Tax Strategies & Preparedness for Mobile Notaries

This episode, featuring Renea Dentman, is PACKED with the ins & outs of five critical tips for tax and business planning for mobile notaries and loan signing agents. Did you know you can hire your kids and enjoy some legal tax benefits? Or that Notaries can opt to exempt their Notary Public revenue from their self-employment tax liability? Details on these and so much more on this episode of the Sign & Thrive podcast!

Guest Information:

Renea Dentman is a philanthropist and a serial entrepreneur. She is the owner of Ms Notary Consultant and California Notary Agency. Despite economic downturns, Renea has successfully run profitable businesses for the past ten years. She has used her knowledge and expertise in the business, tax, and notary industries to develop courses that teach others how to start successful Notary Businesses.

As a result, hardship pushed her to acquire a high degree of self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work. This enabled her to complete her bachelor's degree by the age of 20 and begin her master's degree in accounting by the age of 21. This same work ethic and feeling of professionalism propelled her to the top of the Notary business coaching sector. Renea thinks that everyone of her clients have the desire and ability to overcome their excuses, overcome their fear about branding themselves, to achieve their full Notary business success potential. You will be pushed harder than you have ever been. Your limiting ideas and excuses will be challenged, but you will also have your loudest cheerleader, staunchest supporter, and lifetime champion at your side.

www.MeetRenea.com - consultant, conference, course

Episode Highlights:

11:57 When it comes to your vehicle deductions for your mobile notary and loan signing business, you have two options: Standard Mileage deduction or Exact. Listen in to detailed guidance from Accountant and Notary, Renea Dentman, on this week's episode of Sign & Thrive.

38:55 Tracking your expenses is critical to your tax efficiency and business success. Utilizing bookkeeping and quality financial advisors will help you get to the next level.

53:52 Your home-based office tax benefit is one of the most missed opportunities among mobile notaries and loan signing agents. Listen in this week as Renea Dentman shares her insight.

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Bill Soroka (00:01:04):
All right, welcome to the sign and thrive podcast. I'm here with miss Renee Dentman. She's a corporate accountant and a fellow notary public Renee. Thank you so much for finally making this happen.

Renea Dentman (00:01:16):
Thank you Bill for having me. This is super exciting. I am just honored to be here in the space of a… I always call it the New York best seller sign and thrive. Okay.  

Bill Soroka (00:01:31):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And we're gonna talk about something well, I'm grateful for people like you that are passionate about things I'm not passionate about, which is the accounting, the bookkeeping, this tax strategies that go into it. But I'm the reason I'm grateful is all of that stuff makes a huge difference. In fact, I would say it's make or break a business especially like ours, a service based business sometimes where margins are, can be lean sometimes. So your strategies, I've been following you for a couple years now, you've helped notaries across the country, especially with the PPP loans. I know you do a lot of coaching and consulting, so that's what we're gonna talk about today. Tax strategies and preparing for tax strategies. Right?

Renea Dentman (00:02:24):
Exactly. And that's like everyone, that's a business ownership fall in love with it. I mean, maybe not as much as I do. But this is, these are things that people don't teach. Right. We know how to make the money, but how do we keep the money, and how do we make sure that we maximize the growth of the money?

Bill Soroka (00:02:41):
Yeah, it's so important because it's, especially when, you know, in my particular situation, I went my entire life, not making any money, like always being broke, always pulling up by the boots straps. I had 26 business failures. So making a thousand dollars a month was good money for me. Right. So when I finally started making money, it went so fast. I've never been so poor as I was when I was making, you know, a couple hundred grand a year because I didn't know how to prepare for this. So this is a gift to be able to share strategies like this. And I feel like one of the first questions, one of the main questions I get all the time is how to even structure your business when you start out, do you have opinions on that?

Renea Dentman (00:03:27):
Yeah, absolutely. So just a little bit about like, I've been an accountant for 10 plus years and I've been a business owner for about five plus years on a different business. And I've been a notary for about 2.5 years. And the reason why I was able to Excel in it is because I had a different business. Like we, we always that first baby we fell in. Right. Or we, we learned a lot of loops and holes, and I think I'm here because of the fact that I want other notaries to know the things that I learned in my business, number one, that I was able to dominate in my business. Number two, just because of that. Yeah. So when it comes to business structure, I was a DBA. I was doing business as …. Like I thought that I was li that allowed me to get a bank account that allowed me to get checks in my business name.

Renea Dentman (00:04:16):
And I thought that that was the best thing for me at the time, because I was not, it was not Renea Dentman right. But little did I realize that may be great if you are on a tight budget, but you have to understand my life was a little bit different at that time I had no house. Right. So I had no assets. I was in student loan debt, right. So there's no liability that really, that I can maximize on my assets. Right. And then on top of that, it was just that I didn't know about the liability part, right. That they can come after you. Right. I thought just not commingling my funds was enough. So just going back to the question of just the DBA, it's not recognized from a state level, I didn't know about funding, right? The possibility or grants that wants you to be recognized on your secretary of state versus just the county level.

Renea Dentman (00:05:14):
Right? So a DBA doing business ads, going to the IRS and getting your EIN number and not knowing more about it, that is just on a county level. And just having counties tax or a city level's not on a state level and it has no protection. So here in California, yes, baby California is the $800 to be a LLC annually. The annual friend has tax for. So the, the average notary or the average business owner, they look at that number. They hear about that number and they think twice about it. But when you really think about it and knowing your number, that's only $60 a month, right. How often do we use $60? That's gonna protect you. So when I'm really breaking this business structure down, I ask the notary, what, what is your net worth? Right. And I ask them based off of what assets do you have? What are we protecting for that liability? Now, when I make that make sense, then you'll start to realize that a LLC may be the first step or a S corporation or a corporation may be something that you wanna look into more than just a DBA. Right. But that's where I go with that.

Bill Soroka (00:06:38):
Yeah. I, I love that you put so much thought into that, which most expert advisors would, because the experience I have is in coaching notaries all over the country is they wanna blanket policy for everybody. They just wanna say, just tell me what to do. And of course I am not an attorney. I'm not an accountant. I can't advise on that. And every situation is different. So I love that you highlight that. What are you protecting? Cuz that's really the main purpose of an entity, right? It's exactly it's liability protection and tax efficiency, if you do it. Right.

Renea Dentman (00:07:12):
And let me add a couple other things, if you don't mind, bill.

Bill Soroka (00:07:15):
Sure, please.

