5 Ways Dentists Can Improve Their Tax Strategy

On this episode of The Dentist Money Show, Matt and Tom Whalen, CPA break down the five biggest tax mistakes dentists make and how to avoid them. From treating tax planning as a once-a-year task to relying on disconnected advice, they highlight the common pitfalls that can quietly cost dentists over time. Whether you’re an associate or practice owner, this episode will help you take a more intentional approach to taxes, so you can help reduce costly mistakes, stay aligned with your long-term goals, and build wealth along the way.

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Podcast Transcript

Matt Mulcock: Welcome to the Dentist Money Show where we help Dentist make smart financial decisions. I’m Matt and I’m here with our tax crew expert extraordinaire, Tom Whalen. How are you, Tom?

Tom Whalen: Doing good, how are you doing?

Matt Mulcock: I think I keep adding things every time we.

Tom Whalen: I think we will keep hitting some keywords like tax crew. That’s the real main one.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Tax tax guru. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to make a ton of money and pay no taxes, he’s your, I’m just kidding. ⁓ he’s the guy. so we are recording this. ⁓ we were just talking Tom, right in the heart of kind of that finish line, getting close to tax season being over, ⁓ at least for our clients, right? Maybe not for, for a lot of clients out there, but for our clients.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, right. Right, yeah, the tax deadline for business returns for partnerships, S-Corps, was on the 16th just a few days ago. I’ve got all mine done, I don’t know about anybody else, but we’ve got a lot of stuff done already and now we’re just finishing strong with the personal taxes.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah. Got it. And we were talking, we got to start with this because I was asking you before we got on, what’s the big vacation or the thing you’re going to do to kind of close out tax season for you to feel, you know, it’s like we have this massive sprint, got it all done. How are you going to reward yourself, Tom? Tell the good people.

Tom Whalen: Hey, it’s not a sprint, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Now, I’m heading to Boston to run a marathon, so that’ll be interesting.

Matt Mulcock: I like what you did there running the Boston Marathon. I had no idea you were a marathon. Is this your first one? Can’t be your first one because you had to qualify.

Tom Whalen: Yes, I did. No, this is, this will be my third. I’ve done two before.

Matt Mulcock: Okay. How did I not know you were a runner? We’ve hung out a lot. I feel like…

Tom Whalen: It’s pretty new in my world, so it’s going okay.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. That’s amazing. Good for you. So this is a kind of a ⁓ late in adulthood hobby you picked up.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, no, ⁓ I did not run when I was younger. ⁓ but I told my wife, I’m like, I’m really competitive. I’m, I’m okay enough at running, but I’m terrible at everything else. So I guess I’m just going to start running and just see if I can do okay. And here we are. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. See how goes. Well, good for you. Well, I’m, I don’t know if a lot of CPAs or tax experts would be rewarding themselves with a marathon after tax season, but good for you. I bet not. Yeah, that’s awesome. Uh, well today in, know, in the spirit of it being tax season, we thought it’d be a good idea.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, training’s not ideal this time of year, but we’re getting through.

Matt Mulcock: To come together and talk. We’ve done the tax series, we’ve done several shows on taxes, but we thought it would be a good opportunity to broadly around big mistakes that we see, really five big mistakes we see around taxes. As always, not an exhaustive list, but kind of overarching themes that we see when it comes to taxes with dentists and the mistakes that they’re making. I guess I’ll start with this and I want to get your thoughts, but I want to see if you kind of agree with this statement. From our standpoint, ⁓ most dentists oftentimes don’t have a tax problem. They have kind of an overall system planning coordination problem. Would that be something you’d agree with?

Tom Whalen: Yeah, right. Yep. absolutely. And on some level, the tax that you’re going to generate some level of tax throughout the year, right? The more you make, you’re going to have higher level tax, whatever. there is some level of tax that will be generated. Now, sure, with some planning and some strategizing, maybe we can shrink that a little bit, but there’s still going to be this baseline level that you just can’t really avoid. Right. And If you don’t know about that baseline level, like that’s, that can be kind of detrimental, shocking, painful, all of the above, but again, it doesn’t change the amount. You know what I mean? So throughout the year, if we’re communicating about all this, we have a good system in place. We know about the amount we can plan for our cashflow set aside accordingly. Again, we may not have changed the actual number, but because we have a better communication system, it’s much more smooth.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yep. Yeah. You’re hitting on the big things in that kind of summary of things that we’re hearing all the time, which is things like, why am I extending every year? And I have no idea. I’m making money, but I’m getting surprised. And I know I’m paying taxes, but I just feel like out of control with it. The big surprise tax bills every single year. I guess I want to emphasize and get your thoughts on this, but those things shouldn’t be happening every year. right? There’s reasons to file extensions, but not every year.

Tom Whalen: Right, like there will be times throughout someone’s career where I extend their business return. Not this year, there will be, something’s gonna come up, right? Like there’s some family issues or ⁓ you got a new building and there’s a cost segregation study and they’re not done with the cost set yet, whatever. there’s going to be these things that pop up from time to time where it’s like, yep, shoot, we have to extend.

Matt Mulcock: You didn’t get a K1 in time or something. Yeah.

Tom Whalen: But there’s so many people that we talk to that they’re like, well, I know, can we get a copy of your prior year return to see how things are going? I haven’t gotten it done yet. Well, why not? It’s June. Well, every year that’s just what we do. And if I ask why, it’s like, well, that’s just how we do it. Like, do you like to extend? No, I wish we could get, you know what I mean? So there’s just a lot of times people, it’s normalized, it’s just what they do and they’ve gotten into that really.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. that talk about the extensions here for a second. When there when CPA is just filed, succession, because we’ve seen this. It’s just like what you just described. You see it all the time where it’s like, yeah, I just I don’t know. We just do. Is that just a result of accountants having a poor system? Is that what would you say that comes from?

