I paid 0% tax on 56% of my income...here's how..

It's not how much you make, it's how much you keep. And inside of this video, I'm going to share with you in a single presentation everything that I have ever learned in paying over $30 million in taxes in the last 5 years, which was miserable, and probably paying $500,000 to a million dollars in tax preparation stuff. So, tax products, experts, accountants, audits, all of that stuff, all the fancy things that the rich people don't want you to know, I'm sharing it all with you here in this video. It's a presentation. It's a little different than I normally have. So, let me know if you guys kind of like the longer form. I know some of you guys said you did. And so if you're new to the channel, my name is Alex Moszie. Welcome to Mosy Nation and enjoy. After paying $22. 68 million in taxes in the past 5 years, here's everything that I've learned about saving taxes in one presentation. And if you don't know who I am, I'm going to I'll prove to you that those numbers are legit in a second. But let's get forward. And at the end of this, I'll give you my six consolidated takeaways that you can immediately use to save yourself taxes, make more money, all that kind of good stuff. And a bonus set of beliefs that have served me well up to this point in my life. And we just recently sold a 66% stake in two of those companies at a $46. 2 $. 2 million valuation which you can look up on the internets yourself if you are skeptical which would be totally realistic and reasonable of you considering the many tubers and interwebers that exist that are probably saying things that are a little bit stretched from the truth. All right, so let's dive in. So quick confession. Um I used to be obsessed with tax savings. So it's literally like took up a very large percentage of my time. Um I spent roughly $1. 6 million in legal and accounting fees to figure out the structure that I have today. Uh and so this will be a culmination of all my applied knowledge and beliefs related to taxes to date as a US citizen um in a single presentation and uh hopefully save you 5 years of learning and all the money that I have spent. So enjoy my gift to you. All right, so here's the four beliefs about taxes that have improved my life and probably made me a lot of money up to this point. So number one is that tax shelters cost more than they save. You might be like, "How is that even possible? " Great question. I will dive into it. Number two, tax shelters decrease your net worth. How is that even possible as well? Boulder Dash, Alex. I know it's crazy. Number three, tax shelters diminish your life. How can it diminish my life? I will prove it to you in just a moment. And number four, tax shelters don't make you a better person. You're like, well, that one I believed. Okay, fair enough. Well, I'll show you each one of these and more. So, the problem with number one, which is tax shelters cost more than they save, is that what tax shelters save you, they cost you more in other resources. So, what they save you in money, they cost you more in other things. All right? So there's three primary costs that people do not account for and that I myself did not account for when I started this journey so long ago in the business world. So number one is the cost of discovery and conversion. Number two upkeep. And number three is the cost of unwinding. And if you're like I don't know what any of those things mean. Let me explain. All right. So number one the cost of

discovery is that 90 I'm going to borrow this from Charlie Monger. So 95% of solutions are swampland and 5% are legit. And so as he is my hero uh in many ways not just in investing um I turned to him first to try and figure out what the best kind of course of action around tax was. The short and simple answer is pay them. And the reason for that is his quote here is that 19 out of 20 of these things are not legit and are actually going to get you into trouble. And so the problem is the cost of discovery is the the cost of the time and the attention that it takes you to sift through all the crap to figure out the one out of 20 that is actually worth it, right? And let's just assume somehow you're like, you know what, you did all of that work. You got on calls with accountants and lawyers and your legal operating structure with every one of these things and you ran through all the tests that I'm going to show you later in this slide deck of the things that you should look for in these types of structures. And let's assume you did all of that stuff. Then it you have this huge cost to conversion, right? It takes a lot of time to vet these things, create new entities, transfer all your stuff over, reinccorporate, recreate your new contracts for all of your clients, etc. New banking relationships and all of that stuff. So there's a cost of figuring out which of these is actually legit, which 95% of them are not. Number two is that if you actually happen to find something that might be legit, right, not even including the cost on the 19 that didn't actually, you know, were not actually legit, then you have the cost to converting them. But that's just cost number one. Customer number two is that okay, now you've converted your thing. You have the cost of upkeep. All right, so what you have to do now is you have to trade valuable attention for less valuable money by percentage. All right, so I'll give