Mike Jesowshek, founder of TaxElm, delivers a masterclass on leadership by eliminating one of the biggest pain points for entrepreneurs: tax confusion. His leadership style centers on simplifying complexity and empowering clients and employees through clear strategy and execution. On the Leaders and Legacies podcast, Mike breaks down how he uses transparency, consistency, and responsiveness to lead both a growing team and a national client base.

Mike shares how most accountants are overworked or hesitant to charge for high-value advice, leaving business owners in the dark. His leadership challenge was to change that. By launching TaxElm and building a proactive software tool backed by expert support, he created a system that doesn’t just educate—it equips.

He explains how he built trust through consistent communication, set clear expectations with his team, and scaled impact with tech and systems. His leadership isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing the right things and making those repeatable.

Want to learn more about Mike Jesowshek’s work? Check out their website at https://www.TaxElm.com.

Connect with Mike Jesowshek on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikejesowshek/.

Key Points & Timestamps

• 00:52 – Introduction to Mike Jesowshek and TaxElm’s mission
  
  

• 02:00 – Why most accountants fail at proactive tax strategy

• 04:00 – How fear and lack of confidence hinder leadership in finance

• 07:18 – The “sniff test”: explaining strategy to an auditor

• 10:11 – Core vs. advanced tax strategies

• 13:00 – Misuse and abuse of tax strategies: a leadership issue

• 17:31 – Mike’s mission: democratizing tax strategy for small business owners

• 21:00 – Home office deduction: unlocking bigger deductions

• 24:27 – Building TaxElm software: leadership through systems

• 27:22 – How software and expert support enable client confidence

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment in my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on this show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;03;09
Craig Andrews
Today I will welcome Mike Jesowshek. I'd say mouthful. And looking at the spelling, it will trip your tongue. But Mike is the founder of TaxElm,

00;01;03;09 - 00;01;17;14
Craig Andrews
it helps small business owners find out what tax cuts are available to them and helps them implement those strategies. So if you're in business, you want to listen. This is one of my biggest frustrations, is trying to figure out what tax cuts I should take.

00;01;17;17 - 00;01;25;18
Craig Andrews
And I never learn them from my accountant. So he's also the author of the Small Business Tax Savings Handbook.

00;01;25;18 - 00;01;41;28
Craig Andrews
He's a CPA and a host of the Small Business Tax Saving Podcast. And Mike's mission is to simplify a tax strategy for entrepreneurs nationwide, helping them keep more of what they earn. Tell you what, it doesn't get better than that.

00;01;42;01 - 00;01;43;08
Craig Andrews
Mike. Welcome.

00;01;43;10 - 00;01;45;10
Mike Jesowshek
Greg. Thanks for having me.

00;01;45;12 - 00;01;48;08
Craig Andrews
Yeah, I tell you what, it's,

00;01;48;08 - 00;01;51;01
Craig Andrews
it's frustrating because,

00;01;51;01 - 00;01;52;07
Craig Andrews
I've never had a,

00;01;52;07 - 00;01;59;23
Craig Andrews
a CPA. I've never had an accountant that's come to me and say, hey, Craig, I have some tax strategies. I want to talk to you about.

00;01;59;25 - 00;02;02;25
Mike Jesowshek
Yeah. You know, I have a theory about why that is.

00;02;02;25 - 00;02;21;02
Mike Jesowshek
You know, one theory is, is accountants always are overworked. So, you know, there's so busy doing day to day tax prep that they don't have time to think about those other things. And my other theory behind that is that accountants oftentimes are afraid to charge the value that they're bringing to people.

00;02;21;04 - 00;02;37;10
Mike Jesowshek
And so the accountants think, well, this person's paying me for a tax return. So that means I probably should be doing tax planning for them, even though that's not in our contract. They haven't agreed to it or anything like that, but they feel like they feel like they should be offering it, but they aren't getting paid for it.

00;02;37;11 - 00;02;57;12
Mike Jesowshek
Tax planning takes time, and so they ultimately just say, I'm not going to do it because it takes too much time and I'm afraid to charge for it. That's just the theory that I had talking to accountants, is that you know, why are we doing this? Why why don't you work with your business owners like this? And that's often the case I have is I don't have enough time or I can't charge for it.

