irrevocable trust to own the shares of the c corp if you have a $5,000,000 plus structure because the estate tax gonna come hammer you. You wanna do a real estate arm. You wanna do Amazon store arm.
Mark: 53:01
You wanna do a trading arm. All that comes out from that Central LLC. And all this, ideally, we wanna have in a nontax, noncharging, nonreporting state of which there are now only 2 left in the union, and that’s Nevada and Wyoming. That’s kinda your basics.
Chris: 53:18
So, basically, if I’m hearing you correctly, like, you wanna have your C Corp based based out of Wyoming or Nevada. Mhmm. And then that would be holding pretty much all of your assets on all your other corporations and trusts and things like that.
Mark: 53:31
Yeah. It it holds the so the c corp does two things. Because the c corp has a flat tax of 21 percent, which most people don’t realize. It’s the only flat tax that we really have. Capital gains
Chris: 53:40
And that’s really lovely. That’s a lovely tax rate. I mean, it really is.
Mark: 53:44
Yeah. That and and since c corps don’t pass anything through, they pay their own tax, including the taxes of all the profits of things that they own like the c corp. C or sorry, the, the LLC. The LLC passes through all of its taxes. So if the biggest owner of the LLC is a c corp and the LLC makes a $1,000,000 in profits, the c corp has to pay the tax on it.
Mark: 54:05
21%, worst case. And if you’re in a nontax state, that’s it. There’s no state tax involved. So it does that. It also serves as a place to put your assets that you wanna hold, not do business.
Mark: 54:17
So the 25 Bitcoin that you have that you wanna hold for the next 100 years, that’s not in your LLC. Now the 2 Bitcoin that you wanna sell after the after it goes up in November, we hope and pray, then you’re gonna trade that. That’s in the LLC. The but the ones you’re huddling, the 1938 model a you’ve got with the special chrome fenders, that’s owned in the c corp. The grandma’s special, you know, stamp collection from the civil war, c corp.
Mark: 54:45
Because if there were the worst case and the lawsuits and something took everything away, the c corp has no reason for anybody to go after it because it never did business.
Chris: 54:56
That’s really slick.
Mark: 54:57
Yeah. I mean, I think so. And then the problem being that c corps, you know, you have to personally own the shares of those c corps, and those could be taken away from you. Those are definitely gonna be ascribed and included in your estate when you pass. That’s why we then once your structure is getting valuable enough, that’s why we move those shares into an irrevocable trust.
Mark: 55:18
Every member that c corp gets an irrevocable non grantor trust in which it moves its shares, gets its own e I n, not your shares anymore, and c corps are the only entities in America that allow you to have full control with no ownership. Yeah. So you kinda get the best of all worlds. So it’s the everybody hates c corps, double taxation. Well, yeah, don’t get paid out of a c corp.
Mark: 55:40
There’s ways around that. And everybody hates LLCs. They’re passed through. Yeah. But you could pass it through to a really cool entity that handles your business tax, and you get max flexibility when you start putting them together.
Mark: 55:50
And that’s just those 2. Yeah. The trust element. You had s corp elements. You had other kinds of elements in there as you need, and it gets really, really juicy.
Chris: 55:59
Love it. I love it. And I just I think if again, anybody who’s listening to this, I would just say, like, there’s more. There’s more. You know?
Chris: 56:06
Whatever you think you’re doing, it’s probably a good job, but there is great, and it’s available. And, Mark’s got those secrets. That’s why it’s Mark’s money secrets. So Thank you. Yeah.
Chris: 56:18
I really appreciate you being on the podcast. I actually have some notes here. There’s some things we didn’t get chance to talk about. So maybe we can have you back in in a couple months and kinda dig into, like, we talked about a little bit, before the podcast about, variable life insurance and how to, leverage that for, potential wealth management as well, wealth transfer. Yeah.
Chris: 56:37
So maybe we can get into that next time. But I just I really enjoyed this topic, and I really enjoyed you. You’re excellent teacher. Really good coach. So Thank you.
Chris: 56:47
I wish you nothing but the best. And, for everybody again listening, we’re gonna have links to all his, social media and his websites and things like that in the podcast so you guys will be able to find him super easy. But it’s, Mark’s Money Secrets. Correct?
Mark: 57:00
Thank you so much. Yeah. You got it.
Chris: 57:02
Alright. Well, thank you again so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And, I look forward to talking to you again, and I’m gonna I’m just gonna commit right now. I’ll be in the next mastermind for sure myself.
Mark: 57:12
Love it. We’re gonna have we’ll have a great time together. Thank you so much. Alright.
Chris: 57:15
Alright. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate you.