you a couple stories to drive this point home. So a very close friend of mine um traveled 104 days a year back and forth between Puerto Rico and the United States. So basically every weekend he'd fly back home um and then you know on Monday he'd fly back out. And he did this every single day because he didn't want to pay US taxes, right? But guess what? He was traveling 104 days a year and we were on the phone and I was like, "Hey man, do you think it'd be possible that you could make 30% more money if you didn't travel 104 days a year? " He was like, "I didn't really think about it like that. " And I was like, "Yeah, but you should. " And the thing is, so we're trading this very valuable time and attention for less valuable money by percentage. All right. Number two is I have a different friend who uh counts his days in New York City to go back and forth. And it's like, guys, like, can we not figure out a way to just make more money within the current vehicle? A different friend of mine actually missed their baby's birth because they had to get their days in, right? Like, what are we trading here? And then finally, on a more tactical level, a close relative of mine uh was like, "Hey, I think you should do this captive insurance thing with me. " And I said, "Okay, let's look into it. " So, we looked into it together and I'd already looked at captives a couple time uh because you know there were some tax savings by the way they're very marginal in my opinion um and definitely not the B cost of upkeep. And so every month, every quarter you have to allocate a certain percentage of funds and decide how much of those funds you need to allocate into the insurance vehicle so that you can stay legit in terms of are we really using this for insurance? Are we going to actually take claims out of it? And then what is a reasonable amount that we can put in here? And you're constantly allocating attention to this thing that does not provide value to the business. Number two, and this is what I did not know when I was getting into this game, is that one, there was the cost of discovery and cost of conversion. Two, you've got the cost of upkeep. And three, and here's the real one that no one tells you about, especially the people who are trying to sell you these tax shelters, is the cost of unwinding and fines. All right? And so, not only do they cost more than they save up front, they often don't even end up saving you anything in the long run. And here's why. Most of the big tips and tricks get unwound in a matter of years. And the reason for that is because the IRS is 3 to 5 years behind. And so when they see a loophole, they close it, right? But they close it 3 to 5 years later because they're so understaffed and all that kind of stuff, right? And so often people will get fined because they uh they're evading taxes, right? And so they'll say, "You were not using this clause for the manner in which it was intended. So now you owe us taxes on 3 years ago plus fines plus interest. " And so then you not only have the fines and the interest, but then you have to spend the cost of the legal and the accounting and all the other stuff to unwind the structure that you did under the wrong guys because you pretended to use a structure in this way as it was intended but you didn't actually do it in the way it was intended because you did it to save taxes which is not the point of the clause and I have had this happen to people I know very close to me right and the thing is like everyone has to understand this they write the rules and so matters most is what your intention is when you use these structures that are complex. Like the tax code is an incentive system. You have to think about it like that. They are putting penalties and incentives so that they can move the economy in the way that they believe is right. So the reason real estate has a lot of tax incentives is because they believe that they want people to reinvest in infrastructure in the company. They want people to develop land. They want people to keep buildings from falling apart. And so they give lots of incentives to people to go invest in those things. If all of the tax incentives in real estate disappeared, real estate would not be nearly as attractive and a lot of buildings would fall into disarray because it wouldn't be worth it to people. And so then the country by extension would fall into disarray, right? And so the idea here is that we have to read the tax code as an incentive plan. And that's just side note number one. But point is that with these things, they cost more to discover, cost more to convert, cost more to upkeep, and most of the times will not actually end up saving you money in long run. which is why tax shelters cost more than they save. Okay, so that was number one. Hopefully we checked that box off. Number two, tax shelters do not increase your net worth. And you're like, "How is that even possible? I thought the whole point of this is that they're going to increase your net worth. " I will show you why. So what they save, they cost you more and other resources. I'm going to drive this one in. All right, so there's three p pieces here. One is the people, two is the thinking process, and three is how fortunes are actually built. And number three, you're going to want to pay attention to because it's something that I did not understand until way too late in my entrepreneurial career. Let's dive in. All right. So, the people. So, look

