Unlock Tax Savings: Expert Tips for Real Estate Investors with Carlos Samaniego

Dylan Silver (00:00.78)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And today on the show I have Carlos Samaniego. Carlos is an enrolled agent and tax resolution sniper who hunts down IRS bullies and the dreaded Cali claw before they bleed your bank account dry. He’s a bestselling author, PBS featured expert, and the guy tax pros call when things get ugly. Carlos, welcome to the show.

Carlos Samaniego EA (00:27.391)
Thanks for having me, Dylan, I appreciate it.

Dylan Silver (00:29.632)
Absolutely. I always like to start off at the top. How did you get involved in the tax base?

Carlos Samaniego EA (00:37.939)
it wasn’t as the normal person would, if you could imagine. I didn’t wake up one day in high school saying I wanna go file people’s taxes or deal with taxes in any way, any which shape or form. As you kind of mentioned, I’m veteran. I actually had this dream of going to serve in the military. My dad was a Vietnam veteran, medic in the Vietnam War. And I’m like, you know what, that’s gonna be my calling. So I actually did, I joined…

joined the military when I was 17 years old, I actually signed up in high school, believe it or not, to be able to, back then they had, it’s called a deferred enlistment. You can go to boot camp the summer before your senior year. And then after you graduated, you kind of continued on. And that’s kind of what I did. And I did it. And then I realized right away, Dylan, military wasn’t for me. So I did a short little stint in the military a few years as an army medic.

And then I came out and I’m like, I still like the medical part of it. So I actually decided to go become an EMT paramedic type of a guy. So EMS guy, the guy that drives around that ambulance going to emergencies. Back then, I can still remember Emergency 51 was one of my favorite TV shows. One of the first kind of paramedic shows that existed. And I ended up doing that. And that’s kind of, that was literally the beginning of my

Dylan Silver (01:56.044)
Mmm.

Carlos Samaniego EA (02:05.011)
my future tax career and let me explain Dylan. So I ended up taking that job on, was having a great time. I had a great schedule, working 24 hour shifts. And I started working a bunch of extra shifts during the winter because Christmas was coming around. And then the older guy kept on telling me, dude, why are you working so much? I’m like, just trying to make a little extra money. And then he gave me the best tax advice ever from a person who shouldn’t be taking tax advice. He said,

Hey, just claim 10 exemptions on your paycheck. They won’t take taxes out and you’ll get a bigger paycheck. God, Dylan, the advice worked. I got a bigger paycheck. But what I didn’t realize was that when tax season came rolling around a few months later, that I was going to have this huge tax bill. And that’s what ended up happening with me. I had this huge tax bill and I didn’t follow the tax return because I figured I didn’t have the money to pay them. I’m not going to follow the return.

Make a long story short, Dylan, I did that for eight years and I went eight years not filing my taxes while I was working as a EMT paramedic. So I ended up becoming the person I now service. I was a eight year non-filer with a $100,000 tax bill and didn’t know what I was gonna do with that. And believe it or not, I still didn’t deal with it after those eight years. I actually…

Dylan Silver (03:11.587)
Mmm.

Dylan Silver (03:24.291)
Yeah.

Carlos Samaniego EA (03:31.07)
ended up getting out of the tax industry, correction, the paramedic industry, ended up becoming a real estate agent, this is a real estate show, a real estate lender agent, that’s what I started doing, and got involved in the real estate industry and loved it, it was great, commissions were great, and that is where my problems really, it became apparent that it was gonna really affect my life because,

Dylan Silver (03:40.782)
Yeah.

Carlos Samaniego EA (03:59.852)
I was doing a loan for a potential client and I ended up falling in love with this person and we started dating and ended up getting married to her within a couple of years and at that point in time Dylan I had realized what I just did. I married the woman of my dreams and she had no idea that I had gone eight years of not filing my taxes, owed almost $100,000 in tax debt.

And then that’s where my tax problems became a major issue because I realized I needed to fix the problem because I needed to tell her what was going on. And I’m fast forwarding this quick story, but I ended up looking for somebody to help me because I had to fix this problem because she was gonna divorce me if I didn’t tell her. I ended up finding a person that specialized in solving taxes and there are specific people that do that.

