Interview With Shauna Wekherlien aka The Tax Goddess {VIDEO}

In this QuotersCast, your host Renee interviews a top 1% Tax Strategist Shauan Wekherlien who goes by the moniker the Tax Goddess. Discover how you can pay waaay less in taxes from this outstanding expert.

The TAX GODDESS – Shauna Wekherlien Has Saved Her Clients Over $1 Billion of Taxable Income During Her Time As A Specialist CPA!

Shauna has over 24 years as a CPA. She is ranked as the top 1% of certified tax strategists in the country. Shauna is an author and speaker and investor. She’s located in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Tax Goddess has helped her clients save over $1 billion in taxable income, which I think is incredible. Find Shauna here: https://taxgoddesslive.com/

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TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW WITH THE TAX GODDESS

Host of The QuotersCast;

Hello everyone and welcome to the QuotersCast. My guest today is Shauna, the tax goddess. And Shauna has over 24 years as a CPA. She is ranked as the top 1% of certified tax strategists. She’s an author and speaker and investor. She’s located in Scottsdale, Arizona.
And this is incredible. She has helped her clients save over $1 billion in taxable income, which I think is incredible. And she has an affiliate program. So Shauna, welcome.

The Tax Goddess;

Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here today. Yeah, it’s my pleasure.

Host of The QuotersCast;

So anyone who’s looking to check out Shauna, you can go to taxgoddess.com. You have a lot to offer people, Shauna. And maybe we can start with how you came to be the tax goddess and a little build up because you got a lot going on right now.

The Tax Goddess;

So, yeah, so actually, I, after a few years in astrophysics, come to find out that I, my numbers brain is really, really, really, really good at tax of all things. So ended up switching. I know what you figure would be crazy, but really tax is a giant game of chess, right?
You have certain rules and you have to follow certain rules. So it works really well because the rules of the universe and the rules of the tax law seem to go hand in hand, which is good stuff.

So, yeah, I ended up in accounting and finance, went into tax. I was called the Goldilocks.

So I started with a really big firm, KPMG, went down to American Express, middle size, went down to a private boutique firm. And then 19 years ago, opened up tax goddess proper, which is now my company and my baby and focused specifically on tax strategy. So very, very fun and exciting.

Host of The QuotersCast;

And this is the part where it gets really interesting because you’re doing something that most other CPA seem to either don’t know about it or they’re far too afraid to even touch it.
So can you explain how you’ve achieved that one percent ranking in the country for as being a tax strategist and exactly what do you do above and beyond a CPA?

The Tax Goddess;

Absolutely. So, yeah, so there is different levels. And so let me let me back up. So according to Google, there are six hundred and sixty thousand CPAs, so certified public accountants, and a CPA can do all sorts of things, right?
They could be an auditor, they could be a controller, they could be a tax person, you know, do all sorts of as you start to specialize in tax. So you go from CPA, you go to masters in tax, so masters in taxation.
Then the next specialization when you’re looking at strategy specifically is something called a CTC, a certified tax coach.
And on top of that, you get certified tax strategist. So there are only fifteen people in the entire U.S. that are certified tax strategists.

There’s only six hundred and seven that are certified tax coaches, and there’s only about sixty thousand that are masters in tax.

So really, when you start looking at the top one percent, if you were to actually look at the number, it’s like point zero zero right out of six hundred and sixty thousand CPAs.

But as certified tax strategists, we are ranked by the amount of money that we have saved for our clients.
And so you hit on that right off the bat, right?

We have just surpassed, I think it was last month, we surpassed the annual budget, the country of Monaco in savings for our clients, which is pretty awesome.
And on average, you know, when we look at our average numbers for clients, we’re saving typically around one hundred and eighty six thousand dollars a year in taxes.
And the tax rates, the current average tax rate for our client is six percent, which is where the title of the new book came from, the six percent line. So anyway, yeah, so that’s what we do.
We specialize in reducing taxes and bringing tax strategy that your regular day to day CPA who prepares tax trends and we need those people.