Tom Whalen: so it could be, ⁓ it certainly could be that, but it could be that they’ve got a whole pile of returns to do and they’ve got only so many people to do it. So they’re like, well, let’s just, instead of breaking our backs for three, four months, why don’t we just kind of smooth out the workload? And that just like that way we’re not rushing through things. So maybe they kind of portray it as like a benefit to the client that, Hey, if I’m working 85 hours a week, 82nd hour, you’re not getting a hundred percent of me. So why don’t I just work 60 hours a week, but I’ll spread it out longer. And then that way, you know, you’re getting all of my attention. So there’s multiple reasons. Some are

Matt Mulcock; Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Some are not so reasonable, but yeah, there’s a lot of

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ that, makes sense. And we want to kind of drive that point home that again, there are reasons to do things like extensions, but that shouldn’t be the norm.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, and I would say too, if I were to know, let’s just say I had, let’s say I extended, I don’t do this, but let’s pretend I extended half of my clients roughly to just spread out my workload. If there were clients that were just really opposed for whatever reason, like I don’t want to extend it, I just want to be done with this stuff. then internally I would plan accordingly, right? Whereas a lot of times what we see is there’s just no communication, they don’t. hey, this year it’s done in February, next year it’s done in July, and I have no idea what went differently. that’s just kind of seems like a crap shoot. So that’s not okay.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you highlighted just there and throughout this, this intro here that, ⁓ taxes are the output. They’re the result. They’re there no matter what. Like the taxes are going to be the taxes, but planning is the key focus here. The planning, the coordination, the communication. That is very different from, from tax advisor to tax advisor. And a really critical point here as we go through these kind of mistakes that we see. ⁓ Anything else you want to add to just kind of the overarching discussion here?

Tom Whalen: No, I think it’s a good ⁓ baseline, good starting.

Matt Mulcock: Okay. Uh, what I, what I want to emphasize here is just, uh, you know, speaking of something like filing extensions or whatever, that all of this is so related. So the hard part from our side as a planner, as financial planners, um, on this side of the business is if you’re filing extensions every year, it’s really hard for us to plan things like cashflow or debt management. So that’s where it can, again, this should all be kind of the the connected part of your plan. So one little thing that you take for granted actually has a ripple effect to the overall big picture. And we see causes a lot of stress for dentists of just not knowing where they stand.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, and a couple of things. One, everybody’s situation is so unique, so hyper individualized that it’s like, I don’t like making generalizations about just anything really. It’s where it’s like, we should extend, we shouldn’t extend like, and maybe the financial advisors, they have reasons, have whatever, but I don’t like making these sweeping generalizations where we, again, we’re kind of hearing that in the marketplace a little bit where it’s like, yeah, this is just what they do. It’s like, well, maybe that, is what someone should do for practice XYZ. You practice ABC and you have a different set of circumstances and we need to treat you differently. ⁓ So that’s one thing. I forgot the other thing I was gonna say, but it’ll come back to me.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, that’s okay. And that’s a good lens to look through as we go through these mistakes is the uniqueness of your situation and everything we talk about this is going to be general type discussion that can be applied, should be applied to your situation, but with some nuance depending on what’s going on. So.

Tom Whalen: I remember what I was gonna say. I want to caveat, I guess, a little bit of this where, again, specifically with extensions, but just kind of good communication and whatnot in general. I think what we’re talking about today assumes that the client is doing their part, right? Like they’re getting the stuff on time. If they don’t have their accountant doing the books and the payroll and this and that, like that they’re doing a good job with it. They’re reconciling their accounts monthly.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: If that’s not the case, then of course the CPAs, they shouldn’t be held responsible for late filings and whatnot. But I think that’s what our conversation should be assuming for today.

Matt Mulcock: Sure. Yeah, that’s, I’m really glad that you mentioned that caveat because that is something that gets lost sometimes with dentists is them understanding their role in all of this, whether it be tax discussions or just personal wealth, investing debt, whatever it is, whatever the financial topic is, there’s always a two way, ⁓ discussion here of like the effort. There’s effort on both sides basically. So I’m glad you brought that up.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, right. Yep, for sure.

Matt Mulcock: So let’s go through these five mistakes and kind of let that kind of guide the rest of our discussion today. So mistake number one that we see all the time is when dentists treat dentists or CPAs, but dentists treat taxes like a once a year event. I want to just get your first reaction to that.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, it’s like, it’s like, it’s a game. It’s a, you’re gambling, right? Like, let’s just go put it all on red at the roulette wheel and just see what happens. Like, it’s kind what you’re doing. ⁓ Here’s my stuff and I sure hope I get a refund. Right? Like that’s not, that’s not a, like there, again, there will be times where that works, but just cause something works doesn’t mean it’s a sound play. ⁓ So again, it’s like,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Maybe you got a $50,000 refund or you owed 50 grand. I think it’s easier to deliver the refund news than the owing news. But in either scenario, somebody either you got a scramble for 50K to come up with, or you didn’t have that purchasing power, that liquidity, and you had no idea. So ⁓ it all comes back to liquidity, I guess, in my opinion, with all this. Like I said, you might as well go to the roulette wheel.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. And I think part of this, I mean, it kind of speaks to what you just said. was with the caveat that. That there’s effort on both sides of the CPA and the dentist to actually put the time in it, you know, that’s required and the effort that’s required to not treat this like a once a year event. I think one of the issues here is that dentists are busy. And I think there’s a lot of CPAs, Tom, you can speak to this from a lot of experience that. You know, you might be there being like, Hey, we got to meet, we got to meet, we got to review your quarterlies. We’re going to review this for that. And maybe the dentist just is like, I’m too busy for this. Let’s just meet at the end of the year and meet next year. I think that’s a huge problem too.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, yeah, it is. the thing that I’ve grown to, I guess, understand and I guess appreciate or respect throughout my years of working with dentists is like, when I first started in this world, I’m like, my gosh, they work, you know, four days a week, sometimes three, maybe four and a half. Right. But like, it’s like every minute of every day is scheduled. And it like that just doesn’t like for me.

Matt Mulcock: What a cush life they have. Yeah.