00;02;57;15 - 00;02;59;27
Craig Andrews
Yeah. That's wild.

00;02;59;27 - 00;03;17;02
Craig Andrews
I mean, as an example, you know, I heard about the Augusta rule. And for those that don't know, that's where you can rent your house for up to 14 days a year, tax free. You know, you don't have to pay tax on the revenues. And and so I call my CPA and I say, hey, are you familiar with the Augusta rule?

00;03;17;02 - 00;03;27;05
Craig Andrews
And he's like, yeah. And I was like, I want to use the Augusta rule. And next thing I know I'm sitting there the the only thing he said and,

00;03;27;05 - 00;03;36;28
Craig Andrews
you know, I told him, I said, look, I'm using like Vrbo listings, you know, for comps to figure out which. And his only objection was you can't charge the 24 hour rate.

00;03;36;28 - 00;03;50;05
Craig Andrews
You know, if you're holding a meeting at your house, you can't charge the 24 hour rate. I don't know if I fully agree with that because I've done tax, I've done, marketing strategies where I'll actually rent a Vrbo home,

00;03;50;05 - 00;04;03;29
Craig Andrews
to do it because I don't like doing them around conference tables. Yeah. And so but it just it was frustrating that I had to find out about the tax loophole and go to him with it.

00;04;04;01 - 00;04;23;07
Mike Jesowshek
Yeah. You know, the funny thing, Craig too, is that a lot of accounts are afraid of their own shadow as well. So if you say Augusta rule to half the accountants out there, they're going to say no. That's baloney. That's you know, that's a sure audit. We're not doing it. And then you start to dig into, you know, the way that you described it.

00;04;23;07 - 00;04;39;06
Mike Jesowshek
Oh, just rent your home to your business for 14 days and pay yourself a check for $5,000 a day. You're good to go if that's the way you implemented that strategy. Yeah. I get why an accountant would say we're not touching that. And there's people that do that. There's abuse to strategies every day. But that's not what we're talking about.

00;04;39;06 - 00;04;52;17
Mike Jesowshek
You're saying, no, I want to do it. I want to do it the right way. And now I just need your help. Mr. account and Mr. and Mrs. Account, I need your help with these last final pieces to make sure that I'm not my eyes and cross minds. And so that's another piece that I think is important as well.

00;04;52;20 - 00;05;03;15
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well and fortunately there was a house literally two doors down where supposedly we're not supposed to have VBS in our neighborhood that the bylaws don't allow it.

00;05;03;15 - 00;05;04;05
Craig Andrews
But they don't follow,

00;05;04;05 - 00;05;10;08
Craig Andrews
you know, you're also supposed not let you're not supposed to not let your dog poop in somebody else's yard. And they do that every day.

00;05;10;08 - 00;05;11;25
Craig Andrews
But they,

00;05;11;25 - 00;05;16;01
Craig Andrews
but they had their house, and it's great.

00;05;16;04 - 00;05;18;01
Craig Andrews
I have a comp.

00;05;18;01 - 00;05;27;00
Craig Andrews
I'm not taking the full amount. I'm taking about one third of what they're charging for that. And I could probably do more. But, you know,

00;05;27;00 - 00;05;45;20
Craig Andrews
I had to work it out with my accountant and find his comfort level. But the bottom line is, if I ever sit across the table from an auditor on that, and this is always my thinking, is I don't want to do anything that I couldn't explain to an order and feel confident in my answer, and I'm just telling not.

00;05;45;22 - 00;05;58;13
Craig Andrews
I'm like, dude, one third, literally one third of what they're running the place for. Two doors down. You know what? You're complaining. I should have taken two thirds or the full amount.

00;05;58;16 - 00;06;19;04
Mike Jesowshek
Yeah, and that's a great concept to always have in your back pocket of. If I were to explain this to an order, sitting across the table from an auditor would what would their thought be? Would they be like, yep, makes sense. You're good to go. Or would they be like, that's baloney. There's no way. And I think that that's a good sniff test to do when you're implementing tax strategy.