Renea Dentman (00:07:16):
So it's about the goal. What is the goal? What is the purpose? What is the race that you're running? Right. And that's about the network. So let me add two additional, additional gyms, right? I'm a gym dropper, right? Gym number one. Is, are you trying to buy a house? Right. So if you're trying to buy a house, the strategy of that is the fact of the matter is do you opt into a corporation? Cause you can now issue yourself a w two. Right? But at that moment, we're gonna dive a little bit deeper of what, when someone should opt into a corporation and then number three is the fact of the matter is a LLC is great, right? And a corporation is great, but what is your true net? Right. That matters. Right. and also when it comes to buying a house, do you want to exhaust everything or do you not? So that's where we're gonna go a little bit further into what are your goals? Because if your goals is, Hey, I already have a house I'm not looking into being investor or buying my second home. Then maybe a DBA is best for you. You know, it, maybe a LLC is best for you and not going up the ladder. Right. If you're like, oh my God, I want to be, I wanna have a house. Well maybe you don't, you can't exhaust everything. Right. And we're later term about that, but those are some of the things.

Bill Soroka (00:08:54):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad that you're gonna talk about that because I hear everybody, nobody wants to pay taxes, but if you have a major purchase that you wanna make like a home or another business, or you've gotta prove income, you can't write. Or as you said, exhaust every avenue, right. You've got to start, you've gotta show income and you gotta pay tax on that income. So I'm glad we're gonna get into that.

Renea Dentman (00:09:18):
And it's the golden plan, right? What is your golden plan? I think a lot of notaries get into this industry and they see that it's a opportunity to make money, which is great. I was able to Excel, but did you come in with a plan? And when you come in a plan, that's where business structure, business foundation start is right there. It's not about making the money in it's about how are you going to nav, nav navigate through the process.

Bill Soroka (00:09:46):
Yeah. Excellent. All right. Well, let's talk about it. So what do you recommend? What are some of the tips for not even just mobile notaries, right? Like granted, this is the science right podcast. We're credentialed professionals that work on the road. So what are some tips for us?

Renea Dentman (00:10:04):
Yes. one of the tips that is great for you is make sure when you do your knowledge, right? So we talk about that, but then some people don't understand. So there's three different type of systems out there that I recommend notary gadget, notary, sys, and VIN books. Right. They are made for notaries. Some people like to say, Hey, I wanna use my square account. Or I wanna use snap docs account. Or I wanna use QuickBooks because they have self-employment. But I think that you gotta get used to bookkeeping, right? So when you do bookkeeping and I recommend these three, particularly why? Because it takes our mileage into account automatically. And on top of that, it takes our, not our not exemption account. So if we track that, get your bookkeeping, right. Get your front office together, make sure you're using these systems and it's not, oh, I'm gonna do it after just do it before, before you go on your signing, just enter it.

Renea Dentman (00:11:11):
You can always come back to it, but let's just make sure we doing data entry, no accountant like data entry. No, no one, like it is brutal. Bill is brutal. Yeah. But that's the first tip right there. Yeah. Because if you really do these three systems, I promise you two of the major problems is people don't know how much to exempt. They can't pull a profit and loss statement. And lastly, they forget to put their expenses in and they think that they can write off everything such as when we're driving, being a mobile notary, you hear all the time, save your receipts, save your receipts, but is save your receipts in the concept of learning taxation. When it comes to mileage, you can only have two options, the actual or the standard mileage, you can't double dip. So if you have a registration, you have a parking ticket, you have something that you bought from AutoZone for your car and you saving all those receipts. That's that actual mileage deduction that is not standard. So what is standard standard is the 50 cents method, right? You get 56, 58 percentage on your mileage. But if you opt into one, you can't take the other. So saving your parking tickets, saving your registration, even gas, some notaries think that they can write off gas. That may be true, but you gotta pick and choose before you even start.

Bill Soroka (00:12:53):
What do you think? So this was a slap in the face for me. When I first learned this, I was like, what I'm saying? Literally I had shoe boxes full of receipts, and I never did anything with them, but they were still, I, I was collecting all these receipts and my account was just like, no, you gotta choose one or the other. You wanna keep track of every single expense or do you want the mileage deduction? And here's what he told me. And you told me if you agree, he said, the mileage deduction works more in my favor. Usually do you find that to be true?

Renea Dentman (00:13:22):
I find that to be true. And these three system notary assist notary gadget, and then books, they do that. They already generated where, where you're going to, where the next appointment is, where the next appointment is. So they automatically in your profit and loss statement when you run it, they already did it for the entire year. Right. But then there's notaries going in and said, well, I got a parking ticket now I gotta I got registration and then I pay my gas. You can't double dip. So I definitely think standard knowledge is for the average person coming in. But the buffer and the caveat to that is bonus depreciation bill. And that's a FL what? I'm going to break that down.

Bill Soroka (00:14:11):
Yeah, please. What is bonus depreciation?

Renea Dentman (00:14:13):
So we have regular appreciation where you have the existing life of just a vehicle. So the average vehicle, existing life, if not, if I'm not mistaken is like about seven years existing life of a vehicle. But with bonus depreciation, what Trump put into standard up into 2023 is that if you get a vehicle over 6,000 pounds, like a BMW G-wagon, which is 6,000 pounds, right. That you gain exempt off your first year at a hundred percent,

Bill Soroka (00:14:52):
What do you mean? What's getting written off the cost of the vehicle,

Renea Dentman (00:14:55):
The cost of that vehicle.

Bill Soroka (00:14:57):
Wow.

Renea Dentman (00:14:57):
And that's actual deduction, actual mileage. So in that situation, so we just talked about standard, the mileage and can't double dip. So bonus depreciation is you can write off the entire value that you purchase for the vehicle.

Bill Soroka (00:15:14):
So the brand new vehicle only, or used vehicles,

Renea Dentman (00:15:17):
That's a really great question. And most of the time, these vehicles will have to be connected to your corporation. Right? Okay. It's not only the reason why not, but yes, it has to be like you ally guaranteed on the vehicle, or it is also part of your LLC, but that's pretty much the, the matter of the fact and you, or if you personally do it, you can still do it. But you have to use that vehicle up to about 80% of the time for, and not 20% of that, but I know that is advanced, but I wanna put that out there. I wanna put it out there because that's how actual knowledge that section can really benefit. If you know that you're going to purchase a car in this year, well, try to add your corporation to it. And then at that moment, even if it's less than 6,000 pounds, the useful life of a vehicle seven years, right now, you can depreciate it over two or three years.

Renea Dentman (00:16:20):
Now, if you do like $30,000 vehicle, right, $30,000 divided by three years, you're gonna write that off and depreciate that even faster. And that's $10,000 every year versus you have to divide that by seven, which $30,000 divided by seven, right? The depreciation of that would be about only 4,000 a year. So the, the fact of the matter is if you use actual knowledge, right, you can benefit off just the vehicle that you just got. Right. You can write it off quicker than you ever can through depreciation. And then lastly, all those other things that you wanted to write off with your receipts, you can, your gas, the average gas is about $2,500. Okay. A year. So a notary usually pay about $2,500 a year on gas, right. On the average person. So you can write that off. You can write, oh, I got a parking ticket, which is a struggle of being a, a remote notary, not a remote notary, a traditional notary, right? Yeah.