at the richest people in the world. A lot of them live in the United States. And not only that, a lot of them live in California and New York, which is wild, right? How is it that the richest people in the world can live in the highest tax places in arguably the world? How is that even possible? Maybe they know something that we don't, which is that they are using they know how to build fortunes, which I'll get to in point C. But the thing is that if that were the case, then simply going to a tax friendly area is not in and of itself going to increase your net worth. All right, which is I think is important. And as a an important side note is that when you also surround yourself with people in those types of environments, especially when people move to very specific geographics only and solely for the purpose of tax sheltering, right? What in my opinion what happens is they start thinking in increments rather than in orders of magnitude. So let me explain. So, it's majoring in the minors. It's thinking, "How can I save 30% chunks rather than make 30 times more money, right? " And you've talked to those people, they're going to make the argument like, "Well, no, I'm going to do both. " It's like, "No, you're not because you're literally sacrificing everything that you have to just save 30%. " When and I'll get to the big picture stuff in a minute, but the big wins are what drive your net worth, right? So, you can spend all this time and attention obsessing about stuff, right? these little doodads to save 2% and 1% whatever that might end up getting unwound later and because it's probably swamp land is probably not legit anyways or you could have just bought Bitcoin in 2014 and been done with it. The point is that the big wins, the very few big wins are the things that are going to drive the net worth the most, not the tax shelters. And so people disproportionately allocate their attention towards these savings when that is not where the disproportionate amount of the net worth is going to come from. So don't surround yourself with people who are obsessed with this stuff because they're thinking in increments, not in orders of magnitude. They're not thinking how can I 10x. They're save 10%. And that in my opinion is the wrong way to go about building a fortune which if you're watching this channel and you're part of Mosy Nation. That is the point. All right. So see how fortunes are actually made. This one is one that I hope that you like slow down and I will try and talk a little bit more slowly than this because I really want everyone to get this one. Okay. So how fortunes are actually made. You make and I grabbed this from Jack Butcher F I think on Twitter, but this is a loose uh paraphrasing, but you make fortunes by taking a lot of risk with a little bit of money. You maintain fortunes by taking small amounts of risk with a lot of money. All right, so just understanding how fortunes are actually made. All right, now let's dive into some math in a second. So wealth comes from the appreciation of equities, not income. All right, so how is it that all these very wealthy people live in these high-ax places? It's because 94% of the Force 100 growth came from appreciation, not income. In other words, what we build builds our net worth, not what we make. Huh. Interesting. Let's dive a little further into this. All right. So, let's ex let's put an example like you're in year four of your business. And so, let's say last year your business made $10 million in IBIDA. All right. Which is profit. Fancy word for profit sort of. All right. now and you can move the zeros. You can make it a million. $100,000. It doesn't really matter. Or you can make 100 million. The point is that let's just say in this case last year business paid $10 million in eBay profit. All right? And let's say you it's valued at 5x which would be a $50 million business. Okay? And you receive 10 million times 63 um which would be 37% is taken out for taxes. So you get uh 60 $6. 3 million in after tax dividends. And let's assume that you're not reinvesting any of it in the business and you're just taking it all as dividends just for the sake of this simple example. Okay, now you're like, okay, I guess that makes sense. Now, pause and hold that. So, you made 6. 3 million and your business is worth 50. Got it. Now, next year, let's say you go from 10 million to 12 million in IBA. Awesome. Good for you. Little 20% growth. Very conservative. Sounds good. Still valued at 5x. And the value, wait a second, goes from 50 million to 60 million. Huh. But wait, there's more. you receive 12 million times 63 which is $7. 6 million after tax in dividends. And so if you look at your net worth increase, the net worth increase is $10 million plus $7. 6 million. So you had a net worth increase of 17. 6 million. So let me break this down for you. All right, which is 60 million the new value of the business minus 50 million, right? Is the 10. And then 12 million times the 37% tax rate gets you 7. 6. You add the 10 plus 7. 6 is 17. 6 million. But here's where it's interesting. If your net tax, so you made $22 million in increased net worth and your after tax was 17. 