00;06;19;06 - 00;06;38;09
Mike Jesowshek
Picture yourself being against an auditor. And how are you going to defend this? And can you convince them now whether you convince them or not, you likely won't even get audited, to be honest with you. But what? That is a good sniff test to determine, you know, where am I in that risk table? Because anything with task tax comes with risk.

00;06;38;12 - 00;06;53;20
Mike Jesowshek
But the thing with tax is that this stuff is in the law. The 14 day home rental rule that is in the law for a reason. Now, the government didn't knock at your door. Craig. I'm sure you didn't find this. Find this out because the government knocked on the door and said, hey, I noticed you're not taking advantage of this tax strategy.

00;06;53;23 - 00;07;18;07
Mike Jesowshek
That does happen. So it's our responsibility as citizens. Understand? Okay, the government's giving us incentives in the tax law. There's a reason they do that and it's our responsibility to understand them, but then not only understand them but implement them and implement them correctly, because you can take that 14 day home rule and abuse it and take something that is black and white legal in the tax code and make it illegal just from incorrect implementation.

00;07;18;07 - 00;07;24;10
Mike Jesowshek
So I think that's the key to do that sniff test. And that gives you a list of kind of where are you on that risk table.

00;07;24;12 - 00;07;27;02
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and for me,

00;07;27;02 - 00;07;45;29
Craig Andrews
I'm not a good enough poker player that if I was sitting across the table from an auditor and I knew I, I colored outside the lines, I think my body language would give me a way. And so when I can go in with full confidence that, yeah, I did this, of course I did this.

00;07;46;01 - 00;07;57;06
Craig Andrews
And, you know, in keeping there's a principle buddy shared with me. He said, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. I'm like, yeah, I'm being a pig, but I'm not being a hog. Right. Good.

00;07;57;09 - 00;08;20;04
Mike Jesowshek
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, that's really kind of been my mission as we kind of talked about, is there are so many opportunities out there. And it's people are afraid, I think sometimes to implement tax strategy because they feel like they're cheating the government. Why do they think like they're cheating the government? Because they're supposed to turn that they thought that they were supposed to send the government $10,000, but they brought it down to 2000.

00;08;20;04 - 00;08;40;06
Mike Jesowshek
So they just thought they cheated the government out of $8,000. What they don't realize is the government only wanted the 2000. They didn't want the ten. I mean, they'll take the ten, but they only one of the two because they put strategies, they put law into place to allow you to get to the two. But it's your responsibility to make that gap and create that implementation.

00;08;40;08 - 00;08;58;13
Mike Jesowshek
Otherwise you send the government ten. They're going to say thank you and move on to the next person. They're not going to come back and knock at you and say, hey, you forgot about this, this or that. Unless it's something simple like a child tax credit or something like that, that the government will let you know about. But when it comes to being a business owner, the government oftentimes doesn't even know what's going on under the table.

00;08;58;13 - 00;09;18;24
Mike Jesowshek
So your 14 day home rental rule, a good auditor could probably look at your tax return and understand what was going on, or understand that you're utilizing that strategy, but it's not black and white to them. Exactly that you were using that strategy. They can just look at different forms and try to calculate and piece it together, but oftentimes they don't see under the table until they open up an audit.

00;09;18;24 - 00;09;24;11
Mike Jesowshek
And that's when they start to see the details of what's going on. But they don't see it unless an audit opened up.

00;09;24;14 - 00;09;33;18
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So what's the most salacious tax deduction that you've ever seen.

00;09;33;20 - 00;09;56;07
Mike Jesowshek
You know, as an accountant we get a lot of stuff thrown at us. And when I talk about tax strategies I often split it into two pieces. We have what I call core tax strategies. And then advanced strategies. Core strategies are strategies that everybody should implement to the fullest extent. And these are things that whether you're making $5,000 a year or $5 million a year, these are strategies that you can implement.

00;09;56;07 - 00;10;11;25
Mike Jesowshek
So think of things like the Augusta rule, maybe a home office deduction, maybe utilizing travel, maybe doing an S corporation, all these different strategies. Those are what I call into core tax strategies. And then advanced tax strategies. These are going to be typically reserved for higher income earners.

00;10;11;25 - 00;10;17;21
Mike Jesowshek
Usually have some type of investment or legal structure or something that's involved with these types of strategies.