Bill Soroka (00:17:28):
Yeah. So

Renea Dentman (00:17:29):
I think that, that's what I wanted to kind of put at the caveat.

Bill Soroka (00:17:34):
I, I love that. So what I would take away from that conversation is Uhhuh Uhhuh, Uhhuh. I'm gonna talk to my accountant about bonus depreciation. I'm just gonna ask about it, but let me ask you just a clarifying question. So the bonus depreciation is that only for actual mileage deduction, not the standard deduction,

Renea Dentman (00:17:56):
That's only for actual and thank you for that clarification. So you have the actual, anything that has to do with the parts of a vehicle, the transportation of a vehicle, it will fall into actual outside of mileage.

Bill Soroka (00:18:13):
Okay. All

Renea Dentman (00:18:13):
Right. So all the listeners that are listened, anything that you think that has to do with that vehicle, from a parking ticket to a registration, to insurance, to a title, to whatever that is actual it's itemizing, all of the things that has to do with your transportation and your vehicle.

Bill Soroka (00:18:31):
And if you decide to do that, like say you do buy a new car one year. So you do actual that year, the next year. Can you do mileage?

Renea Dentman (00:18:39):
No. You can't change.

Bill Soroka (00:18:41):
You just stick to it no matter what, right?

Renea Dentman (00:18:43):
Technically that's what they say for the useful life of that vehicle. So if that vehicle is gonna be with you for at least five years, technically you can only do one.

Bill Soroka (00:18:53):
Okay.

Renea Dentman (00:18:54):
Cause she's still depreciating. So if you use actual, when you bought a vehicle, you're still depreciating year two and year three. Remember when we did that division 30,000 divided by three you're depreciating, 10 years, 10,000 every year. Right.

Bill Soroka (00:19:11):
All right. Great advice. Sorry. That was tip number. That was just tip number one with some caveats and good information there. What else you got for us?

Renea Dentman (00:19:20):
Okay. Next one of the things we, I, I wanna be the, the plug for this, for the notary community. Like the notary accountant, the notary tax specialist. Why? Because people don't, they, they talk about it, but they don't know how to apply it. Right. And what am I talking about? I'm talking about the exemption, right? Exempting. We hear it when I got in this industry back in 2019. That's all I heard.

Bill Soroka (00:19:50):
Right. Are you talking about meaning IRS publication, 3 34. That exemption.

Renea Dentman (00:19:56):
Yes, sir.

Bill Soroka (00:19:58):
All right. Yeah. Can you explain that first, before you go into it?

Renea Dentman (00:20:04):
Yeah. So IRS publication, 3 34, it allows notaries and ministers to people in the world that can be self exemp on a federal level, not a state level. So they recognize us as a public servant, right. In these different professions to now take advantage of voluntarily exempting. Our self-employment tax, our self-employment tax is 15.3%. Okay. So because of the money that we make, we would have to pay 15.3%. So how do we make those numbers make sense? And I'm good at doing that. So if I made a thousand dollars for the year, right, and I wanted to do 15.3%, I should have put away $153 for the year. And what that breaks down to is $12 and 75 cents every month. So therefore I was prepared to pay taxes on that thousand dollars.

Bill Soroka (00:21:03):
So $153 for every thousand dollars though, that's easy to extrapolate for sure.

Renea Dentman (00:21:09):
Mm-Hmm exactly, exactly. And

Bill Soroka (00:21:12):
No, go ahead.  

Renea Dentman (00:21:15):
With that being said this is one of the things that is a pro and a con the pro is that you don't have to pay taxes on your notal act. Right. And I'll break that down a little bit, but the other part is if you opt into it, it's the opt in or opt out right on the form. It's a schedule S E schedule S E that's what you roll over to your schedule C but let's just say, can I do partial? Do I have to do everything? So I look on my profit and loss statement from my P and L from pulling from one of these three accounts. It says that I am capable of writing off $10,000. That's how many notorious acts that I did in my state. Right? For the year of 20, 21 or 2022 at that moment, can I do partial exemption?

Renea Dentman (00:22:15):
What if I don't wanna write off all of it? Yes. You can do that. You can write off as much as you want, long as you are minusing from your net profit. So if my net profit is $10,000 and my not exemption is $10,000, then zero. Right? But if my net profit is $10,000, I can do a partial and only say, I wanna apply $5,000 to my exemption. These are different things that notaries hear about, but they don't know how to apply it. And it is not because they don't know how to apply it. It's because I did the work right from the level of the education I have with my master's in accountancy and just working corporate experience. I was able to poke holes in calling a IRA, getting around my CPA friends and my enrolled agents and making sure that where are these forms, right. And really understanding them how they flow and where to put em, if you'll go to publication, 10 40 S S E it tells you exactly how to do it, Phil. Yeah. It, it writes it down of how, what form, how it flows and how to put exempt notary. They tell you when the dotted line of a scheduled C put exempt notary on their bill. And no one's talking about that, bill.

Bill Soroka (00:23:50):
Why do you think that is?

Renea Dentman (00:23:52):
There's one, there's no paradigm shift right. In the community in the community is like, go, go, go, go ahead and get this money. But the paradigm shift has to say how we protect this money, right? How do we just don't hear what we, what rumors say, but how do we really apply it? Right? How do we sit down? We, we have zooms and webinars and master classes of learning the notary industry, but we don't have zoom and master classes of learning how to form flow. I'm not asking you to be accountant. I'm not asking you to taxation. I'm asking you to be a form and empowered entrepreneur. That is a note.

Bill Soroka (00:24:36):
Yeah. I, I love that point because it really isn't how much you make. It's how much you keep. It makes such a huge difference. And I learned that lesson again, really the hard way, because I was making more money than I'd ever made. As even before my publishing, I dialed in a system, I started making ridiculous money at this. I used to pinch myself and say, there's gotta be something wrong with this. How can this be? How can I love the work? I do so much and make so much money at it. But then at the same time, I would look at my bank account and I was living in the same broke mindset. Yeah. I was making money and spending money. Like it was just coming in. It was going out and I wasn't planning for tax. I, I remember when I was like a few years behind on my taxes and I called the IRS and they worked with me and they're like, you don't owe anything. You didn't make any money. I mean, that's how bad it was. Right. They're like, they wanted to send me money. They felt so bad for me because I, and then, so I took that mindset into this business and it really, it really could have jammed things up really bad. So I'm glad I had advisors, people who are passionate about this to help pull me out. Yeah. But I wanna go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Renea Dentman (00:25:53):
Yeah. I think that when it comes to rich dad, poor dad is it's the concept. It's a thick book. It's a, it is a book that's gonna take a lot to get through. Right. But one of the things that it pulls out is the cash flow quarter. Okay. And they talk about going from employee to business mind. They also talk about from being a self, self entrepreneur to investor and how these mindsets has to shift. We wanna work for ourselves, but what is all the different moving pieces about it? Right. And one of the things is, is taxation, right? Yeah. You're, you're human resource. That that's what really the position and the role that you're playing because human resource, no, make sure that you fill out a w four, right? When you come here, they gonna make sure you fill out that w four. And that w four is gonna say, what zero exemption you're gonna do. You're gonna write a 1 0 2. And that right there is the entry level of how they're going to tax you. When you're checked, who is making that when we are entrepreneur, who is checking in with us, with our human resources to say, how are you going to apply this?