Dylan Silver (04:40.812)
Yeah.

Carlos Samaniego EA (04:58.327)
And he told me I wasn’t a bad person. made a stupid decision and that he was going to help me. And then I went to tell my wife to have that conversation. said, Liz, I need to talk to you. I have something to tell you. And I told her what had happened and what she did. And she was really pissed. But here’s what she did say. If you. If it can be solved, we can work through this. And I ended up getting it solved. And that person that solved my problems.

had whispered something to me as I was leaving his office. He goes, hey Carlos, if you ever decide to make a career change, I think you’d be really good at this type of work. You like helping people and you’re really good at making people comfortable. And what was it, back in 2004, 2012, I started getting into the tax business. By 2017, I became a licensed enrolled agent by the Department of Treasury and now here I am.

Dylan Silver (05:50.338)
Yeah.

Carlos Samaniego EA (05:56.5)
I fix people’s tax problems.

Dylan Silver (05:58.872)
What an unbelievable story and how many times, how many of your clients do you tell the story to?

Carlos Samaniego EA (06:05.585)
Everybody because I tell the story through my my branding I tell it on YouTube. I tell it in my I got multiple books. I’ve told this story That’s what PBS interviewed me about my story because It’s an it’s important a lot of people that go through this type of a problem I call it. It’s America’s best-kept secret. It’s just because when people have tax problems They don’t know who to go to they don’t go to their family members

Dylan Silver (06:32.718)
They don’t know where to go to.

Carlos Samaniego EA (06:34.443)
They don’t go to their friends. It’s not a subject that you bring up at your bar, right? Hey, know, hey Dylan, you know, having a beer. I haven’t filed my taxes in 10 years or I owe a hundred thousand dollars. So it’s just a secret and you don’t know who can help you. And the problem is there’s so many scam artists right now that are out there prying on people in this type of situation. And then they get scammed and then they really kind of go into a shell because they got scammed. So I try to share my story all over the place.

to let people know there are people there that can help.

Dylan Silver (07:07.096)
You know, Carlos, being in the real estate space, now this is pivoting a bit here. Real estate investors, with every tool that we have access to, are becoming more more savvy on themselves being somewhat of a tax strategist, right? We might not have all the answers, especially if we’re starting out and we don’t have all the money to pay an accountant. But now there’s all these different folks. You got the tax strategist. I’ve heard like mini cost seg. And then of course you accountant and

Carlos Samaniego EA (07:33.876)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (07:36.14)
all these different roles. But what I’ve seen is that there’s so many things that you can write off these days. And so kind of getting into the nitty gritty here, I’ve seen people, of course, write off their apartments and their homes as office spaces. You can definitely write off your miles if you have marketing expenses, which in real estate, even if you’re a wholesaler, right, we’ve got so many marketing expenses. A lot of these things are ways where people can reduce their their tax burden to the point where

When I was thinking about being in real estate before I even was, I was working for a Nissan dealership. I had worked in car sales for five years. I probably could have started my real estate business on some level as a wholesaler and all the miles that I was doing to networking events and all the marketing that I was putting out on social media, some of it paid. I probably could have used that as a write off and not paid so much in taxes at the end of the year, but I wasn’t thinking like that.

Carlos Samaniego EA (08:32.371)
Right, right. Yeah, it’s just one of those things. And I see that with a lot of real estate people. I do a lot of real estate talks. I speak at a lot of lunch and learns and Zoom meetings at real estate offices. And one thing I’ve realized is that I wish there was a mandatory course getting your real estate license that sat down with you and told you, these are all the tax deductions that you can take.

You just got to keep track of this stuff because I’ve had one too many clients who are in the real estate industry come to me with, you know, $100,000 tax bills and I’ve looked at all their previous years returns and they weren’t taking the legal deductions they were allowed to take. They didn’t know any better. You know, they were just, you know, a lot of them try to do their own taxes and I always say if you’re self-employed, don’t do your own taxes. You know, it’s just, it’s worth it to spend a few extra dollars to go to somebody.

Dylan Silver (09:10.744)
Mmm.

Dylan Silver (09:24.162)
Don’t do it.