We love our CPAs because they keep us out of jail tax strategist job is to work with your CPA hand in hand with your CPA to build tax strategies that also don’t get you let me in jail, but that help reduce the overall taxation.

So your CPA can focus on filing the returns, getting everything filed for April 15th or October 15th, these kinds of things. And your strategist can help you, the business owner, implement those strategies to keep cash in your pocket instead of in the government’s pocket.

Host of The QuotersCast;

OK, to that, the six percent strategy. So you’re clearly dealing with people, high net worth individuals.
You’re saving them over one hundred thousand dollars in taxes. That’s amazing.
And you bring them down from what about 30, 40 percent, I guess, the bracket, they’d be in down to six percent. Is that what that is? How exactly do you do that? Can you share some strategy? I guess that why you’re called a tax goddess, right?

The Tax Goddess;

Everybody believes I can wave the magic wand and poof bibbidi babbidi boo. Here’s your six percent.
OK, I would love to say that’s true, but I don’t think the government would let me do that. There are actual strategies, right? And really what we look at, there’s about four hundred, I think it’s almost four hundred and fifty at this point.

The way that I look at it, I look at myself as a redheaded, fire breathing, tax saving dragon.
And I sit on top of this, sit on top of this pile of gold. And each gold coin is a tax strategy.
So when somebody calls tax goddess, we’ve got a team of 93 around the globe at this point.
So when somebody calls tax goddess and they say, listen, I’m a business owner.
I have a couple of rental properties and I need to file my personal taxes plus my kids’ taxes.
What we look at is we analyze that group of tax trends.

So everything that you own, every business, every rental, whatever it is that you own, we analyze those tax strategies. We look at local and credits and all these other strategies then apply all of those to your specific situation.

We have about an 80 percent knowledge of how much money you’ve been overpaying for the past three years, five years, ten years, whatever it is. So we are able to implement specific strategies.
So you never have one person that implements all four hundred and fifty strategies.

Because some strategies are for real estate, some are for business owners, some are for specifically for doctors. There’s different strategies for different types of categories, different types of people.
But on average, we will apply 10 to 20 strategies for any given client. And those are the kind of results that come out of a proper integration.

Because anybody can go to TikTok and watch one video and be like, oh, that’s a great strategy.
If it’s not properly implemented, the IRS gets kind of mad about that.
So really, when you look at getting somebody down to the six percent life, right, it’s about integrating 20 different strategies that fit together in your particular situation, your custom life to be able to get to that six percent.

Host of The QuotersCast;

OK, so why do you think more why there’s not more people like you implementing all these strategies?
Why is that?

The Tax Goddess;

Great question. Well, one of it is just one piece is just time. Right. And specialization. I mean, I’ll flat out say there’s a lot of CPAs that don’t want to be strategists.
Right. There are many CPAs that just they enjoy firing experts and they enjoy being bookkeepers or like whatever it is that they’re doing.
So there’s not everybody wants to specialize in tax strategy.

Let’s put it that way. The IRS changes the tax code three times a day, every day, 365 days a year.
So, you know, I built our practice tax goddess specifically as a tax strategy firm, which means that I have researchers, I research myself, I’m constantly reading.

Right. A lot of CPAs, just normal day to day CPAs, who, as I said, we love them.

They don’t have the time to do that.

They are not following up on the three changes on April 15 while they’re trying to get your tax card filed.

Right. They just can’t. There’s just not that many of them.
You also get the other side of it where every single person and I’ll bring in something we’ve coined a term called the aggression scale.
And the aggression scale goes from zero to ten. Zero meaning the IRS never calls you never ever except for a random audit because that can happen. And ten mean we’re all going to jail.

Okay. If you think about a normal CPA, right. And I’m going to use Home Office as one of the most common strategies that the IRS has absolutely approved.

Like it’s a level zero on that scale. The IRS has approved it. They have a form for it, all these things.
But many of your listeners, I bet you anything, if they’ve asked their CPA, can we take Home Office?
No, no, no, that’s too aggressive.

Many CPAs, traditional normal CPAs, live at a negative two on the zero to ten scale.
They’re very conservative. They won’t let you take that right off the car.
I had one client, for example, ask me about I want to write off the four Rolexes that I bought this year.
No, no, maybe one.