Tom Whalen: I work a lot of hours, but I’m very flexible with my time. So I’d almost prefer it. But when it’s like every minute of your day seems scheduled, when you’re done with your scheduling and you, somebody else wants to schedule something else. can totally understand how it’s like, ⁓ I just need to chill out a little bit back off time. ⁓ so I get it and I give some grace, but it, that’s like, that has to happen. ⁓ so yeah, I mean, we want it to be two way street now.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Tom Whalen: There are, obviously there’s, if you’re a business owner, a practice owner, there’s gonna be your business filings first and then you got your personal filings that come after that. If your accountant is like handling the books and kind of doing all that stuff, I would think your business return ought to get done on time. Because there’s not a lot that you need from the client at that point. Now when it gets to the personal tax side of things, it’s like, we need. Your spouse’s W-2 and your brokerage statements and your home mortgage, stuff that we don’t have access to that we need you to fill in for us. ⁓ But when it comes to the business return, if your accountant’s handling everything, that stuff should be getting taken care of throughout the year.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And you’re, right. I’ve had the same, I’ve had the same experience as I’ve done this now in the dental space specifically for, you know, the better part of a decade, just how, how rigid their schedules are and how overwhelming they, how overwhelming their daily life can become being practice owners. So, and it’s, so we’re not, we understand and taxes are usually among some other topics, but taxes is top of the list of things that they’re I think it’s easy for a lot of dentists to just be like I don’t even want to think about this right now Out of sight out of mind till the yep. Yep, totally get it But want to hit a couple of things of like what this can cost you and then which eat with each of these kind of hit ⁓ Some suggestions for a fix things to be thinking about but I think the cost there’s a couple of things ⁓

Tom Whalen: Yeah, honest night, out of mind, whatever exactly.

Matt Mulcock: missed strategies, right? think there’s certain things that have deadlines or certain things that have to be put in place, ⁓ beforehand throughout the year, whether it be with retirement plans or planning for tax credits, things like that. Missed strategies, no ability to adapt or adjust if you’re waiting just till the end of the year or beginning of the following year. ⁓ and then I think a huge one we see is you highlighted earlier is surprise outcomes, surprise tax bills. ⁓ and I’ve seen equally Tom. A dentist, depending on their mindset and how they approach taxes. I’ve seen equally dentists be mad about surprise tax bills, but I’ve also seen them be equally angry at surprise tax returns. I’ve seen, I’ve seen both, or where I’ve had clients who were like every single year I’m getting these massive refunds. Um, and that’s what I meant to say, not return refund. Um, and like big refunds, like two, three years in a row. And they’re like, how are we not planning this better? So I think both can be frustrating, just these big swings or outcomes on either end of the spectrum.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you said it just a minute ago, the ability to adjust is so huge. Because again, you do the one time a year, say it’s March. like, there’s very few things you can do at that point. I mean, very, very few things. And typically, it’s going to cost a lot of cash. How can we go do a profit sharing contribution for the office? Well, it’s going to be $80,000. And it might save you 30 in tax. Shoot. Like it’s might be a good move, but it’s like, well, then you need the cash then. so, and that’s like, like I said, there’s just very few other things you can do if it, if the year’s already over. ⁓ so yeah, no ability to adjust and then, yeah, like there’s, there’s just, I kind of said it earlier. If like, if I’m working a million hours a week, my brain isn’t, it’s just not all there, right. Versus if we’re doing these planning sessions throughout the year when we’re in our lower workload environment. There’s just so much more that we can think of and just kind of hash out together. And you know how it goes. Like when you’re just talking to somebody, things just happen organically. Conversations just happen like, oh, I didn’t know you bought this building or whatever. Right. Like there’s that, that will just come up if you’re kind of as regularly communicating versus if you’ve just got, Hey, here’s my 30 minutes to talk about some stuff that happened this year. Right. So that’s, that’s, can’t really, I can’t really like quantify that, but

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah. Yep, yeah.

Tom Whalen: there certainly is value there.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, definitely. ⁓ so you just highlighted the, the fixes there for this mistake being, ⁓ make sure you’re doing projections throughout the year, specifically a mid-year projection or just projections along the way. And then ongoing communication with your, with your advisor team, your, your tax advisor team, I think would be huge. ⁓ mistake number two, this is really connected. We’ve, we’ve hit, I think a lot of these kinds of concepts even just before, but mistake number two is hiring a tax, what we’ll call a tax historian instead of a tax planner. Any thoughts on this one?

Tom Whalen: Yeah, mean, it’s I think easy is a strong word, but I think I’m going to I’m not going to throw myself in the CPA profession under the bus. But. Sure, but it’s right? Like, here’s here’s my stuff, do my taxes. ⁓ OK, like you’re giving me the information. I just got to make sure it goes in the right spot in return. Right. ⁓ So that’s yeah, it’s just.

Matt Mulcock: You can, it’s okay. Mm-hmm.

Tom Whalen: It’s like, if I’m a teacher, I can grade a test, right? Like it’s already done, like you did the work, I just gotta make sure things are right or wrong, whatever. ⁓ But yeah, that needs to happen, because you need to have your taxes prepared. But that’s to me is like a commodity, commoditized business, and it’s like, if that’s what you’re gonna look for, go get the absolute cheapest provider you can get. You’re not getting, like the value is of course in the planning, right? ⁓

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah.

Tom Whalen: we are forward thinking or we’re talking about, what’s income this year, next year, the year after, there kids in the mix? Like, can we move some stuff around for them? Like, that’s where the real value is. And of course, that’s not gonna be the commoditized business, but ⁓ you get what you pay for.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, totally. I’ll give a quick example of things that I think these are maybe higher level things that maybe dentists don’t think about, but this just came up in a conversation with a particular client ⁓ around cashflow planning and specifically ⁓ the schedule of amortization and depreciation falling off. And when you’re planning around cashflow, that’s really critical when it comes to how that impacts your tax bill. You said it earlier, we have this all the time. Dentist ⁓ buys ⁓ or builds a big brand new building. do a cost seg. Well, eventually those things are going to fall away and taxes are going to change. And if you’re not being proactive with, or if you don’t have a team that’s proactive thinking about this stuff for you, tracking your depreciation schedule, your amortization schedule, and what that’s going to do to your overall cashflow. That’s a huge that can be really, really frustrating.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, and depending on the size of your practice and what, if you bought a practice, say you bought a practice, like total sale price was 300 grand. Like it’s going to be a lot less noticeable versus if you bought one for two and a half million, right? Um, but actually I was having the same conversation with a different, I guess, I assume it’s a different client cause I have no idea what you’re talking about, um, large practice, they bought their practice on a 10 year loan. You got a

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah.