Bill Soroka (00:27:10):
That's I think where the benefit of getting good counsel, good advice really comes in. So on publication 3, 3, 4, with this self-employment exemption, what are some of the downsides to

Renea Dentman (00:27:26):
Taking it? Exactly. So one of the downsides that is taking is I wouldn't say complete downside is good, but all things that are good, you gotta have a plan for, right. So the good is you don't have to pay taxes on self-employment tax, the money that we receive up to a certain amount, the, the, the caveat to that is why are we paying self-employment tax? What is that applying to it's applying to social security and Mecal. So when do the average person taps into that? I believe it's when you're 62 or 65 years old. Right. So what does that really look like? Well, my father is 80 years old, right. My father. Right. And so, and my mother, right. They're up there in age, the different errors, right? In the baby bloomers, they depend on their social security. When they retire, they got their pension, they add their social security benefits, and that provide them a fixed income to live off of for the rest of their life, from that moment. Right. And then medical insurance, they don't gotta worry about because they've been paying for it every time, every time they worked in corporate or wherever they were, but our mindsets are different now. Right. It's now we're entrepreneurs. Well, if you're not paying into the taxes, don't expect to get what they got, which was

Bill Soroka (00:29:00):
So security. Well, and that's the thing, right? For people who don't know your social security, the amount of your social security is dependent upon your income and what, and your contributions into that fund throughout your work life. How, how much have you contributed? So if, as self-employed people we haven't contributed, if we've taken, if we've maxed out or exhausted, I love that word. If we've exhausted, our social security people publication 3, 3, 4 contribu or exemptions, then we haven't been contributing. So there's a, an impact.

Renea Dentman (00:29:36):
So lemme, we

Bill Soroka (00:29:37):
Qualify

Renea Dentman (00:29:38):
For a little bit. Yeah. That make it more modern and logical. You remember when, well, most entrepreneurs never get this benefit. States allow self-employed people to get unemployment benefits in history that never have been done before. Only people that was working a w two job was able to opt into getting unemployment, right. Not a self-employed person. Right. But during the pandemic, whatever you put in, that's what you got out over those years. So some people got more than others. Some people got a little bit less than others. It was because how much did you have in your tank? Like gas? Do you have a full tank or do you have a load tank that was gonna justify how much you contribute to that bucket? So in that reality is some people doing the employment. They were receiving more money than they ever did in their life. Right. Because they've been working 2010 years and paying into it. So that's gonna happen once we get a little bit older in age and we decide to retire from working at all that social security that we contribute. Right. That's what payout, but there's a pro to it too. You just have to be informed if you do not pay into it now, then what is your plan B and your plan B is starting your own outside of your corporate job Roth IRA, right? Your four play plan, right?

Bill Soroka (00:31:24):
Is that tip number three?

Renea Dentman (00:31:26):
I would say it's still tip, tip number two, but it's, it's

Bill Soroka (00:31:29):
Still in tip number two. That's a great idea. It's great idea.

Renea Dentman (00:31:33):
But it's applying that to something that's going to benefit you, right? We have self-employment Roth IRAs. We have other retirement plans for you, right? We meaning society. These institutions, financial institution. If you go into your bank, you can set one up. Once you set one up. Now, the money that you were going to pay for the self-employment tax. Now you can put some money aside. So if you were supposed to pay $3,000 in self-employment tax, now put that $3,000 into a savings for your retirement, or just put half of it. It's up to you. But the benefit of that is compound interest. Your money will continue to grow in this retirement account in 10 years, in five years in 20 years, especially if you're in your twenties. If you keep doing that by the time you think you're in your 60, you may have doubled what you put in, but you're building your own social security bucket for yourself, right?

Renea Dentman (00:32:50):
That is going to maximize your interest. I look at it like this. You have to have a plan for everything. If notary don't work for you, what are you gonna do? Right. If loan signing, agent don't work for you, what are you gonna do? Well, the plan is you do one now, you know, both navigation. You can go route one, route two, you gotta choose what route you wanna go. But there's a consequence for everything that you do. So is it a, a, a win is amazing win long as you have a plan B for it, right? Hmm.

Bill Soroka (00:33:24):
That's fantastic advice. Thank you, Renee. If there was, and I I'm, I'm gonna ask one of those questions that I I'm looking for a blanket answer, and I know they don't exist, but is there a particular age group where taking this exemption makes more sense than others or vice versa? Is there just a particular age group? Like if you're closer to reaching social security, does it make more sense to not take the exemption or to take the exemption? Or how does it work? Can you give us an overview or a generalization?

Renea Dentman (00:34:05):
No, I definitely think that that is good. I think in my opinion, right, Ms. Renee Diman opinion is that put in a Roth. I is better because it's compound interest. Okay. It's compound interest. Your money's gonna grow no matter what, right. Versus if you put it in social security, it's not growing, it's not doing anything. You're just putting in a savings account to hope to get it back later. Right. And there's no guarantee. So even if I was, let's just say, I'm 55 years old, I got about seven years in my tank before. I'm like, okay, well, at that moment, before you became an entrepreneur, right, you was probably working somewhere else. Right. Building up some type of pension program, like you were getting back in the day and trust and believe bill down off of that NoMo, right. Pension, no. Or you was building on 401k.

Renea Dentman (00:34:58):
So you were able to do that. But what, what I would say is if I am working part-time, and I'm 55 years old as a notary, and I'm working full time as a w two earner, I would use a lot of the money that I currently make and maximize my current retirement plan with my company. And you offset the income that you're gonna contribute for them to match up to some companies 13%, cuz you know, you're gonna make it in the back end from just being an notary. That's what I would recommend. So take advantage of that. So the average company, I don't know, match dollar from dollar up to a certain amount. Some people can't contribute more than five, th five, 5%. Let's just say off of the current paycheck. Well, if you know that you want to contribute a thousand or 1500 a month to your work pension or your work 401k, I recommend you to max it up to more or double what you're currently doing for those that are working corporate they're 55 years old.

Renea Dentman (00:36:14):
And then you just go out every month and make the difference as being a notary because that's the greater good of what you're gonna do. You're in a position that you can go harder. Right. But when you are just for those that are, Hey, I'm 55 years old, I'm an entrepreneur. What do I do? Right. And I don't have the ability to max it. Right. What I recommend we're gonna live. We all gonna live past 70 years old. Right? That's what my best approach is. So I would definitely get with a statistician, right. That at that moment. And it costs a little bit for them to maximize in life insurance. That's the next caveat? Life insurance is a retirement plan and it's called the I U L in index, universal life. That one, that's what I would tell somebody at the age of 55 years old or 60 years old, what do I do?