What a tax strategist does is we look at what do you have in your life and how do we make it appropriately
following the order to get the four Rolexes as a write off, set up a business, buying and selling Rolexes.
You have to make some sales. You can’t just buy them. Right. But buy and sell Rolexes.
Now you can buy four Rolexes, 10 Rolexes, 20 Rolexes. Doesn’t matter. You get to wear them until you sell it. But you got a business and you made a profit.

So a tax strategist approaches problems differently. A CPA looks at this is the set of facts that I have.
It’s either a black or white. Yes or no. Right. And a tax strategist says this is the set of facts that I have.
And this is where I’m trying to go. That game of chess. Right. With the rules. This is where I’m trying to get to. How do I make my four Rolexes a deduction?

Host of The QuotersCast;

OK, that’s this is amazing. I can see people wanting to work with you already.
So I know you’re in Arizona. Do you have licenses for other states?

The Tax Goddess;

So this is one of the fabulous bits about being a CPA. We are eligible to work anywhere.
So we’ve got clients all across the U.S., all 50 states. We also do all the territories, Puerto Rico, the U.S.
Virgin Islands, you know, you name it. There’s clients all around. You’re a U.S. citizen paying U.S. taxes.
We don’t do like Canadian taxes. We don’t do any other country taxes, only only U.S.
taxes. But yeah, as long as you’re paying U.S. taxes and you don’t want to be paying legally, paying U.S.
taxes, then we’re your team.

Host of The QuotersCast;

Excellent, but you also mentioned you have 93 people working with you currently and looking at your website. You’ve got like over 40 jobs available that you’re looking for people and they all look to be full time. So clearly you’re growing. Tell us about all this growth after over 20 years in the business.

The Tax Goddess;

Oh, you’re a sweetheart. So very long story short, the very when I opened my business, okay, it was never supposed to be a big firm. It really wasn’t. It was supposed to be me and a secretary making enough
money to put away for retirement, have a good life, be happy.

Okay. The goods and the bads to what I do, who wants to pay more than they have to?
Nobody wants to pay more tax than their legally require to pay, right? So, you know, you get a call by people, right? So, you know, good or bad with what we do, the expansion and tax goddess has happened because people are sick and tired of paying taxes that they don’t have to pay.

Now I’m a big believer, right? And I’m not red and orange. I’m a redhead, right? Red and orange do not go well together. I’m not going to a level 10. I’m a level eight on that aggression scale, right? Like I’m okay with the IRS calls, but all the legal backup, all the documentation, like they have all the things.

But, you know, people are just, they love their CPAs. They’ve had their CPAs for 20 years, but they’re not
getting the kind of advice. They know they’re overpaying because they are hearing…. Go back to TikTok.

They are hearing, hey, I can write up my kids. I can use the master’s exam. As well, I can buy a 6,000 pound car. I can write up my dogs for security, right? Their CPA is not telling them those things and they
want that strategy.

So, the expansion of tax goddesses really come out of just need. That and the fact that I’m an educator.
I love to train and I love to help people. It’s a big thing for me. And so, if I can take and bring it down, I guess that’s my place in the world. So, I love what we do.

Host of The QuotersCast;

Yeah, I love that. Now, with your longevity in the business and with a lot of the changes in our society, I’m curious. You take such an integrative approach to what you do. And it seems like people are becoming more single and individual and solitary in so many ways in work and private life. So, how have you or what, if anything, have you noticed about the clients that have come to you?

The Tax Goddess;

Great questions. Great question. Certainly, we’ve all seen changes. COVID was like a shock to the system, right? And it just changed the world. Tax Goddess is a company. So, when I first started, I was brick and mortar. Call it nine years, seven years, somewhere in there. I”m terrible at timelines.
But 79 years worth of my practice was one to one, right? We went digital about 12 years ago, right?
And so, when I say digital, I mean, online, global. We hire around the globe.
We’ve got teams in 20 different countries. I mean, we’re everywhere.