Tom Whalen: some deductions towards goodwill, that’s a 15 year deduction period, then a bunch that was towards equipment, a five year deduction period. So the first five years feels pretty good, because we’re taking equipment and goodwill deductions. And those deductions are like more than what my loan payment is. It’s like I’m right side up on the tax versus cash flow situation. From years six through 10, that equipment’s gone, and I’ve only got the goodwill, but that’s like a slower pace than the principal goes. So years six through 10, we’re talking about like, hey, this is gonna,

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Tom Whalen: Your cash flow is not going to change from the practice operations in theory. Now, of course, if you add an associate, whatever, but all else equal, your cash flow is going to be very similar, but your tax bill is going to rise because those depreciation deductions are falling off. So you’re going to feel like you’re paying a much higher tax rate. like, no, your rate’s actually not going up. It’s your taxable income’s going up, even though your cash flow is not going up. So it’s just education, I guess.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Because when we say depreciation, amortization, clients’ eyes just kind glaze over and like, don’t know, like, tell me when it matters. It’s like, okay, in year six, it’s going to matter, right? Now we’re coming up on year six. Exactly, exactly.

Matt Mulcock: It matters. Yeah. And to that point, even just the topic around something like depreciation and amortization, um, the difference between a, uh, like a tax historian or filer versus a planner there, they should be talking to you about how you should be like, should you take 179 on that purchase or should you put it on a normal schedule? Like these things are really, really critical. And if, and tell me if I’m wrong, Tom, but I would say, and again, in no way throw like to your point throwing shade at the industry, but I would say the default position for most CPAs is living year to year and just how do I get my client to not be mad at me? So I’m going to maximize these deductions as much as I possibly can in this year. And I’ll worry about it next year. And cause there, I think a lot of times it’s hard to have a conversation with a client and say, Hey, we’re actually going to admit We’re not going to maximize deductions this year because we’d rather extend this out over the next five to 15 years because we project out your income actually doing climbing. here’s why we’re going to like having that nuanced conversation. I think a lot of CPAs just whether they’re just overrun with business and can’t have it or they just don’t want to. That’s a problem when it comes to this historian mindset versus an actual tax planner.

Tom Whalen: Totally, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, think a lot of it is there. It’s like everybody’s super busy all the time forever and you can never get a hold of anybody. Right. Well, that world, why would I, the CPA, want to put more time in? Right. It’s like, I’m just, we look at each year in a vacuum and, okay, great, we can take some more deductions and then next year we’ll figure it out next year. And it’s, and I would say,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yep. Sure.

Tom Whalen: Part of that is maybe just a problem with the relationship. I sound like a counselor here, but ⁓ it’s like, it could be with your same CPA, but like if what you’re expecting and paying for and getting is just this once a year type of meeting, it’s like, how can I dig in and think three, five, seven years down the road if all this is is just a,

Matt Mulcock: We need to go to therapy with your CPA. Yeah.

Tom Whalen: one-time thing and like that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m just gonna try to maximize deductions but that’s where we’re like, again on our end, we do like to have a kind of a full scale year-long relationship looking into the future. How are things gonna change? Again, we want to take our deductions against our highest bracket income. That’s just how we wanna manage the tax brackets and we can’t do that effectively if we don’t have the full scale.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. and, and to bring back the caveat you mentioned earlier, I think it’s critical to repeat it here in this kind of mistake is that again, it’s two ways and to defend CPAs here again, there are times that, ⁓ it’s not always the CPAs fault. If like there are situations where the CPA is wanting to be proactive and the client is either too busy or is not getting the right data on a regular basis. Like there are situations like that. On the flip side, we’ve seen time and time again, where Dentist says, I call my CPA, never answer, or I email and it goes into this ether. don’t know who is, I don’t have a person even. have like a, ⁓ like a tax team and then I I’m getting responses from. Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Yeah. Yeah, there’s a tax person, yeah, I’ve got a bookkeeper, a tax person, a payroll person, somebody that handles my investments, but then somebody who handles the 401k, and I don’t even know where to begin. So yeah, that’s really tough on clients.

Matt Mulcock: Yes. Yep. Yeah, that is really, really hard. And I think there’s a fix there is like, make sure the group you’re working with, have streamlined really clear communication of who, who’s my person. Is it clear? Is it consistent? Do they answer my calls? ⁓ are they proactive in their communication? ⁓ and then am I providing the proper numbers that they need throughout the year and the data, the clean and accurate data to be able to do this planning as opposed to just be an historical record of my tax bill.

Tom Whalen: And we hear it so much, so, so, so much where it’s again, the, I left three emails and four text messages and a voicemail and three weeks later I finally got a return. It’s like, gosh, that’s not how it’s supposed to be. I remember when we were growing and trying to add, you new business, like we were pumping up, we know dental, we threw and threw, we know dental. And that’s how we got some clients. But now lately it seems like, Oh, no, you answered the call. Let’s tell you about our dental knowledge. Yeah. But you answered the call. I’m like, OK, I want to get to that. And it’s like a bummer for me as a CPA, that. That’s kind of pretty normal because I don’t want people to view, I think, rising tides raise all boats. Right. So I don’t want to just view their relationship with their CPA as this struggle and something that’s just like got this negative connotation.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Cool. You just, yeah.

Tom Whalen: I want to get back to the days of where we can sell based on our knowledge and our expertise versus, you’ve responded quickly. Well, anybody can do that. yeah, that’s just like, that’s a really, really common thing that we see is. ⁓ And again, if your communication is so lacking like that, then it’s hard not to be a historian because if you’re just not talking until it’s time to do your taxes, like that’s all you can feel in the office. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. What else? That’s all you can do. Yeah, totally. Makes sense. ⁓ makes sense that the sounds like you’re saying the bar is sometimes pretty low to be able to, reach, ⁓ mistake number three, we see, ⁓ we’ve, we’ve talked about this in the last tax series a lot, but letting the tax tail wag the dog wag the overall wealth dog will say,

Tom Whalen: That’s what I will put on clients.