Renea Dentman (00:37:13):
I am a notary and I'm making good money. And do I still operate and get a, a Roth IRA? Well, I will tell you to look into IUL plan and I will tell you to put all of your money there and it sheltered and it compound interest too. So it's different role that you take. But these are conversation that we're talking now that some people never heard bill. So just hear for the first time, and then you're gonna hear for the second time you're gonna hear for the, and you're gonna the light bulb corner click, and you're gonna now be educated when you go talk to accountant or you go talk to advisor and you're like, Hmm. And I'm sorry to say bill some CPAs don't know it like Ms. Renee. Why? Because they're not really an entrepreneur. They still have the employee mindset. They don't have a business mindset. So they can't, even though their credential allows them to say they're credible, but they never live the life of our entrepreneur. So they don't always know what is the best for their client. Because at the end of the day, they're still living off an employee mindset. I hope that that kind of helped.

Bill Soroka (00:38:28):
Yeah. That doesn't, that's a, actually a qualifying question. Now, anytime I hire somebody on my advisor staff, right. And that is my financial advisors, my CPAs accountants, they have to have the entrepreneur mindset because I'm so I got so frustrated, arguing with somebody who's thinking like an employee. And I'm like, that's just not how real life works. I need somebody who understands that. So that's a excellent point.

Renea Dentman (00:38:53):
I'm so happy to excellent point. So happy you said that like having a financial staff, that's your dream team that's gonna really make you win. Right. And the fact of the matter you said that is, and that's what I'm trying to bring to this industry is, oh, I, my CPA said that, huh? Just know a CPA is trying to take money too. Okay. And an end enroll agent, everybody is in it for the money. I ain't even gonna lie bill. Right. So because of that, yeah. They may give you a great plan. The plan that they probably wrote, but they don't have employee. I mean, they don't have a entrepreneur mindset, so they don't see all the different avenues that can be. So I'm glad that you asked me far as age. I wasn't prepared for that question, but I'm, I'm glad that I answered the truth in the organic way that I can.

Bill Soroka (00:39:41):
Yeah, no, I think that was great. Great. painted a great picture for it. That was a comprehensive tip. Number two. What's tip number three.

Renea Dentman (00:39:53):
All right. So now we talked about in tip number two, just as an overview of that. A schedule se E okay. Let's go over a schedule C okay. Let's track a little bit backwards before you can even get to a schedule. Se you gotta go through a schedule C and most people know what a schedule C is because of the PPP. They wanted to know if they were eligible or not. Right. So one of the things that I wanna go over is people always ask me, what can I write off? What can I write off? Can I write off this? Can I write a bat? Can I write? What, what is the, no, I always lead them back to a schedule. C if it's on a schedule C you can write it off. Okay. And you're like, what? All right. So let me just pull up a schedule C real quick. And I'm gonna tell you pay attention to this number and this ring and anything between that. You can easily write it off. Right? And that's the best of that advice that I can give when it comes to, what can I write off? And just being aware of what you can write off. So it's, it's schedule four. It is 10 40, schedule C part two line eight through line 27. A that is what you can write off.

Bill Soroka (00:41:12):
That's a lot of that's a lot of long lines who submits a schedule. C can sole proprietors do a schedule? C can do you have to be organized as an LLC or an S Corp?

Renea Dentman (00:41:21):
I love, I love how you just bring it all back together, Phil, to make it make sense. This is for a schedule C is for a DBA, a sole proprietorship or a individual that is a single member LLC, or a discarded entity in the eyes of the federal government. So they all will have to do a schedule seat, but I'm a LLC bill. I'm still submitting on 10 40. Yes. Because in the federal eyes of the IRS, you're still, so proprie is only you, right? Yeah. So that's the form for them. If your partnership is 10 65, if you are a S corporation is 11, 20 F and they all look the same, it says income and it says expense, or it says deduction and it gives you a overall total.

Bill Soroka (00:42:19):
Awesome. Thank you for clarifying that. So this is basically for everybody who's listening in all likelihood yes.

Renea Dentman (00:42:26):
Bill

Bill Soroka (00:42:26):
To this podcast. You're gonna have a schedule C when you submit your taxes. Yes. All right. So tell us about line eight through 27.

Renea Dentman (00:42:34):
So right here, I'm looking at, it says advertising. Can you write off advertising? Yes. Bill, can you write off your legal expenses such as your legal shield or your professional service or your tax person? Yes. This or you're a tax person. Yes. Bill. Are you able to write off the fact of the matter is my office expenses. Yes. Bill, are you able to write off? The fact of the matter is that I paid myself. Yes. Bill, can you write off the fact that my utilities, my cell phone bill? Yes, bill. So these are all the things that you can write off. But remember when we FA my insurance, my Eno insurance, can I write that off? Yes. Bill, you can write all of these different things off and there's other things that you can, I traveled. Okay. I went to a conference, right. I went to the internet conference. I went to the sustainable notary conference. Right. Can I write that off? Yes. There are some limits of how much you can write off, but those are business expenses. Right? You went and you traveled, right. Can I write off all of those different things? Absolutely. Right. But there's a cap on how much you can.

Bill Soroka (00:43:49):
Is it a, is there a, a standard or an average that they're expecting that the IRS is expecting that you should stay within like a range on these things? Or is it whatever's real?

Renea Dentman (00:44:00):
Whatever is real, the only standard that they have is for your travel and your meals

Bill Soroka (00:44:06):
And sorry, what was that last word in your travel? Yeah.

Renea Dentman (00:44:09):
So if you go conference, you can't just buy and go to a steakhouse and spend $500,000. And I'm just gonna write that off. That was a business. No, there's a cap on that. Okay.

Bill Soroka (00:44:20):
This was another rude awakening for me is the meals and entertainment is not a hundred percent deduction, right. Either. Right. I learned that the hard way. And sometimes if you're eating by yourself, you can't write that stuff

Renea Dentman (00:44:35):
Off. That's correct. We get the question all the time. If I'm out in the field and I'm getting a little bit hungry, can I just write off that? Mcdonald's but I'm working. Who are you meeting? right, exactly. What's going over. Right. So just because of this podcast, if I was willing to meet you and we were at breakfast, it's a business milk. Yes. I'm able to write that off, but this is virtual. So what if I'm eating right now with bill, right? No. You can't write that off.

Bill Soroka (00:45:06):
Oh, shoot. Yeah. I learned that the hard way I thought I was doing so good stopping at Starbucks three times a day, but that backfired really quickly. Excellent advice. What do you say to people who think itemizing deductions takes too much time on the front end

Renea Dentman (00:45:26):
To use the standard deduction? Just overall on their 10 40, not talking about mileage, is that what you're talking

Bill Soroka (00:45:34):
About? Yeah. We haven't even talked about the standard deduction, but yeah, they, they just like, Ugh, I don't even wanna deal with it. Or maybe they second guess that they even have enough deductions to justify it. They just don't bother.