6 million, then you were effectively taxed at 21%. Huh? And why is that? It is because 56% of your net worth increase was tax-free. It was based on the appreciation of the equities of the things that you own rather than the income that you make. Which is why what you build builds your net worth more than what you make. All right. So this one I really want to drive this home. If you can make the business that you have more valuable, the income that you derive from the business is not the primary value that you are actually building. Right? If you double the profit of the business and you have a 5x multiple, right? you were you have a double multiplier that is happening on something that you own in a very real way compared to what you actually taking out of the business. And so in a lot of ways like give yourself the salary, live on the salary that you have from the business, but let the value of the business compound. And it doesn't even matter if you're living in the highest tax state ever because here's what's even crazier. This is valued at 5x, right? If you look at publicly traded companies, like some of the S& P right now is traded at 40, which is absolute insanity. I'm not even going to get into that. But that means that if I were to increase my IBA in this example by $2 million, there's a 40x multiplier, which means I increased my net worth by $80 million. So that is why these guys can manufacture these fortunes because there's massive multiplier on equities, right? So it's not the income that you make, that's the thing that's building your net worth. And so letting that be the primary driver of why you make your decisions of where you live when how you feel about where you live is going to create far more wealth than the savings will. Right? It's orders of magnitude not incremental thinking. All right? Which is why tax shelters do not increase your net worth as much as people will make it seem. All right? So number three is that tax shelters do not improve your life. All right? So a little shift here is that I call this inverted priorities. So saving the tax money will hurt other aspects of your life. So uh one

life. So let me explain. So uh one follow this line of reasoning. I want to increase my net worth so that I can live where I want to live with the people that I care about. So in order to do that I'm going to not live where I want to live or spend time with the people that I care about to have more net worth so that I can wait a second. Something doesn't make sense here. And that is correct. It does not make sense because what we're doing is we're putting the means of achieving the goal above the goal itself. Right? And this happens all the time because us as entrepreneurs, we create this reinforcing cycle of conditional behavior. We get this intermittent reinforce which is how you create addiction, right? Of the work that we do and we forget why we started doing the work which is we have this goal. And don't get me wrong, I think that work is the goal, right? But at the end of the day, if we claim that we want to uh increase our net worth so that we can have this level of freedom, etc., then we can't make the means which is money be more important than the thing. So for sacrificing the goal in order to get more means, it doesn't make sense. Which brings me to number two is why sacrifice a resource that I care about and that I can get no more of for one that I need no more of and can generate at will and as a side note has decreasing marginal utility which means that the more of it you have the less valuable it is which is not the same with time but anyways. So number three, um we can say and this was actually a text exchange that I had with a different friend of mine. Um who you know I was like listen you know we can be on Instagram, YouTube and we can say money doesn't matter and blah blah blah. Um but it's a very different thing to say that money doesn't matter or we can live which means it's like if you can be making these posts and making these claims about how you know you've really moved on from this and you've got this bigger picture about life and perspective. I was like, but all you're doing is sacrificing your life so that you can save little points here and little points there. It's like it's fake. It's not true. Like you don't actually believe that, right? And so I think there's one thing to be talk to talk the path and another thing to walk the path. And so if we claim as entrepreneurs to want this freedom, then I hope to God we don't we don't flip the priorities and uh and sacrifice our freedom to get more means. And so I had a I had this was actually a real conversation which is what sparked this entire presentation. Um is that it's hard to do the whole temporary argument. So he's you know he was like well what if I just go there for a temporary period of time stack enough cash then I'll come back. And it's like the problem is that the enough number is going to change and it's very hard to come back from paying 0% you know to paying a third or half of your net worth in tax or half your income in tax. It's just hard mentally. I'm not saying like you can still do the rational argument for why you're doing it but it's just like I think it's very hard emotionally to do it. And the thing is that if we are hard driving entrepreneurs, which we are, we set up these games and move the goalpost on ourselves. And so, you know, I can promise you like my first freedom number was $4 million in after tax net worth. And then I immediately and literally when we hit four, I was like, "Oh, I think 10 is actually more