Matt Mulcock: Yes, yes, this one is almost always the dentist’s fault. Yeah, so this is like things like chasing deductions, ⁓ overvaluing the concept of I saved on taxes. A write-off, yep. Yes, yes. ⁓

Tom Whalen: Right. Like a write off. like, you’re still negative cashflow on a write off. So that education is huge.

Matt Mulcock: This is a tricky one. This one is always, I’d the trickiest conversation to have with dentists. A, I think it’s just sometimes can be a confusing concept for sure. Like taxes in general are confusing, but also because they’re getting pitched left and right, horrible deals, overcomplicated strategies and structures, all in the name of ⁓ tax savings. I always think of one of my favorite quotes from a financial writer named Jason Zweig, who says, you, if you lie to people who want to be lied to, you’re going to make a fortune. And there’s so many people out there that, lie to you and B, that want to be lied to those that match is always going to be out there. didn’t think this is probably the top culprit is tax saving strategies.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I mean, when you start throwing dollar signs in front of things, people’s ears perk up. I just taxes specifically, it’s like there’s this really harsh, you know, people will pay again, these these kind of subpar investments, they don’t mind throwing money at those. it’s like you pay your tax bill on time, and it’s just the end of the world. So there’s so much out there where again, anything to save a dollar in taxes. I’m like, well, to save a dollar in taxes, you’re gonna need $3 cash. Right? So we gotta we gotta be smart about

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And, and we’ve talked about this again, when we were doing the tax series that this sounds crazy, Tom, but the truth is tax saving on taxes is, I don’t think ever, or should ever be the number one priority. Is that a fair statement? It’s a secondary priority to building wealth.

Tom Whalen: Right, so yeah, because it’s like, do you, just in the wealth vacuum, we’ll say, it’s like, what are you, what’s the goal? Well, to end up with a bunch, right? Like, I don’t know, what does that mean for you? It’s different for you, me, whomever, right? Everybody’s enough versus a bunch is a, a, it’s an arbitrary number or subjective number, I should say. But I want to have a bunch of money that’s my money. It’s like, okay, well, that’s after tax.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Like that’s what that is, right? And we

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yep.

Tom Whalen: want that number to be a big number. Okay, well, the tax, even if your tax rate blended is 33%, it’s like, well, that’s one third of the puzzle. The other two thirds is making a bunch of money. So let’s maybe focus on the bigger piece of the pie first, and then we’ll deal with the taxes secondarily. But we, again, we have so many conversations and people are just chasing left, right and center all these different deductions. like, you could spend all this effort just raising that top line and you’re gonna be much better off than the 30 grand attacks you would have saved.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, such, such a good point. The idea of like opportunity cost of doing these types of things versus just raising your income, which raises your tax bill, but also increases your after tax wealth. Like sometimes it’s that simple. And, and by the way, we are all for thoughtful tax strategy. It’s a huge part of what we do as a business is yeah, let’s not pay unnecessary taxes and let’s reduce taxes where possible, but it’s just in our mind, it’s always kind of a secondary part of a bigger picture goal of designing a strategy and designing your life, designing your business and your, you know, the purpose behind all this. Taxes are always in our mind, kind of a subtext to that, not like number one priority.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I mean, if you’re, if what you’re doing to save a bunch of taxes are these kind of like shady investment deals that are maybe questionable at best, or you’re tying up all your liquidity, like that can like damage your future prospects of your practice, right? Like you can’t make that other investment that you would have, like you said, to opportunity costs. So like strong, positive cashflow and liquidity is so huge. And then it’s just like,

Matt Mulcock: Absolutely.

Tom Whalen: I always ask this question to my client, like, is this going to make money? Like, just don’t worry about taxes. Is this going to make money? And if the answer is yes, then okay, let’s talk about it. But a lot of times we hear, well, I don’t know, but it’s like, we get this huge write-off. Like, that’s, I don’t like that answer at all.

Matt Mulcock: Cool. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And again, when done right, you can do like, I’ll give you a quick example from today. Everything you just described, it was a client I talked to worked with, we worked with her for a long time for years. She, we just implemented a cash balance plan because it fit with her overall where she is in her stage of her career, cashflow, liquidity, debts plan, everything all in place. She’s got incredibly high cashflow because she’s done it right. She’s latter part of her career put a cash balance in place. is the first year, 2025 was the first year she funded it. Her tax bill was reduced by like $150,000.

Tom Whalen: Yes, probably put in 300, some-odd thousand bucks today.

Matt Mulcock: Significant tax reduction, but it was so she’s done it all right. She’s kind of put the plan in place and now she is being rewarded with being able to put away multiple six figures in this plan, reduce her tax bill by six figures and not jeopardize her liquidity. But she didn’t chase anything. She did it in due time. So I want to highlight something like that because to say there are situations dentists out there, like there are situations that you’re going to put a strategy in place and be able to save six figures plus with one thing. And by the way, keep the money, but it’s just something you should never be chasing. It should be a part of the bigger picture.

Tom Whalen: Right. Yeah, like on the opposite side of that same coin, I’ve had clients approach me, they’re like, hey, I’ve heard about this cash balance thing. And I’m like, you’re having a hard time making payroll next week, brother. 300 grand, like we’re so far away from that. we need to. Exactly. So they’re all there. I guess where I’m going with that is the same strategy could be great for somebody, but awful for somebody else and goes back to the whole.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You’ve got no liquidity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Whalen: everybody’s situation is so uniquely different that it’s like, need to, again, treat everybody differently or uniquely whatever. ⁓ now that cash balance plans are awesome when they’re awesome. again, if you’re not there, then it’s a terrible idea.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I’m so glad that you brought that counterpoint because yeah, we’ve seen that same thing. Same tool used improperly can be a disaster. So I think it’s a great point. So fix here for, for, for this mistake, the mistake of just letting the tax tail wag the overall dog is just start with your goal. Start with your overall design, your plan.