Renea Dentman (00:45:46):
So from a, we can't think like that when we're an entrepreneur, that that's the rule of thumb being an entrepreneur, you have to submit your schedule C right. You don't have the benefit of a w two. So for example, on a 10 40 on the first page, on the left hand side of the 20, 21, 10 40 it line 12, a talks about standard deduction. So for a married person is about $25,100 for a single person is only $12,550. That's just for anyone following taxes. Right? But especially for those that are w two that is applicable for us to bill, but that has nothing to do with our schedule C the schedule C is going to be carried over to your 10 40 to be able to PR be produced in line eight of your 10 40 line eight is other income. Other income is where you're going to put the same way as if you received a w two before you can even think about the standard deduction of I going to file head of household, or that you have to report income.

Renea Dentman (00:47:19):
Your schedule C is your income just like, as it is a W2. So I just wanna clarify that for the audience and anyone out there saying it's too much work. well, being entrepreneur is too much work. Being a notary is too much work, right. Going to the gas station all the time when you're just like, man, I just got $150, but I just went to the gas station two days ago, does a lot of work mentally, just draining. Do I wanna stay in the industry? So it's just part of being an entrepreneur, right?

Bill Soroka (00:47:51):
Yeah. So what do you think they're missing out on what's the cost? Because I know there's people listening cuz I, I coach them a lot that do not itemize their deductions on the schedule C so what do, what's the cost of that in their business?

Renea Dentman (00:48:06):
So let me just clarify when it comes to itemization. So itemization is really used in the concept of, I wanna write off more than $12,550 on a 10 for this has nothing to do with a schedule C, this is a 10 for saying, Hey, do I take this standard deduction? Or do I take the itemization? Most people do itemization if they own assets, right? If they have a house automatically the average house owner homeowner is going to do a itemization, right in general, right? They're made general right there may will do or will not. But if you are more than 25,000 being married or head of the household, 18,000, then itemization comes. But on average standard deduction is one of the ways that if you don't want a headache, go ahead and take it. It automatically defaults because if you don't have enough, 12,000 to write off, this has nothing to do with a schedule C then absolutely.

Bill Soroka (00:49:11):
It's the best, best way. Then on the schedule C if you, if they're not turning in a schedule C if they're not optimizing those eight line eight through 27, what are they missing out on in their business?

Renea Dentman (00:49:24):
They can't file. Like there's no other way, bill. You can't file taxes. If you don't do a schedule C,

Renea Dentman (00:49:31):
Right? There's no way you can't pull any. There's no way to do taxes. If you're entrepreneur you're notary. And you're saying, I do not wanna itemize anything. And I don't wanna do a schedule C, then you can't report taxes. A schedule C is required. Just like even if an Uber driver, they send you 10 90 nines, you have to report it. But I think what I'm hearing is I'm willing to do a schedule C, but I'm not willing to do any expenses because it's too much work. Then you just gonna get hit with that's it mm-hmm . And if I understand your question correctly, go ahead and do that, that schedule C go ahead and put on the top. How much all of those 10 90 nines are. Right? And then you're gonna just get hit with what you owe and that's it.

Bill Soroka (00:50:20):
What do you think the fear around that is? I think it feels like it's an audit. Like people are just terrified of audits. How real is that fear? Do you think

Renea Dentman (00:50:32):
It's real? We're entrepreneur, we're not paying taxes. What is the point of the IRS? Internal internal revenue service. They want their money that is old to them. Mm-Hmm being an entrepreneur is pretty much saying there's no guarantee that you're gonna get all your money, right? There's no guarantee I'm gonna file taxes. There's no going guarantee that I'm gonna have good books, right? There's no guarantee. So they look at us as an entrepreneur and a notary because we are able to exempt everything, nearly their God eyes on us. Right. Does that mean to be scared? No, absolutely not. That just mean to be informed. That just mean if you gotta listen to this replay for the second time, go do it. This conversation was just to get you informed. So now, you know, better, you do better and, and doing better is just, Hey, do you have accountant in your family? Do your best friend is accountant, do, do anybody know about taxes? Do you have a tax? Let's start having those conversations. Now people are like, I wanna be a business. Do I go F be a LLC? I'm like, well, let's go make some money and see how we're gonna navigate that before we even think about filing. Yeah. Cause the woman that you become a LLC, you gotta file every year. Right? There's no ends or out unless you disclose. I mean like you dissolve your LLC.

Bill Soroka (00:52:04):
Yeah. I love that. Well, really the, the value of a conversation like this is that hopefully will inspire people to pull their head out of the sand. Cuz it can be intimidating. There's so much maybe yes into this. And if you were like me and you're not used to making good money or you just don't wanna deal with matters like this, cuz it's not the fun stuff. Right. For creatives or whatever it is. It pays to pull your head out of the sand and to look at this and to get strategic about it. When you find the right partner in this, the right advisors in this, it can really be life changing. All right. Let's move on to step four. Unless you got more for schedule C.

Renea Dentman (00:52:47):
Nope. I don't got nothing more for schedule C other than the bottom. And I think that will go into tip number four, tip number four is being able to write all two different things. So when you look at a schedule C okay, line 30, it tells you home based office credit. Don't be scared of that. Especially during the pandemic, they're gonna be a little bit ease on the deduction, right? The home based office credit line 30 is going to tell you to apply that to form 88, 29, 88, 29 is so easy to understand. It's just saying, what is your business percentage that you're going to write off? Okay. What number are you going to enter in that most people understand that you can't write off your electricity bills right then on your schedule seat. But you can, you can write off your electricity bills from your home based office.

Renea Dentman (00:53:52):
So if you're a notary and we all are notaries and you work in your home, the form 8829 is a huge tax deduction, especially for everyone doing the pandemic, right? So on that line, all you have to do and just, just walking through and you can do this as a test, run for yourself, right? You need the square footage of your home area. Then you need the square footage of your entire house or rent or your, your apartment. Once you have that, they're gonna tell you, get the percentage of what you can do for your business percentage. After that line 19 and line 21, what are you gonna write off line 19 rent line 21 utilities, right? You can't double dip. So if you're writing off your wifi on your schedule C under those lines, then it can on this form right off your wifi. But if you didn't write off your electricity bill then right off your electricity bill here, right.

Bill Soroka (00:55:01):
Is it your entire, is it your entire electricity bill or is it the percentage of the, is it the ratio of the space you're using ver against your house? Is that the percentage you use on your electricity bill? Or is it the whole thing?

