Writing Off Your Life: Tax Strategies of the Super Ninjas with Barbara Schreihans: An EOFire Classic from 2023
Episode
22 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Career Growth, Personal Finance, Relationships
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Business Structure & Self-Employment Tax: Operating as a sole LLC means paying federal tax, state tax, plus 15.3% self-employment tax simultaneously — the highest possible tax burden. Restructuring the business entity (such as electing S-Corp status) can eliminate or reduce that 15.3% layer, potentially saving thousands annually depending on net profit levels.
- ✓Augusta Rule — 14-Day Tax-Free Rental: Business owners can rent their personal home to their own business for up to 14 days per year, and that rental income is completely tax-free personally. The business deducts the expense, and the owner receives the payment tax-free — a dual benefit that can extract hundreds of thousands from a business legally.
- ✓Paying Children Up to $13,950 Tax-Free: Business owners with children can place them on payroll and pay each child up to $12,950–$13,950 annually, completely tax-free. Once on payroll, children qualify for a Roth IRA. Contributing the annual Roth maximum for five years during childhood can compound to over $2,000,000 by retirement age.
- ✓Document Processes from Day One: Writing down every operational task and recording Loom videos of all workflows — even before hiring — creates a training library that scales. When growing from one to 27 employees, this system eliminates retraining from scratch after turnover and continuously surfaces process gaps and customer service improvements.
- ✓Know Your Numbers Before Strategizing: Tax strategy is only executable when profit, expenses, and income are tracked accurately and consistently. Without clean financial data, no tax professional can identify deduction opportunities or restructuring options. Tracking numbers is the prerequisite step that unlocks every other tax-saving strategy discussed.
What It Covers
Tax strategist Barbara Schreihans of Your Tax Coach outlines specific IRS-legal strategies that allow business owners to deduct personal expenses, reduce self-employment tax liability, build generational wealth through family payroll structures, and maximize home office and vehicle deductions by connecting everyday spending to documented business activity.
Key Questions Answered
- •Business Structure & Self-Employment Tax: Operating as a sole LLC means paying federal tax, state tax, plus 15.3% self-employment tax simultaneously — the highest possible tax burden. Restructuring the business entity (such as electing S-Corp status) can eliminate or reduce that 15.3% layer, potentially saving thousands annually depending on net profit levels.
- •Augusta Rule — 14-Day Tax-Free Rental: Business owners can rent their personal home to their own business for up to 14 days per year, and that rental income is completely tax-free personally. The business deducts the expense, and the owner receives the payment tax-free — a dual benefit that can extract hundreds of thousands from a business legally.
- •Paying Children Up to $13,950 Tax-Free: Business owners with children can place them on payroll and pay each child up to $12,950–$13,950 annually, completely tax-free. Once on payroll, children qualify for a Roth IRA. Contributing the annual Roth maximum for five years during childhood can compound to over $2,000,000 by retirement age.
- •Document Processes from Day One: Writing down every operational task and recording Loom videos of all workflows — even before hiring — creates a training library that scales. When growing from one to 27 employees, this system eliminates retraining from scratch after turnover and continuously surfaces process gaps and customer service improvements.
- •Know Your Numbers Before Strategizing: Tax strategy is only executable when profit, expenses, and income are tracked accurately and consistently. Without clean financial data, no tax professional can identify deduction opportunities or restructuring options. Tracking numbers is the prerequisite step that unlocks every other tax-saving strategy discussed.
Notable Moment
Schreihans explains that the Augusta Rule originated in 1970s Augusta, Georgia, when Masters Golf Tournament crowds filled all hotels and locals began renting their homes. What started as a pre-Airbnb workaround is now a fully legal mechanism business owners use to extract significant tax-free income annually.
Episode Transcript
Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by HighLevel, the all in one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down writing off your life tax strategies of the super ninjas. To drop these vibe bombs, I brought to Barbara Shreehans in the EOFire studios. Barbara is the founder and CEO of Your Tax Coach. She's a tax strategist who weighs business owners in saving millions of dollars in taxes while also growing their profits. And And today, we talk about how you have to stay consistent in working your business, how along the way you can identify gaps in your processes and think of ways to improve them and owe so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Barbara and our sponsors. Kape is a privacy first mobile carrier built from the ground up with security as the priority. If you care about protecting your digital life without giving up your smartphone, Kape makes that possible. Visit cape.co/fire and use code fire for 33% off Kape for six months today. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a thirty day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Barbara, say what's up to Fire Nation and share share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, and thank you for having me. Oh my gosh. Something that most people disagree with. I would say that you have to stay consistent even if you are kind of out of your business now because you've created a team and you've created processes. You still have to work at it every single day. Fire Nation, we are talking about writing off your life. We are talking about tax strategies of the super ninjas, and we have Barbara to drop all these value bombs here today. And I wanna start off with your story, Barbara, because I I find it fascinating. Why in the world did you become a tax strategist? Everybody asks me that because they're always like, you don't look like an accountant. You don't act like an accountant, which I don't really know what that means. But I think people typically think of accountants as kind of, like, boring and old and stuffy. But I kind of accidentally fell into accounting because I got pregnant in college, and I needed a major where 100% chance the day that I graduated, I had to have a job. Right? Because I was having a baby my junior year, and so I was like, I need to support him. And so when I went to my career counselor, they were like, well, if you want no chance of not having …
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Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode
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Tools
- LoomRecommended
“Writing down every operational task and recording Loom videos of all workflows — even before hiring — creates a training library that scales.”
company
- Your Tax CoachBy guest
“Tax strategist Barbara Schreihans of Your Tax Coach outlines specific IRS-legal strategies that allow business owners to deduct personal expenses, reduce self-employment tax liability...”
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