And so, when it comes to the clients, I think both from a hiring standpoint for Tax Goddess, extremely helpful because we can pick the best talent anywhere in the globe.

So, not that I loved COVID, but that changed the perception of a lot of clients of, oh, I have to sit now anywhere where I can get the best talent and the best skills.

So, a lot of the clients that are coming to us have never had nervousness there, like, who has access to my information and what’s going on?

But once they see, of course, I’m hyper paranoid about security and backups and data and this kind of stuff. So, once they see how we build the firm and the quality of the people that we have within our team, it doesn’t even become a question anymore.

Host of The QuotersCast;

Now, you have a lot of services for real estate. And so, explain that because I know you invest and so,
tell us about that.

The Tax Goddess;

Absolutely. So, before I went out on my own, I was a real estate investor myself. I mean, I’ve always been a CPA, right? But this was way back. I feel like I’m saying my age here. This was way back when the market crashed in 2008, you know, this kind of thing.

I personally, I had eight single-family rentals and a small commercial strip, sold it all in 2008 happened,
which was lovely. But so, I’ve got a personal intimate knowledge of real estate.
I’ve done it.
Built it.
Flipped it.
Fixed it.

Like, you name it, I’ve done it, right?

So, we do end up with, I think, about 35, maybe 40% of our practice is real estate related. Either construction or fixing flippers or whatever that is purely because I happen to know, right?
I mean, personally happen to know. But we do, there’s only two industries that we do not really
work with.
One of them is nonprofits.
If you’re a nonprofit, you’re not worried about tax strategy very much, so we’re not really worried about it.
And then I would say significant manufacturing, right? So, if we’re talking, if you’re making 200 million and above gross in manufacturing, there are specific strategies and specific planning for those types of companies. So, we don’t normally deal with the super large or small manufacturers, fine, but not the super, super large manufacturers.

Host of The QuotersCast;

All right. And so, I’m curious, doing what you do and being so involved in
real estate, do you, it says something on your website about creative funding for these deals.
So, can you talk a little bit about that?

The Tax Goddess;

Absolutely. Yeah, one of my favorites, personally. Well, there’s a couple.I’m sorry, now you’ve got my brain all in the directions. Okay, so the first one, as I mentioned, I’m a dragon sitting on top of a pile of gold.
One of the things that I love to use, whether it’s for funding for construction, but really funding for any reason, is life insurance as a tool. Now, most people, they hear life insurance. They’re like, nope, nope, nope, slimy, life insurance, absolutely not, we’re not doing that.

Life insurance is one of the best underutilized tools to gain funding that I have ever seen.

If there’s a problem, you can get it. If you need to stop making payments, you can do that. I mean, I’m in love with life insurance as a tool from that standpoint. So, life insurance is a big one. If you don’t have a life insurance policy that is built for access, for cash access, because there’s life insurance terms. For example, you die, somebody gets paid out. That’s not what I’m talking about, right?

I’m talking about life insurance that uses cash access. There’s different types of policies, tons of them that do this. If you don’t already have one of those started, start now. When you don’t need the funding, start now. Because typically you can’t borrow out of those things for the first year.

So, if you haven’t started it, even if you start small, put in 50 bucks a month, whatever, get the thing started. So, start there.

The other option, there’s a specific strategy called an 831B, which if you have an operating company, you can actually set up your own insurance company. The benefits of using an 831B is that since you are the owner of the operating company and you’re the owner of the 831B, after a year and a day, so same thing, we always get that year time frame, right? After a year and a day, you as the owner of the insurance
company have access to this money to invest or build or grow or flip or whatever, right? So, this is a way, the 831B is a way for you to like double dip on your money, which I love.

Host of The QuotersCast;

So, do you help people get set up in an 831B?

The Tax Goddess;

Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. All the good bits. Now, I will say from that standpoint, we do the taxing end of this stuff. So, we do have quite a lot of partners, vendors, specialists in all these different arenas, right?
Because I don’t set up the 831B entity. I don’t get your premiums. We don’t do any of that, right?
I tell you how to do it, how to run it, what it looks like, and how you get access to it.