Renea Dentman (00:55:13):
Correct. But you can only use up to the percentage of your business percentage in general, right? Right. So the rule is like 33% that you can technically use. Right. But at the end of the day, you're never going to get a hundred percent because if your business expense, if you do your, the average square footage of a home office is between 50 square feet and 200 mm-hmm in, in any home based office. Right. Unless you have a dedicated room, right. For just your office space. Right. So if you do that square footage from an average of, let's just say 700 to a thousand square feet for someone living in an apartment, that's only about like 12% of overall how much you can write off. So yes, bill, this form is definitely easy to understand. It's something that people can just get more aware of.

Renea Dentman (00:56:11):
Right? And then once you get aware of it, you can get more familiar with it. And then you can pu put the pieces into the form. I love that, but this is something that I don't want notaries to miss out, especially that's all we've been doing for the last two years. Right. Being in our home, being remote, this is really for remote notarizations too. Right? Right. They need to definitely benefit this. People call it a red flag, but it's not a red flag. Right. It's not a red flag deduction because of the fact that being an entrepreneur, we all red flags. Right. So long as you have, and you're doing everything right. The most that they're gonna ever ask you is just provide proof, right. And the proof is your electricity bills. The proof is going to Zillow and saying, Hey, this is my square feed of that.

Bill Soroka (00:57:03):
I think in the reality of this is, is when you're straight up. And you're just honest about the space. Then you don't have to worry about red flags. I mean, is that true?

Renea Dentman (00:57:13):
That is a hundred percent true. A notary ran to me in regards to I exempt 18,000 of my not Toal act. The IRS has asking me for a letter of explanation. Okay. Well, let's write that a letter of explanation turns out the IRS left it alone. Okay. We just didn't know. She provided all of her. The not Toal act reports, right. That I went here, here. Hear hermal. That was just enough for them. Remember they just want a letter of explanation explaining it.

Bill Soroka (00:57:47):
Yeah. Yeah. Great. That's awesome. All right. So awesome advice here. Do you have a tip number five for us?

Renea Dentman (00:57:54):
Tip number five, bill. Let's talk about hiring your child into your business. Is that fair to say

Bill Soroka (00:58:02):
I'm intrigued hiring your child. Yes. How does that work into

Renea Dentman (00:58:06):
Your business? So hiring your child into your business, I'll just give a sneak peek. If you have someone under the age of 18 years old, you can hire him to your notary business, right? From shredding the paper to doing your social media, to taking pictures on just your flyers. You can hire your child into your business, up to the standard amount without having to do so. I recommend you get a job description and make sure that it is to a point where it's the same. Okay. What are their job descriptions to go look at that too. At that moment, you can only write off up to the standard deduction, $12,500. Okay. At that moment, do I need a payroll system? Do I need all of this? And it'd be helpful and I recommend Gusto, but it's not necessary because you didn't hit the ceiling, what that is required. And if you follow my YouTube, I explain that in detail. Right. I have a whole separate video on that, but I just don't want tip number five to miss out on. You can hire your child in your business. Okay.

Bill Soroka (00:59:19):
How does that

Renea Dentman (00:59:20):
You can write up,

Bill Soroka (00:59:21):
How does that work? I mean, is, is that a red flag or is that just something IRS?

Renea Dentman (00:59:27):
That's it's a, it's not a red flag. It's only a red flag up to 12,500 nice per child. Wow. Per child. So let's just say, can you write more than 12,500 for one child? Yes. But at that moment you have to now run payroll. Okay. Okay. So can you do these, can you buy their, their food and say, this is where I use the money for? No. When it comes to shelter and food, you cannot apply that. Do you have to give your child the actual money right. Physically to write them off to show that it's good to show that, but you can put it in a different account, right? You can open up account for your child and put the money there, or you can use it internally. That's what it is. 12,500. If you stay below that for each child, then you're good to go.

Renea Dentman (01:00:21):
Anything more. Can it be okay? Absolutely. Now you just gotta do a w two now. So that's one of the things that I highly recommend people to understand, not to hear people are like, I heard I can write off my child, but how do I do that? What are the numbers? Okay. First of all, step number one, write a job description. Step number two, open up a account for your child. Step number three, make sure your child is involved in the business. Like for example, they're going to be working two hours or three hours a week, shredding paper when you get that canceled order. Right. Making sure that they, you take a picture and you're making a post about, you know, family is a part of the business, right. Without them helping them take it to FedEx or ups, right. If they're order

Bill Soroka (01:01:10):
Washing the car, you know, those types of things, right.

Renea Dentman (01:01:12):
Washing the cars. Yeah. You know, making sure that is, and it is great because you put 'em in the business. I wish my people, I, I wish my parents would put me more responsible for me to understand that. And we, we already give our children, I forgot what it's called, like money for the chores. If that makes sense. Yeah. Right. Well, this is a little bit of lunch money. OK. They work in a business and when they become 18 years old, they have that mindset that my, my, my mother wrote me a check for X amount of dollars. Right. Or gave me cash because this is what I have. And when they get to that age of 17 or 18, what job experience you have? Well, I work for California notary agency. Right, right. Or I work for bill mobile notary service. Right.

Bill Soroka (01:02:07):
Right. Yeah. I, I love that idea cuz there is. I mean, even though that's a great advantage, I think by bringing the kids or even just the family in general into the business, it helps enroll them in the dream. So those times when you're working on a weekend when they'd rather just be hanging out, but you're trying to make something happen when they're enrolled. They're part of it. It kind of helps smooth that out. Cuz there's a little bit of sacrifice on the front end, but on the back end of this thing, it can be a really amazing business and it can change your entire life for your family. So that's, that was a great tip. What's number six and is I'm sorry. Yeah.

Renea Dentman (01:02:45):
And lemme just talk a little bit about like most people when we did the PPP run and thank you so much for helping us get that word out. Well, when the PPP said, how are we going to enter the money into your account? We need avoided check. Most business owners didn't even have avoided check, avoided check.

Bill Soroka (01:03:05):
What's a check

Renea Dentman (01:03:06):
how do I write the check? What do I put on a check? I don't know. So therefore, if we go back to tip number five, which hiring your child, you're writing out checks, you are aware of how that they know how to receive a check. They know what it looks like, because guess what? High school don't teach that elementary. Don't teach that. And middle school show don't teach it. I went to a lot of colleges. They don't teach that either. Yeah. So they're just the principal of money management

Bill Soroka (01:03:32):
And life skills. Yeah. That's a really good point. Love that.

Renea Dentman (01:03:35):
So tip number six. I'm gonna have to give that back to you bill, because one of the things that you touched on was making sure your financial staff are entrepreneurial mindset. How do you make sure that you have the right person on your team? How do you even search for that? We talk a good game of five tips, but how do we make it make sense by just pre-screening or getting those referrals? Bill.