Tom Whalen: with the end in mind. That’s, I can’t remember the writer, but Seven Habits Highly Successful People. Yeah, yeah. Start with the end in mind. And like, again, I think a big number for, again, I don’t know, I can’t define that for anybody. But after tax wealth, I think is the goal when people are talking about all this stuff. Like, hey, you want to save on this and that, you want to save here and there. I think what the goal really is, is to end up with

Matt Mulcock: Covey. Yeah, Stephen Covey.

Tom Whalen: big nest egg at end of day. Let’s start there. Now, how can we get there? Taxes are, they certainly are part of that, but by no means are they the main.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Totally. I think what we just said there too, with all of that is sequencing matters. That’s the most important of where you put, what you focus on and when matters more than like, save taxes here or there, like the sequencing of it all.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, and you cannot reduce your tax bill enough to like you can’t save taxes to wealth. You know what I mean? Like you can’t like there’s only so much like because you can bring your tax bill down to zero in theory. But but well, sure. But like, let’s just say you’re generating ⁓ pretend you’re generating 50 grand a year in tax and we saved you down to zero for

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Sure, make no money.

Tom Whalen: whatever, however, like we got there. Well, that’s like, that’s your maximum number. You can’t do more than that. Think, but you’re earning potential and investment growth and whatnot is is unlimited in theory, right? So you’re capped on what you can do to your after tax wealth by tax savings, but you’re not capped on making more money and investing and letting that money grow and make more and more and more, right? So the the tax savings is a is certainly capped and it’s a smaller number to begin with.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Such a good point. Such a good point. Yeah. ⁓ mistake number four, ⁓ there’s a couple of different ways to word this, but no one’s quarterbacking the plan. I’ll just kind of add, ⁓ a little bit more to this. We’d say the mistake just being there’s no coordination. There’s no, like, it’s just, whether that be, we said that earlier where you’re working with a CPA team and you don’t have a person. And we’ve heard this so many times. It’s like, I don’t have a person I work with the team, but like, I don’t know who the quarterback is and I don’t know who to contact. Or you may have a person at like as a CPA, but like they’re not acting as your quarterback. Some do some don’t. And you don’t know kind of like how to connect all the dots together. So just no go to kind of quarterback.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, that’s, we’ve had it where actually recent client we onboarded, we were just kind of asking about their prior setup and this was the number one thing. And she’s like, I gave access to like for the banks, the credit cards, the loans, like to this company through employee A and like, they have everything and, but employee B, C and D are the tax team and they’re saying, hey, we need all this stuff. And it’s like, well, no, you already have that stuff. there’s so there’s like no communication going on in this company. Michael, that’s that kind of stinks. But it’s such a thing. But I don’t even know who to go to with my issues now, because there’s just it seems like they don’t know what’s going on either. But then, you you might be talking with employee A who’s suggesting something, but employee B’s doing the taxes doesn’t know that employee A suggesting something.

Matt Mulcock: Exactly. Yep.

Tom Whalen: Again, it can be a great move, it be a great idea, but if I’m unaware of it, that’s not ideal. We see it a lot where the CPA and the financial advisory team is piecemeal, and that’s totally fine. But again, there’s times where we’re doing some cashflow planning and just tax projections and whatnot. And all of a sudden at tax time, we see that they did a Roth conversion of $70,000.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Kind of needed to know that. Now I’m going to have to tell you that you owe 25 grand and you’re probably not ready for it, but the advisor might have said, hey, this is their lowest income year they’ll ever have. And that very well may be the case and be a good move, but we didn’t plan for it because we didn’t know about it. And now we’ve got, again, conflicting information a little bit. And it’s just the client is the one who’s got to buck up, obviously. it’s like, that can be devastating.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, can be really frustrating, especially when there’s no communication. And this concept comes up a lot, not only with like the external team you have of advisors, whether it be CPA, financial advisor, you know, insurance, attorneys. This also, this concept comes up a lot we see within dental practices. And we at Dentist advisors struggle with this sometimes, always talking to our leadership team about this of it could be possible that everyone’s doing their job. And it most likely is the question always is who owns the outcome. We’re always asking that question. Who owns the outcome of this initiative of this project of this KPI. So that that’s a question that Dentist should be asking within their own team. But also when it comes to their wealth, who owns the outcome here? And you, you highlighted it of, you know, the CPA team tax teams over here, the advisors over here, they’re not coordinating or communicating individually in their silos, they’re doing their jobs. They might even be being pretty proactive with you, but if you don’t have somebody owning the outcome, I think it’s going to lead to some frustration and miscommunications like the one you highlighted.

Tom Whalen: Totally, that’s, yeah, again, like that could be the right move. It really can. And we might have agreed with it. And like I said earlier, we may not change the tax bill, right? Like we might say, hey, yep, we agree with that. But knowing that eight months in advance, now we can swirl away a little bit of money. Maybe they wouldn’t have paid down XYZ debt. Like, you know what mean? Like it’s just, we know now. So we can fill that into the.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, definitely. So fix here. Ideally, you have an integrated team of some kind, whether that be all exactly.

Tom Whalen: It doesn’t have to be the same company for everything. Now, of course, I would argue, gives you the highest likelihood of success. But we’ve got a number of clients where, you know, we’ve got an outsourced bookkeeper, and then we’re doing the tax work, and you guys are doing the investments. Like, there are times where that works, but it’s like, it does at least open the door a little bit. It could maybe go awry, but again, it doesn’t have to be the same overall unit. but they do need to be on the same page.

Matt Mulcock: totally integrated in some way. Totally agree. And ideally you’ve got one person, whoever that is in your life, that’s coordinating these people together ideally.

Tom Whalen: Yep. We just so many clients that are just like, Tom, I know this isn’t something that you’re going to do, but I don’t know where to start. So I’m just going to go to you and okay, that’s fine. I know it’s not anything either, but this is your insurance guy that you got to go talk to or, Hey, this is for Matt to discuss. But again, I might be the quarterback in this, this relationship. And it’s like, I love it. Just start through me that way. Like I know what’s going on too. Then, ⁓ I think that people really like that.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, great. Yeah, totally. And ideally to your point there, the team’s just integrated in some way and communicating in some way on a regular basis. ⁓ okay. Mistake number five. this is kind of a counterintuitive one, but I think it’s, it’s worth worthy of talking is mistake. Number five is not knowing if your CPA is actually good. Not knowing how to evaluate your CPA or your tax team. You want to talk on there, speak to this one.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, it’s tough, right? Because like, well, is your dentist any good? I don’t know. I think they’re good. I had a root canal a few years ago and it didn’t hurt too bad. So they’re probably pretty good. It’s like, ⁓ what happens if the crown that got put on there falls off in 30 days thereafter? because whatever, but it’s tough because you don’t know the nuance industry like that CPA does.