00;10;17;24 - 00;10;37;01
Mike Jesowshek
But I get hit up probably once or twice a week by some promoter of some type of advanced tax strategy, and they go across the board, you know, some of it's just something that I know about. They're just packaging it in their own little title. That sounds great and easy to promote or whatever it might be, but a lot of it's garbage to,

00;10;37;01 - 00;10;53;18
Mike Jesowshek
when I look at a tax strategy or an attempt and a tax strategy is someone came to me and they said, Mike, I am going to take a deduction for all these suits that I bought because I'm good, but I wear a mean on TV or I mean, I wear them

00;10;53;18 - 00;11;12;04
Mike Jesowshek
in a podcast interview or I wear them sitting on my desk. And I said, well, you know, if you can wear them outside of work, it's not a tax deduction. And this is what I put my logo on it. And I said, okay, let's look at it. And the logo is like inside the suit coat on the way bottom inside there's like a logo of their company.

00;11;12;04 - 00;11;28;21
Mike Jesowshek
And I said, well, it's a, it's a logo piece of material. So this is a valid business deduction. And that's one of those ones where you gotta you gotta do the sniff test. If you go to an auditor, sit across the table and say, well, honor, here is my business suit. That's a valid business deduction because I put a logo on it.

00;11;28;24 - 00;11;46;23
Mike Jesowshek
They're going to look around and say, I don't see the logo. He opens up his jacket. It's sitting there at the bottom, the audit. What's the auditor going to say to you. Not allowed. And so it's things like that that we talk about tax strategy that's from like an a core that's an easy to understand one. You can get so far in advance that some of these complex ones.

00;11;46;26 - 00;11;51;15
Mike Jesowshek
But a lot of times it's just understanding where is the abuse happening.

00;11;51;15 - 00;12;08;03
Mike Jesowshek
People might have heard of conservation easements from an advanced tax strategy standpoint, or people maybe have heard of captive insurance. And if you haven't, go Google both of those captive insurance company, micro captive insurance company and conservation easement. Both of them are going to bring up this dirt about how the IRS hates them.

00;12;08;09 - 00;12;32;28
Mike Jesowshek
The IRS attacks them. It's really not. People shouldn't be doing them. But that's because they've been heavily, heavily abused. There's people that do both of those the right way and get good results from it. But it gets a bad rap because of abuse. And so what does that mean? It means that if I am going to go down one of those routes which we shoot people, you know, we talk about people going into the captive insurance route and where the benefits from a

00;12;32;28 - 00;12;36;17
Mike Jesowshek
liability protection standpoint is where the benefits from that are.

00;12;36;20 - 00;12;53;12
Mike Jesowshek
It just means you have to be more diligent. You have to keep your eyes stronger. You have to cross your t's a little bit better to make sure that you're doing it correctly, because there's more scrutiny on it. And so that's when I talk about implementation. It's not just implementing a strategy because that person with the suit coat, he implemented a strategy.

00;12;53;12 - 00;13;04;24
Mike Jesowshek
He bought a piece of clothing and put a put a logo on it. He implemented the strategy, but it was incorrect implementation which made that deduction not allowed because he didn't implement the correct way.

00;13;04;26 - 00;13;08;12
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

00;13;08;15 - 00;13;13;14
Mike Jesowshek
Or even on the captive insurance side, as an example, there was people back in the day that you be in,

00;13;13;14 - 00;13;32;20
Mike Jesowshek
you know, I'm in Wisconsin, you have a business in Wisconsin, and you would get insurance for volcanic eruptions. There's no volcano volcano in Wisconsin or anywhere close that you would ever need that type of insurance for. So it was a pure black and white tax play that was trying to abuse the tax law.

00;13;32;23 - 00;13;42;22
Craig Andrews
So you get how how did they make money? How did this work out there buying insurance. So they're paying for something that will never happen to them.

00;13;42;25 - 00;13;45;08
Mike Jesowshek
But it was a company that they owned. So the insurance

00;13;45;08 - 00;13;58;04
Mike Jesowshek
it was an insurance company that they owned. So they were making up this premium that didn't even make sense as a valid insurance premium. They were paying it to a company they owned, which can be a valid deduction if you're doing it the right way. If you have,

00;13;58;04 - 00;13;58;19
Mike Jesowshek
you know,

00;13;58;19 - 00;14;02;23
Mike Jesowshek
somebody on the back end, that's, that's finding the right types of things that can be insured.