Carlos Samaniego EA (09:28.501)
to get the advice to take all the deductions that you’re legally able to take. Because that self-employment tax, and for those of you guys that know, when you do your most real estate people or self-employed people, if you’re operating as a Schedule C business, you got this self-employment tax that’s a monster that can really come after you. And you gotta do everything possible to reduce that. And the only way you can do that is keeping track of those deductions.

So.

Dylan Silver (09:58.171)
Is that the- and we’re really getting down to the nitty gritty. So don’t give away all the game here Carlos, but maybe some of it. Is that the 15 % when I look at this up? Is that the 15 %?

Carlos Samaniego EA (10:01.535)
Yeah. No, no, no, no.

Carlos Samaniego EA (10:08.971)
That’s it. Yeah, there’s three different taxes for most people. If you’re in a state that has income tax, like California, you got your federal income tax, you have your state income tax, and all you self-employed people have your self-employment tax, which is about 15 and a half, roughly percent. So there’s three major taxes that’s on there. So to give you an example, if you had $100,000 net income,

Dylan Silver (10:19.437)
huh.

Carlos Samaniego EA (10:37.513)
The government slaps on a 15,000 plus tax bill just for being self-employed. And people are like, well, what the hell is this self-employed thing? Well, if you ever seen a paycheck, right, Dylan? You see federal, state, social security, Medicare, and those little things. Well, self-employment tax is that social security and Medicare. See, when you’re employed, your employer pays 7.5 % of it, and then you pay 7.5%. But when you’re self-employed, like a real estate agent,

you pay the entire both portions so roughly 15 percent so

Dylan Silver (11:12.142)
When folks are thinking about transitioning from as I did and as you did from a W2 job to now you’re your own boss, there’s a lot of uncertainty that comes up. And frankly speaking, it’s not like I had lots of money to invest in lots of different mentorship. If I could have done one of a couple things, I would have.

Carlos Samaniego EA (11:21.813)
Let’s go.

Dylan Silver (11:34.956)
Firstly, really put a huge emphasis on networking. Every amount of networking that I’ve done has been huge and it’s benefited me five or tenfold. But also, to your point, the tax strategy has been huge because I was so, and you probably get this all the time, Carlos, I was so afraid because I’m like, this is going to be such a huge burden. But it turned out after I found through networking and through friends of friends of the right people, I was actually ending up saving money where I really otherwise would have if I had gone to

Carlos Samaniego EA (12:01.6)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (12:04.302)
who I was previously doing my taxes with, one of the big brands, I would have owed thousands and thousands of dollars.

Carlos Samaniego EA (12:07.733)
Yeah.

Yeah, you brought something up that’s really good is that a lot of times when I tell people, hire a bookkeeper, whether even if you can’t hire a monthly bookkeeper, someone that can go over your books quarterly, right?

And they’re like, well, you know what? I don’t want to spend the money. go, you’re not spending money. Remember, you’re hiring a bookkeeper to go through your books to give you kind of strategies that you need to save money. And 100 % of the money that you’re paying her is a tax write-off anyway. So you’re actually, it’s not costing you money. It’s saving you money. could potentially save tens of thousands of dollars by doing that.

Dylan Silver (12:46.37)
The bookkeeper is a tax write-off, so you have to go do it. That’s a gem that you just gave me. There’s so many different ways where people can get educated on this type of thing. I mentioned before, it’s confusing for me even as someone who’s relatively familiar with it, but I mentioned like cost segregation, mini-cost segregation, tax strategist, CPA. Who is the right person for someone to go to if they’re starting out, let’s say they’re a new real estate agent, who do they need to talk to?

Carlos Samaniego EA (12:50.325)
Yeah. yeah.

Carlos Samaniego EA (13:16.981)
You know what? I’m gonna say, I’m gonna start with who to avoid. Avoid social media tax advice, especially your TikTok tax advice. I’m not saying there’s not legitimate information. If you’re gonna be listening to some tax advice online, make sure they have either a CPA, enrolled agent or tax attorney as a credential.