Matt Mulcock: I think? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Tom Whalen: Dentistry, whatever, in every industry, you don’t know it as well as the professional in that industry. So it’s hard to ⁓ have an objective answer to that. But it’s like, I would ask somebody, like, is your CPA any good? Or how do I know if my CPA is any good? It’s like, well, what are your pain points? Or like, what are your frustrations? what are the problems that you want alleviated by this person? And are they doing that? Now again, like your perception might be different than mine. I might never want to owe a dollar of tax. might say, listen, all I care about is having a refund every year. Okay, are they doing that for you? Because I can do that for every client. I’ll just rank up your tax payment, your estimates, but it’s all withholding, yeah. But if that’s their number one and only concern, okay, we can do that. So what are your pain points just in general in your financial world, financial tax world? Are they able to address those pain points for you? Now, of course,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, we’ll just put your W-2 to 400 and put it all to taxes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Tom Whalen: We want to know if they know the industry, kind of can do some benchmarking for you and have nuanced conversations about practice growth and staff retention and all these things. ⁓ So like I would love for somebody for that to be their answer. Like, hey, I, yeah, they can have great nuanced conversations about my practice with me specifically with about dentistry in general. And yeah, then they seem like they’re pretty good at it. Okay, great. But a lot of it, think the starting point is, what are you trying to get out of this relationship? And are they able to do that? And sometimes, yeah, like, there are a lot of, I will say a lot of times like the answer is yes, but sometimes it’s, they’re falling short and I don’t know what else to do. So I’m just going to keep going.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They default to it’s familiar. It’s convenient. They don’t want to, they don’t want to switch. It’s just kind of overall like attrition and the idea that switching any professional, like a CPA would be, I think they assume like, it’s just a nightmare to do that. Or, one, something, something we hear a lot. We hear this a lot where, Oh, uh, I’m working with my dad’s old CPA that He’s just, you know, old timer that he did his taxes. Now he’s doing mine. He’s super cheap. So they default to price. Yeah. Yeah. Old uncle bill. Yeah. We, we hear that a lot. And, and, and if you said it earlier, if your number one priority is the example you gave is just getting a refund every year. The other example I’d give is if you’re, if your number one priority is just cheap, like I just don’t want to pay my CPA a ton. Great. Like that you can get that done with old uncle bill.

Tom Whalen: We call them uncoordinated. Yes.

Matt Mulcock: You know, he might only charge you 500 bucks for the year to file your taxes. The question always becomes then, well, what is it costing you? And all the other things that we’ve highlighted.

Tom Whalen: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, we hear it a lot too, where people are like, I’ll, you know, let’s talk about, like, let’s switch after tax, like after my taxes get taken care of, let’s switch, or like there needs to be a certain time of year. Like, oh, Tom, you’re so busy this time of year where you don’t want to switch. You really want to put that on you. I’m like, don’t, don’t you worry about me or our team. Like, we’ll, we’ll let you know if it’s a better time. But generally speaking, it’s like, again,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Opportunity cost, you said it a few times now, like what are we missing by, okay, hey, you want to wait till after tax season’s over, okay, well then we might have a vacation plan and you might have a vacation plan and now it’s the end of July. Yeah, but like it’s the end, say it’s the end of July now, like okay, we missed out on six months of planning and projecting and whatnot. like the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the next best time is right now, right? So we kind of think that if there is a,

Matt Mulcock: You’re running a marathon.

Tom Whalen: riff or I don’t know if you don’t really like what you’ve got going on, why wait? mean, just familiar doesn’t mean that you need to keep going back to the well.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. ⁓ so the fix I think on this last one of just not knowing if your CPA is actually good, I think is take a step back, evaluate what I’m actually looking for. We believe that the evaluation should be more than just the surface level things. It should be, what are you, what value actually getting out of this relationship specifically around things like. Proactivity communication. Do they actually answer my call? Do I have a person? Do I have a person that I can go to that I, I have their cell phone number? that I can shoot them a text if I need to, or I know how to get a hold of them, I think is super underrated. And then are they actually planning for me? And as opposed to just filing and do I, am I aware of my situation? Do I know what’s actually going on from quarter to quarter to year to year?

Tom Whalen: And like I said earlier too, I think industry expertise is just so underrated because it’s like, it is huge. And if you don’t know the industry, I could say, hey, I’m a dentist and I just bought a practice two years ago. I would like to work with you, plan accordingly. It’s like, well, I don’t know the industry. I don’t know what to expect. What does their trajectory look like? And I might just say, well, you made 200 grand last year. Let’s just plan for that. It’s like, well, that’s not how

Matt Mulcock: Huge.

Tom Whalen: Right? Like that’s just if we’re going to go take more CE and get certified to do other procedures and now we’re or we’re looking at the seller and they made 200 and but they were only working, I don’t know, 40 weeks a year, three days a week. But I’ve got all these bills, so I need to work five days a week or four days a week. And I’m to work 50 weeks a year. Like I’m to project out a lot more than what somebody who doesn’t really know the path of a typical dental practice or a young buyer that’s a gunner. You might say, hey, they’re not Like, yeah, they’re trying to plan. It’s like, but is their planning sound? Like, do they know the industry to be able to kind of project out recording?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah. Great point.

Tom Whalen: So you can be a rock solid, like nuts and bolts CPA, but if you don’t have that dental expertise along with it, you’re probably leaving something on the table.