00;14;02;23 - 00;14;15;10
Mike Jesowshek
Premiums make sense, those types of things. But just kind of creating things that you know will never pay out. You know, you would never, ever want that type of insurance or need that type of insurance. That's kind of blatant abuse of the tax law.

00;14;15;12 - 00;14;19;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. What's,

00;14;19;25 - 00;14;25;12
Craig Andrews
what's another wild deduction you've seen somebody take just weird and bizarre.

00;14;25;15 - 00;14;26;22
Mike Jesowshek
Weird and bizarre.

00;14;26;22 - 00;14;41;21
Mike Jesowshek
I tend to you know, it's funny because as an accountant, we tend to we hear a lot of different things. But the super bizarre ones, they don't talk to us because they know what our answer is going to be. And can I do this? Can I do that? They know what the answer is going to be.

00;14;41;23 - 00;14;55;16
Mike Jesowshek
You know, my filter when I talk to somebody about a tax plan, you talk to someone about tax strategy is saying, I want people to take advantage of what's available to you, but I don't want anybody abusing a situation. So if we look at the 14 day

00;14;55;16 - 00;15;00;10
Mike Jesowshek
Augusta rule, if we're going to utilize that type of strategy, we just got to do it right.

00;15;00;10 - 00;15;21;27
Mike Jesowshek
And I think that you're being more than conservative in your approach to it by saying, okay, I'm going to find a comparable and I'm going to take a third of that. But there's also a situation that we read in the news of a company, a company in California that was taking $360,000 in a 14 day home rental expense deduction.

00;15;22;00 - 00;15;44;06
Mike Jesowshek
That's hard to fathom. Now, they might have had a house that was comparable to that, but was the events that were occurring. Did they require that full house? You know, if they said, well, I'm having a board meeting every month, do you need a mansion on a hill to host a board meeting every single month, or does a co-working space downtown LA work that's maybe $1,000 a day for rental.

00;15;44;08 - 00;16;00;29
Mike Jesowshek
So it's piecing together those types of things. And, you know, most of the wild and crazy stuff you find in the news. And that's what gets people so scared of tax strategy. They hear about this 14 day home rental case that went squash and ended up really, really bad for the taxpayer. And they think, well, the strategy's dead.

00;16;01;02 - 00;16;13;10
Mike Jesowshek
No abuse of that strategy is dead. And there's more of a heightened alert from the IRS potentially once they see these abuses data pop up but doesn't mean that the tax law is dead until they change it.

00;16;13;12 - 00;16;14;00
Craig Andrews
Right.

00;16;14;03 - 00;16;30;06
Mike Jesowshek
If they change a tax law, to me, that's telling us that the government is okay with what was being done. And they the only way to stop it is to change the law. And this is what happened with conservation easements. We talked about that being one of those things. If you look up conservation easements, there's a lot of dirt on that.

00;16;30;08 - 00;16;46;29
Mike Jesowshek
And a lot of people say, well, it's not legal. There's no abuse to it. Everything else, the only way that Congress was able to stop those from occurring was to change a law. And this happened a couple of years ago. Well, they changed the law where it made them even no longer valuable or even make sense to do anymore.

00;16;47;02 - 00;17;00;29
Mike Jesowshek
But there was a law change that required. And so my defense against that to say, okay, everyone that did it prior to that law change, this should be support to say that it is legal. And the only the government had to change the law to make it not legal anymore.

00;17;01;02 - 00;17;31;17
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Interesting. So. What I mean, again, it's my frustration. I just think as, as my, you know, having a business, I, I have this general sense that there's a lot of tax strategies out there that I can take advantage of. I have no idea what they are. I have no where to look.

00;17;31;20 - 00;17;49;17
Mike Jesowshek
Yeah. And that's exactly what my mission is, is to say from a small business owner, how do we make it apparent of what strategies are available to you, and then how do we help implement those? And so when we look at tax strategy, people say, well, what is tax strategy even become about. Why what is the tax strategy out there in tax.