Bill Soroka (01:04:04):
Yeah, I learned this the the hard way. I can't wait to hear what you have to say about it, but it's I love referrals, but even though and even sometimes referrals don't work out, but the biggest lesson for me was to ask questions, to interview them and not to be a, not to approach them from this desperate mindset of, oh my gosh, I can't believe a CPA would even talk to me in the first place. I'll just take whatever they say. And GROL at their ankles, you know, it's not like that at all. And when I switch that to I'm hiring you and here's, and I want somebody who's going to answer questions. Like you said, that they have the entrepreneur mindset as well, that they're personable, that they have integrity, that they have a great stellar reputation. Like I do a lot more research now than I used to, but that burned me sometimes. So that's kind of my process. And even then it's not foolproof, right? There's no guarantees as you were talking about earlier, there's just every now and then somebody might slip in it. Doesn't have to be a big dramatic event and you just move on and you hire. I ask for referrals all the time for these types of positions and I move on to somebody who just clicks.

Renea Dentman (01:05:20):
What do you think? I think that's wonderful. I think that's wonderful. One of the things that I recommend also is going on YouTube, right? Going on YouTube and looking at those that are in enroll agents, a lot of people don't know what a role agent

Bill Soroka (01:05:40):
Is. Yeah. What is that?

Renea Dentman (01:05:42):
Enroll agent is a certification and a type of recognition from the IRS saying that you are capable of preparing taxes for the consumers, right? And it's a highly recognized certificate. Even CPAs have EASs underneath their credentials. They have CPA because there's only three people in the world. Let's just say you had a situation there with IRS. Well, there's only three people that can be represent you in the eyes of IRS. There's a CPA, there's an attorney and there's an enroll agent.

Bill Soroka (01:06:28):
Hmm.

Renea Dentman (01:06:29):
So the enroll agent is responsible of understanding taxation on the federal level. So if you can't afford a CPA, I'm pretty sure you can afford a role agent. Okay. And enroll agent is a missing secret when it comes to entrepreneurship and taxation and enrolled agent is going to spend more time teaching you, explaining you then a CPA. CPA is all about billable hours, right? So I would go on the IRS website type in advocacy for enroll agents and list will pop up. Where is it? And now start interviewing right. Start interviewing. Have you ever worked with a notary before? Are you aware of publication? 3 34. Okay. How do I hire my child into my business? Right. Are you familiar with a scheduled se? Okay. What is qualified business expense? Have you ever worked for an entrepreneur? I just gave you about five to 10 questions to ask in the preprint. Yep. Just write those questions down.

Bill Soroka (01:07:36):
That is great advice. Great advice. And I had no idea what an enrolled agent was. Now. Tell me more about the search on YouTube. What are you looking for specifically? Are you looking for people who just deliver value? Is that the type of person you're trying to connect with? Or what, what should our listeners be looking for in their YouTube experience?

Renea Dentman (01:07:58):
Okay. So I'll tell you one person that I highly recommend you listen to Tyrone. He is for us and not against us. Okay. He is also known as the self-employed tax guy. Okay. And that's his YouTube handle. Okay. His YouTube handle is that. And he cannot send you in the wrong direction. Tyrone's self-employment tax guy. He's gonna tell you everything that you need to know about taxes. Okay. He's easy accessible. He has a tax firm. Right. And he tells you why you should know it. He breaks things down. That's so easy. Right? Another person that I recommend you follow, he's more heavily involved onto TikTok than anything else. Right. He's called duke, the tax guy.

Bill Soroka (01:08:55):
Say again,

Renea Dentman (01:08:57):
Duke,

Bill Soroka (01:08:58):
The tax guy, duke duke, the tax guy.

Renea Dentman (01:09:00):
Yes. And he's heavily known. You can find him on Instagram and you can find him on TikTok. He give you literally step by step instructions of anything that doesn't make sense. And these libraries of these two individuals, they are like Bulletproof knowledgeable. And I definitely recommend that. That's where you can learn. But when it comes to YouTube, just search for the education, put tax, just put the word self-employment tax, right? What do you pop up? And then at that moment, watch a couple of their videos. Are they consistent? Do they post on a weekly basis? Right? Can, are they really taking you to the form that they talk about? Like for example, I just gave you IRS publications, ruling numbers lines. If they can do the same thing as Ms. Renee, then that's when I will look more into it and then make appointment with them.

Renea Dentman (01:10:05):
And most of these people have Callendly links. Talk to 'em talk to 'em about your situation. See what they say. But the rule of thumb, I always say two is better than one. I don't care if you're in love with one, two is better than one. That's why I gave you two and make your own two. Why? Because if I told you that you had a, a medical issue, I'm pretty sure you're probably not gonna believe that first doctor, you're gonna go find another doctor to make sure that he said the same thing or she said the same thing. So I say that to say, make sure that that's how you interview great advice and make it, make it just make sense and be comfortable who you talk to.

Bill Soroka (01:10:50):
Yeah. I lo I love that advice. You're looking for somebody, who's gonna treat you like an equal. They're gonna be an advisor and they're gonna guide you along and treat you with respect. That's and you'll always get a second opinion. That's really great advice. I love that Renee, this has been an enlightening conversation. I love this. Do you have any other closing remarks or advice for our notary listeners

Renea Dentman (01:11:17):
Do better? Because you know, better, you just listen to some brutal information, but so much helpful information. I wish someone would've told me right sooner than later, so it didn't cost you really much, right? So because of that, let's just implement at least once a month. If that's what you can. I tell my students once a week should be your, you are filling yourself with knowledge when it comes to at county and taxation. But if you just very busy, be intentional, make one month out of one day out of the month where you're just going to learn about different tax strategies, learn different major tax forms, study a sch C study a S E make appointment with another tax professional once a month. That's only 12 times a year. I'm pretty sure if you make that and you start there today, you'll definitely be a more informed entrepreneur and notary.

Renea Dentman (01:12:23):
And therefore you can teach it to the next person. Don't just take the information, right. I, I literally could have just said, Bill, I don't wanna come on. I don't think this information is something I want to give to you, but I did it. I came on to share because it's not being shared. So I hope that you do the same. Bring somebody, bring another listener in to this and say, man, this was a valuable episode. And, and whatever you take, even if you just take one thing, go ahead and tell five different people about it.

Bill Soroka (01:12:57):
I love that. Thank you so much. That reminds me of, I, I think it was Maya Angelou. They said there's no success if you're not helping someone. Mm. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your expertise, your wisdom, your insight, and your passion for this industry and for helping others. Renee deman. If people wanna, if you wanna check out Renee, I'll have all of her links to her YouTube channel her website to her multiple businesses in the show notes. So you can check those out. Thank you again, Renee,

Renea Dentman (01:13:30):
And the most easiest way. MeetRenea.com. If you just go to meet renee.com, you can find all

Bill Soroka (01:13:36):
Of that. Meet renee.com. That's super easy. I love it. I love it.

Renea Dentman (01:13:39):
Thank you so much, bill. It was such a pleasure.

--- End of Transcription ---

Bill

This episode was produced and marketed by the Get Known Service
Intro music provided courtesy of Fan Fiqtion