Matt Mulcock: It’s hard to totally. Yeah. The industry expertise is a big one. I want to wrap up here with, so we’ve hit the five mistakes. Let’s just hit, let’s just summarize those really quick. I’ll just kind of list them. So, treating taxes like a one, one time event or once a year event. Number two is hiring a tax historian as opposed to a tax planner. ⁓ mistake number three is letting the tax tail wag the overall dog mistake. Number four is no one is quarterbacking the plan. There’s no coordination or integrated team. then mistake number five is not even knowing how to evaluate if your CPA is good. I want to wrap up here. You kind of hit it or referencing it, but I want to, let’s just spell this. think pretty big myth that transitioning to a new CPA, to a new tax team is such a hassle or such a problem where it’s so difficult. Talk maybe just like. Let’s just wrap up with like, what does that process look like? And is it actually that, is it actually a hassle?

Tom Whalen: No, I would say no. And frankly, if anybody would think it’s a hassle, it’s the new CPA, because we’re the one doing a lot of the work. What I mean by that is, hey, we’re looking at your financial statements, we’re looking at your QuickBooks file, hey, maybe we, I can look at somebody’s QuickBooks file and be like, their accountant knows dental or.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: I don’t have to speak a word to anybody. can look at the financial statements and just by the way that they’re formatted and organized, I can tell you if they know dental or not. If they don’t, and if the financials are kind of in shambles from a dental formatting perspective, you the client, you’re not doing anything. We’re doing it. We just, hey, give us access to your QuickBooks file. We’ll take it from there. ⁓ But typically what happens is we have these onboarding calls and what are we looking for? And the way we… The way we charge clients, we don’t do the whole hourly thing. We just say, what services do you need based on your service listing? And everybody’s got their own different service listing. So we just do a flat monthly fee. we then, once we agree on everything, say, okay, we just let us loose to the accountant, right? We’ll communicate with them. We’ll get the information we need, old returns, old tax returns, financial statements, payroll reports. Like we’ll get everything we need from them. You just need to give us the introduction now if we’re switching payroll providers, again, we’re going to need access to these softwares. We might need access, like set us up as a secondary user on the bank account, credit card account, cetera. But those things. It’s like, I don’t know, what does it take five minutes to go add me to a chase login, something like that. ⁓ if it took an hour to do all the stuff that I would request somebody to do, that might be grossly overstating the workload. ⁓ it’s in. So.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: No, it’s not difficult. Now again, on our end, like, yeah, we have to just kind of new client onboarding for us. just, there’s some time involved, but, whatever. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, totally. From the client side, it’s pretty straightforward.

Tom Whalen: Yep. Hey, go talk to my old accountant. Because sometimes people are like, I want to meet with Uncle Bill and tell them face to face. Respect that. Totally get it. Oftentimes they’re like, if you’ll do it all, like we just need you to make that introduction and then we’ll take it from there. ⁓ So that’s very, very common. ⁓ But yeah, a lot of people are just kind of like, I just, I don’t know. It is so convenient with Uncle Bill and I don’t know. Like it’s just the unknown. It’s like the devil you know versus the devil you don’t know.

Matt Mulcock: Sure. Sure.

Tom Whalen: And again, it’s really easy to do nothing. In the moment, it’s really easy, right? Because you don’t do anything at all. Even if doing something is 5 % effort, well, doing nothing is 0 % effort, so it’s infinitely higher, right? But then the thing we always ask is like, okay, well, it’s tax time again, you’re extended, and you owe $50,000, you had no idea you were going to owe, is that comfortable? And again, it’s…

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Whalen: In the moment, it’s easy to do nothing always. That doesn’t matter if it’s accounting or whatever. It’s always easier to do nothing in the moment, but overall, I’ll say it on the rooftops, I don’t think it’s a lot of extra work for what you’re potentially getting on.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Absolutely. This is great, Tom. So, so much, so many good insights and I think just things for dentists to be thinking about when it comes to evaluating their own situation. Anything else you want to finish up or add to anything we’ve discussed on these five mistakes?

Tom Whalen: Um, no, mean, I think again, like the unknown, the fear of the unknown is, like, it’s so people are just so locked in by that. I don’t know. I don’t know. I feel it’s like you’re, they’re still getting by. That’s, that’s the thing is like, yeah, oh, 59. It sucks, but I have the cash or like, whatever. I’ll make it work.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah.

Tom Whalen: But what if I switch to this other person and the same thing keeps happening? I’d rather just do nothing and know what to expect now. ⁓ I just would urge people to get out of their comfort zone a little bit. ⁓ You know, we’re talking on today is March 19th and we’re doing a podcast and this is not meant to like toot my own horn, but like we’re set up appropriately where I can manage this with you, right?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah.

Tom Whalen: Getting my client workload, got all my business returns done, zero extensions, having a podcast meeting with Matt. Like we’ve got it locked in. We’re ready to take these, these new potential lead calls and client onboarding. So if you’re ever wondering, like have, at least have the conversation.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s a great point and a great way to finish this up is if you are listening to this and thinking, yeah, I do extend every year and I don’t know why, or I do get these tax bombs and I don’t know why, whether it be a refund or whether it be an actual bill. And you’re thinking, I don’t know where I stand. I do talk to uncle Bill barely once a year and it’s really frustrating and stressful and I’m tired of it. We built a system to make it easier and a process to be able to get you on a call and we’d be happy to review with you. And to your point, it’s just to have a conversation and see how maybe getting another set of eyes on something can give you more clarity and less stress in your life.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, you can still decide to do nothing. Right? That’s totally fine too.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. So if that is you and you want to talk to us, Dennisadvisors.com slash accounting, get on with Tom, get on with Marshall or someone on their team. We’d be happy to talk to you and view your tax situation. ⁓ For now, if you’re still listening, you are one of the cool ones. Tom, thank you so much for being here as always and sharing your wisdom around taxes and accounting and how all this works. I’m guessing you got to get going and go train for your marathon coming up. So yeah, so we’ll let you go, but appreciate you being here. Yeah, yeah. Appreciate you being here, everyone. Appreciate you for listening. Thank you. And until next time, take care. Bye-bye.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, got a big run coming up tomorrow. be hard up. Adios.

Keywords: dentist taxes, tax planning, financial strategy, CPA communication, wealth management, tax mistakes, proactive planning, tax strategy, dental practice finance.

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