00;17;49;17 - 00;18;11;00
Mike Jesowshek
Reg is out there because the government wants something. The government wants us to use it because they want something. The government wants affordable housing. So what do they do? They give incentives for people that build new housing that's affordable. The government wants its citizens to be employed by small businesses. They want small businesses to employ their citizens to help grow the economy.

00;18;11;02 - 00;18;32;16
Mike Jesowshek
So what do they do? They give an incentive to small up to people that open up small businesses, operate small businesses to people that hire employees. And so those are some of the rural out there. But you're right, most people don't understand what's available to them because they don't get a knock on the door. There is no just kind of blueprint that they open up and they look online and say, here's my business.

00;18;32;16 - 00;18;51;13
Mike Jesowshek
Tell me every tax strategy I should know about because it's so nuanced, based on your situation. You know, you might come in as a business coach in another business coach comes in the next day, and they have completely different tax plans, completely different strategies that we're recommending them based on many different other factors. Do they have kids? They not have kids.

00;18;51;13 - 00;19;10;16
Mike Jesowshek
Where do they live? How old are their kids? All those different factors can play into different types of tax strategies that we implement. And so this is a problem that I had as a business owner is understanding what strategies are available to me. Because before I even got into the tax role, I was a business owner and I was facing the same issue, large tax bills that I didn't like to pay.

00;19;10;18 - 00;19;29;24
Mike Jesowshek
So it was a problem that I had. And then the second problem I had was how do we implement those? Because if I hear about a tax strategy and I asked my accountant about it, more often than not, they're going to try to push me off down the road. And that's something that we see quite often is to say, how do I hear my kids in my business?

00;19;29;24 - 00;19;49;00
Mike Jesowshek
And they said, well, it depends. I need to know this, this and this. I hear that, I see a brick wall. I go the other way because it sounds like way too much work. But the cool thing about tax strategy is if you implement tax strategies that are available to you, it guarantees results. You know, you could put throw money at an advertising campaign and Google ads.

00;19;49;00 - 00;20;13;16
Mike Jesowshek
There's Google ads that and I'm not saying don't do that, but you can do that. And there's no guarantee that you're going to see increased business from that. You likely will. But there's no guarantee. But if I tell you, Craig, go how you kids or go do the Augusta rule or go have a home office and go to strategy one through ten, I can guarantee that if you implement those, you will guarantee I can guarantee the amount tax savings that you're going to save.

00;20;13;18 - 00;20;17;08
Mike Jesowshek
And so why not put an emphasis on that as a business owner.

00;20;17;10 - 00;20;33;09
Craig Andrews
So tell me about the Home Office. I I'm kind of feeling like maybe I'm not taking advantage of something. I mean, I used to be able to deduct a certain amount for, you know, I would have the square footage, but I think they eliminated that. What's this? What's the Home office,

00;20;33;09 - 00;20;34;23
Craig Andrews
item that you're talking about?

00;20;34;26 - 00;20;41;23
Mike Jesowshek
Yeah. So when we take the home office deduction in, I really think that majority of business owners should have a home office. Even if you have,

00;20;41;23 - 00;20;52;00
Mike Jesowshek
office outside of your home, you have a regular obviously going to you should have a home office deduction of some sort, but there's two methods for taking it. You have the simplified method, which is $5 a square feet,

00;20;52;00 - 00;21;01;29
Mike Jesowshek
or the actual method where you're taking all of the, you know, the mortgage interest, the property taxes, the cleaning, all utilities, all of that, and you're taking your percentage of that.

00;21;01;29 - 00;21;16;07
Mike Jesowshek
So what is the Home Office square footage versus total home square footage? Take that percentage. Say it's 10%. Take 10% of all the cost. That's your business deduction for a home office. But a home office doesn't just stop there. And you know, a lot of people say, well, that's a lot of work. And it's not that big of a deduction.

00;21;16;07 - 00;21;41;07
Mike Jesowshek
You know I typically see home office deduction being, you know, at the high end maybe a couple thousand dollars doesn't move the needle a ton. Nothing too crazy, but what the home office deduction does is it opens up the door for now automobile deductions. Because typically if you go let's say you're a dentist, you have a home office and you have a secondary office when you go from your home to your secondary, to your main office where you treat people.