reasonable. " And then 10 went to 14. I have no idea what 14 was really like meaningful to me, but it was. And then from 14, it went to 20. And then 20 went to 30 cuz that's what ultra high net worth is. And then it contin I was like, "Okay, now it's 100. " And the thing is the goalpost continues to change because you become a custo you literally get exposed to higher levels of wealth. And then what you say is like okay well this this level of wealth allows me to live but I want to thrive. And then when you're thriving then it's like well I want to super thrive and why can't I have an island in every single continent that belongs to me. Right? The thing is you might and you might be listening to this and be like I would never do that. Watch your tongue because a lot of very smart people have said the same thing and experienced the same desire because we as hard driving people play to win and to stay hungry you move the goalpost but in moving the goal coast you create a very difficult equation for yourself to be satisfied. All right and so as a quick story to this um I could have done and this is why tax shelters diminish your life. I could have done an intentionally defective grantor trust, which is a fancy thing that basically functions like a waterfall of trusts where um for every $5 million of a sale that you're going to receive, you you put it into a trust. And the reason it's 5 million is because that's below the limit. Um and you have to wait three years before you can touch the money because that's after the trust passes the statute of limitations on trust being unwound by the IRS. You're like, "Wow, Alex, how do you know this? " Because I've looked into this stuff, right? And I could have saved myself about $6 million in taxes, right? Roughly if I had done this, right? I think it might have been more than that, but whatever. Roughly. But for what, right? To save more money that I don't need. And now to needlessly give myself something to worry about because I can't touch the money and I have to follow these stipulations. And if for some reason something happens, then I have the IRS on my back and then get audited. Right? And that little story that I told you earlier about the uh the captive uh that relative of mine, they ended up getting audited. And even if they do win, what a headache just to save like 4%, like who cares, right? Just go and make that much more money without having the stress of a darn audit. And if they do lose now, they're literally going to have lost all the discovery time, all the upkeep time, all the conversion time, all the the effort that goes into it. They'll have to pay the fines, and then cost of unwinding the darn thing, right? And all of the attention that all of that took, they could have been spending on increasing the value of the thing that actually compounds taxfree, which is their business. Crazy. All right. Okay. So, I didn't do the intentionally grant trust and I just paid the darn taxes. Which brings me to point number four, which is that tax shelters don't make you a better person.

All right. So, I only have two main points on this and I will drive this these home because I think these are like as we've gone down these points, uh, they become increasingly meaningful for me of actually how I make decisions. And so these are the only two things that I've really made the decision with, which is number one is reputational risk. I believe that I will be a billionaire at some point before I die. At this point, we have about $100 million net worth. So my wife and I and uh we're, you know, I'm 32, she's 29. And so like if I if we just get 10% a year, like we will hit it. And that's if we don't make any income and we don't grow businesses, which that would drive me nuts. And so we will be doing that. So I think that at some point we will do that. But who knows? By then maybe billionaires, everybody will be a billionaire and an Apple will cost a million bucks. Who knows? But the point is that um I would never want to become a billionaire and then have everyone say he did it and escaped taxes. I just don't want that brand. I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with that. Like I don't think there's actually anything wrong with that if you did it legally, right? Um but I would just prefer to be known as the person who paid his dues and still killed it. That's just me. That's a personal preference. That's a reputational risk for me, right? And uh I' I've said this quote before on this channel, but I'll say it again. Like you only get one name and you have to keep it for the rest of your life, right? And so it's like investing in accordingly. I can't imagine like that at that point in my life if I were, you know, worth two billion or three billion and I could have been worth remember guys like if you're saving 30% right on your taxes, it's only going to increase your net worth by that percentage. Like think about it. So it's like if you're worth 10 million and you had saved 30% on your taxes, you'd only be worth 30% more than that. So it' be like 13 million, right? Like and just think about it like that. Like so it's not like this crazy like it's just that that's all it is right so number one is reputational risk and for me I don't think I would ever sacrifice my reputation for that marginal gain. All right, number two, 85-year-old self test. And uh this is my number one most tweeted tweet, which