I’m there’s just way too many people that end up becoming my clients because they’re taking these these tax strategies by these social media people That are giving them literally like illegal information and people are taking advantage of it In fact, I just had a family member told me recently came to me that said I spent $1,500 on some tax advice from somebody they found online

The IRS turned around and denied the tax advice and gave him a $700,000 tax bill So it was literally illegal Information and then illegal strategy a strategy they couldn’t utilize So you got to be really careful on who the advice that you’re listening to So I would suggest you know looking up somebody with the the right credential that’s been trained You know CPAs are trained on taxes tax attorneys

Somebody a lot of states like in California you have specific states certifications for Preparing taxes and things like that. Just be careful on who you listen to That’s the big one for me

Dylan Silver (14:53.314)
Yeah, that’s you. When I think about my growth path as a I like to consider myself a real estate entrepreneur, right? I started off just on the outside looking in I knew nobody in the real estate space. I didn’t have a friend of a friend even. It was like multiple, what do you call it multiple arms length distances between me and the real estate investor. I just knew that I was seeing it getting harder and harder to own a home.

that the real estate prices and the rents was living in San Antonio, Texas at the time were going up and up and up. And I had a nice apartment, I had a nice car, but I said, how do I partake in this? Because I’m seeing the inflation, how do I benefit from that? How do I get in on this? Everyone thought I was kind of crazy. They’re like, you’re making good money doing what you’re doing. Why do you want to switch? And I just said, I don’t see a pathway for me to be an owner of this car dealership. I even looked it up.

This might have been right before chat GPT came out. was, it was at the same point in time. So I was probably Googling it and it was like, how much money do I need to open up a Nissan dealership? And it was like more than $10 million for sure. And so I said, well, I don’t know how I’m going to come up with that in my thirties. let’s, let’s pivot a bit here. And when I, when I first started doing was kind of reflecting on it, the wrong things. tried to like master real estate investing, which I always tell people when you’re getting in,

Carlos Samaniego EA (15:46.101)
Yeah.

Carlos Samaniego EA (16:01.995)
Right.

Dylan Silver (16:15.084)
Master networking, master getting involved with as many groups as you possibly can. And the path for me of a real estate investor, this is so many people’s journey, is they kind of start out networking, they get into wholesale a little bit, they go from wholesaling to fix and flipping, fix and flipping to short term, mid term, long term rentals, and maybe they graduate to lending. They do hard money lending or note buying. And that’s been a very…

common path that I’ve seen in the real estate space for folks who are not going out of being a realtor and being a broker. Is there a similar type of like career path in the tax space? Do you see a lot of people who are saying I want to make a career out of this and how do I do that? Or is everyone’s journey totally different?

Carlos Samaniego EA (16:46.271)
Thank

Carlos Samaniego EA (17:01.971)
You know there there’s a lot of different ways of doing it. I know there’s a lot of people trying to get involved in the tax industry because you the economy is you know there’s a lot of massive changes happening in the economy. So a lot of people becoming tax preparer to become a tax preparer. There’s no it’s not.

super difficult. There are online courses or even community college courses you can take to learn how to do that. To do the type of work that I do specifically helping people with tax problems, I mentioned earlier there are only three types of people that can legally represent you to deal with an IRS tax problem. It’s a tax attorney or an attorney, a CPA,

And we all know to be a CPA you gotta go to college for four years, on the job training for multiple years after that. But the other option is to become an enrolled agent and that’s what I did. So when I was looking, I had mentioned earlier I was in the real estate industry. That was back in the 2008, right before the 2008 crash from 2005 to 2008, I was in the real estate industry and the market kind of imploded back then.

And I was looking for a career change. And when my wife had mentioned to me, hey, why don’t you get going to the tax industry? I decided to become an enrolled agent because I wasn’t going to become an attorney. I wasn’t going to become a CPA. So I looked up, is there a way to become an enrolled agent? And there’s one of two ways to become an enrolled agent. You can go work for the IRS for five years and then get licensed that way. Or you can take three, excuse me, three four hour exams on taxation. And

I did all mine self-study, believe it or not. Literally self-study for about a year, year and a half. Went and took the exams. Similar to getting a real estate license, right? You take a test, you study, you go take a test. The only difference is this is like three, four hour exams. a little bit, a little bit, a little bit harder. But you could self-study. In fact, my son, who’s a Navy officer or was recently got out of the service.

Dylan Silver (18:50.21)
That’s hard.