00;21;41;07 - 00;21;59;16
Mike Jesowshek
And when you go from your home to your main office, that's a commute that is not deductible. Mileage. So that travel, they're not deductible to you. But what if you start your day and end your day in your home office, and now you're going from one home office to your main office, back to your home office. Now you have office to office that's deductible mileage.

00;21;59;23 - 00;22;19;17
Mike Jesowshek
So by simply adding the home office deduction there will potentially open up the door for more mileage deduction, which wouldn't have been opened up without that small little bit of $3,000 home office deduction, which not to mention you still going to deduction for the Home Office, but it just opens up the door for those other things. So again have to dot your eyes cross your t's.

00;22;19;17 - 00;22;20;11
Mike Jesowshek
This has got to be an

00;22;20;11 - 00;22;24;27
Mike Jesowshek
A space. It's used exclusively for business. If you have an outside office you have to do,

00;22;24;27 - 00;22;37;14
Mike Jesowshek
majority of your administrative type work. Think answering emails, sending bills, invoices, bookkeeping, that type of stuff. You have to do it at your home office. So there's your rising costs, your teams. But it just starts to open up the door for some of those opportunities.

00;22;37;16 - 00;22;44;00
Craig Andrews
Yeah. No, that's. And then that makes sense. I've been deducting. So I have a home office, I have

00;22;44;00 - 00;22;56;02
Craig Andrews
a co-working space I go to. And if I'm going to the co-working space. So I have an app, I use the my IQ app. And I just go in and I there's a night line item, you know,

00;22;56;02 - 00;22;58;29
Craig Andrews
traveling between offices, you know.

00;22;59;01 - 00;23;11;10
Mike Jesowshek
Yeah. And as long as you're taking the home office deduction. Yeah, that's a business trip. But if you are not taking the home office deduction, that would not technically be considered a business trip because you're just commuting to your office. You're not going from one up.

00;23;11;11 - 00;23;14;08
Craig Andrews
How do I know if I'm taking the home office deduction?

00;23;14;10 - 00;23;17;02
Mike Jesowshek
Well, it would depend if you file on a schedule C.

00;23;17;02 - 00;23;30;29
Mike Jesowshek
So things think of sole proprietorship, single member. I'll see if you file on a schedule. See, there's a home office line item that you could see around that schedule. See at the bottom of the page one, if you file as an S corporation or something like that, which we see a lot of small business owners do,

00;23;30;29 - 00;23;32;08
Mike Jesowshek
it's not going to be as obvious.

00;23;32;08 - 00;23;38;17
Mike Jesowshek
It's going to be kind of hidden in not hidden, but it's going to be deeper into the financials in some sort of way.

00;23;38;17 - 00;23;49;28
Mike Jesowshek
And typically I would say you would know because if you're an S corporation, in order to successfully and correctly take a home office deduction, you should have an accountable plan put in place. And that should be something that you worked with your accountant on.

00;23;49;28 - 00;24;16;16
Mike Jesowshek
If you're not providing your accountant any type of information on utility bills, what were the total cost of that home? My guess would be you're probably not taking the home office deduction, or they're just doing what I call Sally, same as last year. So taking, you know, maybe even working on the same account for ten years and then just taking the same numbers from year one and doing that throughout the years, which you know, in theory is fine but doesn't have support to back it up.

00;24;16;18 - 00;24;27;12
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Interesting. Now you have software that helps people do this. Let's tell me about software.

00;24;27;15 - 00;24;52;14
Mike Jesowshek
Yeah. So, you know, when I used to own an accounting firm, digital accounting firm started the podcast about eight years ago and really fell in love with teaching tax strategy at a mass level, and so sold the accounting firm, went full time into the podcast and talking with business owners again, we talk about on our podcast. Our goal is to not just be a fluff podcast, not just say, hey, there's 14 home rental rules a great thing.

00;24;52;21 - 00;25;10;12
Mike Jesowshek
Rent your home to your business, get a business deduction, and then stop there. Like, that's the 60 minute TikToks. You see that people take advice and abuse it or turn it into something crazy. You know, my goal on our podcast say every tax strategy. When you talk about a tax strategy, a lot of accounts will say, I can't help you with that because it depends.