is, "When I was 20, I wanted to be a millionaire. Now that I'm a millionaire, I want to be 20. " And I overheard a version of this, which makes me realize that when I'm 40, I'd rather just be 32, my age, with nothing just to be 32 again, which is a different frame on gratitude that I thought I'd share, which brings me to my 85-year-old self test, which by the way is probably the most useful decision-making frame I have ever made and is probably the thing that I use the most in thinking through everything in my life. All right? And so when I think about my 85-year-old self, a deca billionaire, whatever, and he's old and crass as hell, and he's looking at 32-year-old self, Alex, he laughs at me at the idea of sacrificing anything for money, sacrificing my youth to make more money that I won't need. Like, I would give half of my net worth back to live my life wherever I wanted to during my youth. and to make 12% more net worth if you're deciding between states like will I care if I have 9 billion or you know or or 11 billion or 9 billion or six billion when I die. No, I won't. And so I feel like I can envision this conversation that I have with myself. It's like don't sacrifice anything for me. Like I'm good. I'm old. Like you're young. Enjoy. like just soak in life because it's going to go away fast and like most of the things that you're concerned about won't matter and you will always have more than enough and you will never go hungry and you'll always have people around you who love you and so like just live. And so this idea of obsessing over these shekels that we're going to give back at the end of our life just seems silly to me. And that's at least why my 85-year-old self laughs at me for thinking about these things rather than just spending time in the places that I want with the people that I love. All right, which brings me why number four is that tax shelters don't make you a better person. All right, so far we covered number one, tax shelters cost more than they save. Number two, tax shelters don't increase your net worth. Number three, tax shelters don't improve your life. And number four, tax shelters don't make you a better person. All right, and so if you're Mosy Nation, you're like, "Okay, well, what do I take from all this? " I'm going to give you six rules of thumb, which is why I added an extra finger onto that palm. And then seven beliefs that have served me well. I told you I'm going to make one presentation to rule all others for myself and you so that I can also partially make this as an answer to a question that I had, which is what do you do for taxes? So, this is it. All right. So, if you're not going

to listen to any of the advice that I said up to this point and just pay your taxes, which by the way, like to thank our special sponsor, the IRS, um, for sponsoring this video, uh, six rules of thumb for you. All right, so let's dive in. Real tax savings typically come from three primary scenarios. Number one is when you give up ownership or control. That's what charitable giving is, right? That's why trusts tend to be vehicles that people will use because if you do them correctly, you no longer own the money, which is why you don't owe the taxes on it, right? That's the idea. All right? So, you either have to give up ownership or control typically to do that. And so, some people when they really see it, they're like, oh, like, so this isn't my money anymore. It's like, yeah, now you can make the argument like, well, you control it because you control the person, blah, blah. But the thing is like there's a lot of steps there. Um, and it's up to you, but like that is like when the real savings stuff comes from things like that. Number two is that they come from depreciation. So in the tax code, just like I mentioned earlier with real estate, like the government wants you like they the tax code is just an incentive plan, right? It's the government's way of saying we want you to do this and not do this, right? And so they allow you to depreciate assets that you're buying uh which allows you to not pay taxes because they're basically function as losses, right? So if I buy a building for $10 million, I might be able to depreciate $4 million of that building. And if I had made $4 million that year, then I could depreciate and have zero tax, which by the way is how most people who run real estate funds do it is they don't give a lot of the depreciation to the people who are investing. And they as the general partners will take a disproportionate amount of the depreciation from a company from the funds that they raise so that they can pay you no money, which is how Grant Cardone doesn't pay taxes. Right? That's the idea. That's how he does through depreciation. All right. Number three is deferral over elimination. All right? Right. And so this is also just a rule of thumb is that like a lot of these structures allow you to defer the taxes rather than eliminate them. And so the idea is you basically defer them until you die, but you're not necessarily eliminating them. So the three ways at least that I have seen that have been the most legitimate um across times etc is the are these concepts. All right. Um that being said, here's some of the advice I have for you. In almost all of these structures, there is hair. You must find it. Make sure it's really worth it. Factor in the cost of discovery. conversion. Factor in the cost of upkeep into savings. Cost factor in the fee structure that they're going to impose upon you to do this whole thing, right? And whenever you hear someone say the wealthy have been doing this forever, it's just a sales pitch when they're like ah like the Vanderbilts have been doing the structure for a hundred year. Like it's every single guy says this. So just like just move on, get over it, right? But you have to factor in the money, the time, and the intentions it cost you and it and could you allocate that into your business to get a much higher return? Something to think about, right? Number three, don't pretend to know things that you don't know. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Seriously, anyone who makes you feel otherwise is not to be trusted. All right, I always start, and this is a very true, every single person in my company would know this, especially my finance team. Like, when we hop on calls with like experts and all this stuff, I always say the same thing. I say, "Hey, I just want you to pretend you're explaining the structure to a golden retriever. " All right? Who speaks Spanish, all right? Pictures, simple words. I want to understand. And if someone cannot explain something to you simply, it's either because they're trying to confuse you or they it's because they do not understand it fully. Think about that people. If you are confused and someone cannot explain something simply to you, it is because either they do not understand it or it is because it's their desire to confuse you and seem intelligent. Neither of those scenarios are good for you. So if they can cannot explain it to you visually and simply, I would say look run the other way. All right? because either they don't have the right intentions or skill level of skill. All right, so number four, this is one now you're like, "Okay, I checked all the other boxes. " Now, always ask for people who've been doing the strategy for over a decade and ask to speak with them. The reason for that is because the IRS will unwind things three to five years after they uh impose a clause because they'll find out that people are using it as a loophole in order to get through and evade taxes. All right? And so what they'll do is that's why you need to look at people who've been doing this for over a decade because they've already gone through a full IRS cycle. And you can say, "Okay, you've been doing this for 11 years. You've never had any audits. issues. Okay, great. Let me talk to three other people because you might have just been lucky. Let me talk to, you know, a handful of people and see what was the cost of upkeep, conversion, what how much time per month do you have to allocate to making sure that this continues to stay, you know, within the standards of the IRS? And then is it worth it? " Right? Number five, always do background check on the person and the entities that the owner associate with. Quick story on this one. I had a recent person say, "Hey, I think this thing's really legit. I think it checks all the boxes, blah blah. " And so I looked into it, which is not something I normally do because I've kind of like made up my mind on this, which is I just pay my taxes. But that being said, I decided to look into this one. And literally on the first Google search I had of the guy who owned the entity, all right, and there's two red flags right off the bat. Number one is that the entity was a brand new entity, which means that they're spinning up new entities all the time. That is a big easy red flag of like why don't you have the same entities? Why are you trying to always change entities all the time? That seems weird. There's no reviews online, etc. Okay. Second is if and after I Googled this person, they had literally been indicted for tax evasion. And I was like, what? And like one of the biggest tax evasion scandals in history, right? And uh and you know, the guy who made the intro was like, but they got to quit it. And I'm like, do you want the reputational risk of being associated with someone like that? Right? And some someone might be like, "Hey, Alex, can't believe you forgive. It was proven. " Like, I get it. There's just other people who haven't. And for me, I would rather just not take the risk. That's just my two cents. All right? So, always do a background check on the people and the entities they that they own and are associated with. All right? And then finally, don't spend money on stuff that you wouldn't just to expense it. All right? This is one that I hear all the time like just expense it, right? and I'm saving X percentage on this. Like if you spend money that you otherwise wouldn't in order to save money because you don't have to pay taxes on the money. It's cutting off your nose despite your face, right? Like it's like, oh, I don't want to pay 30% of $100 or 40% of $100, so I'm just going to not even have $100, right? That just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Now, if you were going to do it, then by all means, like if you want to reinvest in the business and that that's expensible, then great. Then wonderful. As long as it's an asset. Now, here's the key point. It's like if we can if we can figure out a way that it can become an asset that's going to build value within the company and somehow it's expensible, then fantastic, right? That's the idea. Uh but spending money on stuff that uh that you wouldn't otherwise just