Dylan Silver (19:06.572)
Yeah. A lot more.

Carlos Samaniego EA (19:16.651)
He passed the exam in less than six months, three months, three and a half months. So he put his head in the books and did the exam and passed it. So it’s passable, you can do it. But that’s the route I took. It took me a little bit longer. But now I have a license that enables me to legally represent anybody in the world to deal with an IRS or tax problem. So there is a possibility of doing that.

Dylan Silver (19:42.604)
I tell people, Carlos, say, when they handed me the paper that said that I passed on the real estate exam in Texas, I took that thing and I ran out of the room. I said, let me get this before they tell me that I didn’t. And I tell you what, I studied so hard for that exam because in Texas, we have some interesting laws out here. I’ve actually had brokers from other states who I’ve spoken with who said we failed the Texas exam. We failed the Arizona exam.

Carlos Samaniego EA (19:54.424)
Exactly right.

yeah.

Dylan Silver (20:10.734)
because our laws are so different and it is not an easy, everyone says the state portion, the state portion, and it’s true, it’s hard. You got lots of different things going on there. So I can empathize greatly with, I didn’t have hours of exams, but it was a cup, we had to take a state international. It was not easy. You know, I see so many people, Carlos, in the tax space. I’m gonna call it tax strategy, because that’s the term that I see a lot now. And it does seem to be like a very,

Carlos Samaniego EA (20:11.167)
my gosh. Right.

Carlos Samaniego EA (20:26.195)
dry right?

Dylan Silver (20:40.27)
expanding industry. see lots of new people in. I think this is good. I think this is very good because I don’t feel like this was a trend. Maybe it was. don’t don’t feel like this was a trend 10 years ago. I felt like when I was going to do my taxes 10 years ago, there wasn’t all these people online that I could go to. At the same point in time, you mentioned there is that risk that you could get information from the wrong person. But if you’re going to a tax attorney, an enrolled agent or an accountant,

Carlos Samaniego EA (21:03.775)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (21:08.552)
I think it’s great that we have more and more young faces and people who are getting into this space.

Carlos Samaniego EA (21:14.055)
And we need we need we need people in this industry this industry the average age of the person in this industry is like in the late 60s There’s millions of people retiring in this industry Hell there’s tens of thousands of people being fired and laid off at the IRS So we yeah people are needed in this industry and it’s a great field if you’re interested in finances and things like that It’s a great field to get into. Yeah

Dylan Silver (21:38.712)
Carlos, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to get a hold of you?

Carlos Samaniego EA (21:43.212)
Best way to get a hold of me I tell people I have a website called tax debt consultants is my corporate website tax debt consultant calm But what I like to do for all the podcast listeners I have a book called how to make the IRS an offer They can’t refuse you can see it here, but you can get the electronic version for free at tax debt book calm tax debt book calm and this literally I when I decided to outline tell my story about

you know, kind of what happened to me, everything we kind of talked about, I decided to kind of lay it out. This is what happened to me. You know, this is how I got myself in tax problems. And the fears and the uncertainties I went through almost 20 years of my life, when you think about it, the first eight years of not filing and then almost another 10 years before I finally actually figured it out what to do. Nobody should live like that.

because it’s a it’s a ugly life to live through and Just let your the readers know that if you know somebody going through that that there is light at the end of the tunnel and Now I’m telling people and we kind of talked to it right before we got on the phone here I got on the podcast is Now is the best time if you if you haven’t filed taxes or got a tax problem Deal with it now. There’s so much chaos going on at the IRS Tens of thousands of people are being laid off

And I say the best time to deal with something is that when they’re confused and don’t know what’s going on, time to slip back into the system because once the clause come out, and the name that you mentioned earlier is Cali Clause. That’s what I call the state of California because they claw after your bank accounts, your paychecks, your house. So they bring the clause, but whether it’s your state that comes out with the clause or the IRS, once they got their clause into you, it’s a lot harder to work with them.

Dylan Silver (23:38.082)
Carlos, thank you so much for coming on the show today and providing us some great value, talking to us about lots of different areas within the tax space. Thank you for coming on here today.

Carlos Samaniego EA (23:47.285)
Thank you so much, Dylan. Take care.