00;25;10;12 - 00;25;33;28
Mike Jesowshek
And I need to know x, Y, and Z before I can help you with that. In what I realized in my research is that it does depend that they're correct. Of course, everyone's situation is different. It depends. You do it differently. But when you talk about a tax strategy, it's 90% the same for everybody. So if we look at a strategy of hiring your kids as an example, 90% of that strategy is the exact same for everyone.

00;25;33;28 - 00;26;02;06
Mike Jesowshek
What you need to do, how do you do it correctly? What documents need on file is the same for everybody. Now, a plumber might hire their kids a little differently than a dentist. And so that's that 10% that you tweak. But as I started talking to small business owners, I kept hearing similar complaints of I can never really get a hold of my accountant, or when I do get a hold of my account, I don't really understand what they're saying, or my accountant doesn't help me with tax strategy or if I find a tax strategy, I just don't know how to implement it.

00;26;02;06 - 00;26;13;20
Mike Jesowshek
I just need to make sure I'm doing these things correctly. So I was kind of hearing these constant complaints and thinking to myself of, how do I know what the complaint is and build a solution that solves those. And that's where this idea of tax,

00;26;13;20 - 00;26;17;12
Mike Jesowshek
started from in, in really our intention of tax, is part of our software.

00;26;17;14 - 00;26;36;22
Mike Jesowshek
You get unlimited access to our team of tax experts to answer within 24 hours. So we serve is that tax strategist that's there to help people around the clock. But the biggest piece of our software is to say, here's the information I have going on. Here's what's going on in my life. Help me understand what strategies I should be thinking about.

00;26;36;25 - 00;26;57;18
Mike Jesowshek
So every user comes in, they fill out a questionnaire, formula, information that they have about themselves, and then it will spin out what we call a tax savings blueprint. And that's going to be every strategy based on their situation that they should be implementing. And then within each of those strategies we have a full implementation module that tracks when they start finished, what kind of tax savings results from it?

00;26;57;18 - 00;27;22;01
Mike Jesowshek
What were the estimated tax savings results from it. But they can log in, go into those implementation modules and from start to finish completely and accurately implement a tax strategy. And so that's our key is to say as a business owner, not only can we help you understand what strategies are available to you, but we're also going to make sure that you can fully and completely and accurately and correctly implement those strategies via our implementation modules.

00;27;22;04 - 00;27;37;04
Mike Jesowshek
But then also, you have our team here that if you run into any roadblocks, hit questions, have any items that you need help with our team who's here to help you along in other ways. And so again, that is just a product of that conversation of talking with business owners of what are your complaints? Why aren't you saving tax?

00;27;37;04 - 00;27;49;14
Mike Jesowshek
Why aren't you implementing these tax strategies that you already maybe have heard about, or know about, or don't know about at all? Why aren't you saving taxes? And then we built the software behind it with the end inside.

00;27;49;16 - 00;28;01;26
Craig Andrews
That's cool. I'm going to check that out because I know I'm not taking the number of deductions I should, Mike, this is this has been awesome.

00;28;01;26 - 00;28;04;01
Craig Andrews
How do people reach you.

00;28;04;03 - 00;28;19;09
Mike Jesowshek
Two main areas I can go? One is tax savings podcast.com on there we have our podcast information, blogs content, free content talking about tax strategies. Every week we're talking to break it down a new tax strategy information in my book on there. And then

00;28;19;09 - 00;28;23;26
Mike Jesowshek
tax album is tax l.m dot com. And that's a direct link to our software.

00;28;23;29 - 00;28;27;09
Craig Andrews
All right. Well Mike, thanks for coming on Layers and Legacies.

00;28;27;11 - 00;28;31;12
Mike Jesowshek
Yeah, Craig, thanks for having me.

00;28;31;12 - 00;28;58;06
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Ally's for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this

00;28;58;06 - 00;29;00;03
Craig Andrews
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00;29;00;05 - 00;29;23;15
Craig Andrews
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00;29;23;17 - 00;29;31;22
Craig Andrews
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00;29;31;22 - 00;31;33;25
Craig Andrews
It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Ally's for me.com. Or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.