to not pay taxes is a very very silly way of living life in my opinion and ultimately not one that is a good uh behavior that will build wealth over time. All right. So, these are just my six rules of thumb that if you're not going to listen to the advice, at least please do these things when you're thinking through some of these other tax structures that you come with. And then finally, these are the beliefs that I currently hold. Um, I'm not saying you have to hold these, but these are the things that have served me very well. All right. So, number one is that attention is my number one most valuable asset. Never do anything that takes it without disproportionate return. Number two, pay zero attention to tax savings schemes. Focus on the making, not the saving. Number three, whenever it decides to come up, right? Number three, there we go. Replace savings with orders of magnitude. So instead of trying to think in increments, think in orders of magnitude. Instead of saving 10%, think about how can I 10x and then you'll never have to worry about the taxes again. Number four, never count your pennies on roads untaken. All right? It'll destroy your spirit and have you focus on the wrong part of your life, your past versus the future. So if you make one of the decisions to start living in the place you want to live or live in a state that you that you feel like being in, whatever, right? Don't start thinking, I could have saved 12% over the last four years if I had that money right now. Like don't do that. It'll destroy your life. then probably you might not have made that money that you made now because you would not have been in the head space that you are currently etc. Right? And at the end of the day there's just there's no benefit to it. So once you make the decision move on all right number five this one and this is a big one. All right just remember that when I die and this is me right remembering that when I die the people that I compare myself to will also be dead. Right? And here's a crazy one. We will all be taxed at 100%. As in we don't get to keep it no matter what. And so here's my here's the probably the best analogy that I can give you, which is a casino analogy. And this is kind of how I imagine really life in the game overall, right? Which is that I believe all of us are given a token in the casino of life, right? And we walk in the door and we sit down to the table and there's a bunch of other players around and we can and we get dealt cards and we play the cards that were dealt, right? And depending on our skill uh in the game, we can continue to amass and amass chips, right? And we get these stacks and stacks of chips. But the difference between a regular casino and the casino of life is that in the regular casino, you can take these big chicks, go to the counter, cash out, take your cash, celebrate, etc., and then you get to go spend that money. But in the casino of life, you have this big stack of chips and then when the grim reaper taps you on the shoulder and says you can't play anymore, you have to get up from the table and the chips stay on the table and what they do is they push them right to the middle of the table and then everyone keeps playing with your chips. And so for me, when I think about it, it's like, do I just want to be in a nice casino or a shitty casino, but at the end of the day, I have to give all the chips back. And so for me, when I think about it like that, it's like, no matter what happens, I'm getting taxed 100% upon death. And you might be like, "Ah, legacy, it's ah, to me that's silly because sure, multiply by 100 generations of people who don't know you, changed their last names, and have mixed their genetics with you, you know, one half to the 100th power. " And no, they're just humans. And no, they don't remember you. And no, they're not your descendants. They're just humans. And so all of that stuff goes away with time. And so it's like, we're just here to play the game. And all of the chips that we amass are going to get put back in the middle anyways. and why sacrifice the lighting and the niceness and the types of people that I get to play the game with so that I can potentially keep a higher percentage of the table that I'm only going to give back at the end. Something to think about. And then finally, money exists to buy us options. Therefore, do not trade optionality for it. All right, so um if you are new to this channel, thank you. Um I make these videos because no one helped me learn this stuff. I had to learn the stuff on my own or to pay a lot of money for these lessons uh either in mistakes or in experts and advice. And so I hope that the pain that I experienced isn't in vain, which is why I make these videos. I just hope that someone can benefit from it. And I like this visual here because we have these goals, we fail, we learn principles, we improve, and then we have more audacious goals. And my goal for you guys is that you can just jump from audacious goals to more audacious goals because you can just use the lessons that someone else has already learned and suffered the pain of consequence for. All right, I repurposed that from Ray Dalio's principles, but I just really like that visual. And so, um, anyways, welcome to Mosy Nation if you're new. Appreciate you. Enjoy the video. So hopefully some of these takeaways can be helpful in your journey around taxes and entrepreneurship.