But yeah, so we taxed out as tries to surround ourselves with just like our staff, the best vendors that we can find, the best partners for any particular strategy.

And we try our best to find at least two for every strategy because we want you as the tax payer to be able to choose, well, this program is better for me because of this matter versus this other.

Host of The QuotersCast;

Oh, you also have a 13-week cash flow model. And I was curious about that.

Host of The QuotersCast;

Can you talk about that, please?

The Tax Goddess;

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, as I mentioned, I love being a teacher. So, yeah, we have our 13-week cash flow model, a profit-first e-course. We do have our group coaching for the 6% life for tax strategies.
So lots of these educational models. The 13-week cash flow in particular is one of my personal favorites,
and I use it myself.
So if you look at a 13-week time span, that’s basically a little over three months. For most business owners, they can’t really very easily predict what the future looks like. Like, I think I’m going to get money, but maybe I don’t, maybe I do.

What’s going to happen? For a lot of people, cash is just one of those. It’s very difficult to keep in the mind.
So if you don’t have reports, if you don’t have a strategy to track cash, you can run into problems, right?
You’re out of cash.

Something’s happening, and now you’re out of cash. So the 13-week cash flow model, what it does is it says, this is what I have.

This is how much income I think I’m going to get, right? Maybe you have standard deposits or a big job, quote, something like that.

This is how much income I think I’m going to get. Here are my expenses, because most people know their expenses really well, right? So here’s how much I’m paying my staff, here’s how much I’m paying my cell phone bill, whatever that is. All of those things 13 weeks out, and it will tell you if you don’t collect
another dollar of money. Are you out of money? Are you in money? Do you need to get financing?

So it’s giving you a projected future fortune, right? What is going to happen in 13 weeks? Whether you need to go and obtain financing right now, whether you need to go to the bank and get a loan,
whether you need to go sell something, whether you need to cut expenses, maybe you shouldn’t hire that new staff member that you really want because you’re not going to have the money for them in 13 weeks,
those kinds of things.

Host of The QuotersCast;

Okay, that’s amazing. So how do you normally get your clients? Is it usually referrals or do you do a lot of online marketing?

The Tax Goddess;

So referrals, of course, as I said, you know, who doesn’t want to not pay tax, right. So lots of referrals from that standpoint. I really enjoy on the education side, I really enjoy YouTube.

So I personally just do a lot of YouTube videos. We do get a lot of people that reach out because of YouTube. I think that’s it. That’s probably a better question for my head of marketing. I have no idea.

Host of The QuotersCast;

Okay, all right. That’s cool. So I want to wrap it up here with one last question. This is one of my favorite questions. Can you give us the experience that you had with your best clients and an experience you had with your worst clients?

The Tax Goddess;

Oh, best client versus worst client. Okay. The best, because if they’re calling you, Shauna, why would they not want to help, right? But there’s very much a difference between somebody who is willing to listen
and who’s willing to put in a little bit of effort and who’s willing to work with the team because this is an integrated thing.

So the best clients are involved. They’re interested. They’re kind of taking control of their situation here.
Those are definitely the best clients.

The worst client, I guess, honestly, would be the opposite that somebody who already knows everything
and isn’t willing to put in the time and effort to actually make the changes, right?
So there’s not a whole lot even a goddess can do for you if you’re not willing to follow the system and do the system.

The Host of The QuotersCast;

All right. Well, this has been really great, Shauna. I appreciate your time a lot.
Where can we find you besides tax goddesses? Where can we find you besides taxgoddess.com?
What’s the best way to get a hold of you?

The Tax Goddess;

I was going to say taxgoddess.com is the spot. That is the place. If you’re calling in, I would give you a heads up on that. You’re not speaking directly to me, right? We do have a team and you’ll talk to them and we’ll gather data. But yeah, that’s how tax goddess works. And we’d love to help anyone. We do have the book just launched on Amazon. So if you are interested, we do have a group coaching model if you are looking for tax strategies in an easy to understand environment we need every Wednesday. So, you can find all that information on taxgoddess.com.