Tax Strategies Every Real Estate Investor Should Know | Save Thousands Legally

Share via:

• Facebook
• X (Twitter)
• LinkedIn
• More

Subscribe via:

Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews tax strategist Roderick Robeson, who shares his journey from military service to becoming a tax expert. Roderick discusses the importance of proactive tax strategies, especially for real estate investors, and emphasizes the need for accountability and robust processes in business. He also highlights the significance of building relationships and networks in the industry, offering advice for aspiring entrepreneurs to keep pushing through challenges and to never give up on their dreams.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Roderick Robeson’s Website
    • Roderick Robeson on Instagram
    • Roderick Robeson on Facebook
    • Roderick Robeson’s Email address: [email protected]
    • Roderick Robeson’s Contact number: (512) 960-4874

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Roderick Robeson (00:00)
  I would say just keep keep pushing. know, we get on these podcasts and we sound polished and we do all this stuff. You have no idea what I’m going through. You have no idea what the person next to you is going to. And I always try to keep that mindset when I see someone who cuts me off or I’m always perfect about that. But you don’t know what someone else is going through. And when you think, man, I can’t

  Quentin Edmonds (00:08)
  Yeah.

  Roderick Robeson (00:26)
  It’s just too much. If that, if that is a dream that you have and it is, it’s like, can feel it that it’s legit. You got to keep pushing, be smart about it. You know, ⁓ be intentional about what you do, but it’s, it’s going to work. You just, you just have to keep pushing. You have to keep pushing. You have to keep pushing. There’s nothing wrong with quitting. There’s nothing wrong quitting. There’s something wrong to me with giving up. You don’t want to just give up. Maybe you got to redirect.

  Quentin Edmonds (00:45)
  Woo.

  Woo!

  Roderick Robeson (00:51)
  you got to go through that fire.

  it takes time. It takes time to do it.

  If you have that dream in your heart and you think about it, you’re intentional and you just stick with it, you know, don’t give up. If you stick with it, you’re going to get there. You’re going to get there.

  Quentin Edmonds (02:39)
  Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. And you know what I’m gonna say? I’m super excited to be here today. I’m excited about my guests. And listen, the word taxes is not a dirty word. I know some of y’all get stressed about it, but listen, taxes is not a dirty word. So I have a tax strategist that listen, that’s gonna help you navigate your taxes. Listen, what I love about his approach,

  that he knows when to be proactive and he knows when to be defensive. He knows when to be aggressive and he knows when to educate. Like this person knows what he’s doing. He’s elite at his preparation to make sure that he’s elite for you when you need him. And so I am really excited to introduce you guys to Mr. Roderick Robeson Mr. Roderick, how you doing today, sir?

  Roderick Robeson (03:30)
  Doing great. Glad to be here.

  Quentin Edmonds (03:32)
  Absolutely. Listen, man, I’m glad to have you here and I want to dive right into it. I would love for you to kind of take us into your world. Tell us what your main focus is these days. If you want to give us a little origin story of how you got started. We love origin stories and maybe tell them like where you’re located. That way when we get to the end, when you start telling people how to get in contact with you, they’ll know where you are. So yeah, man, you have floor Mr. Roderick, sir. Take us into your world, man.

  Roderick Robeson (03:58)
  Yeah, awesome. So I was born and raised in Austin, Texas. You know, no one really grows up saying, hey, I want to be an accountant. So that really wasn’t what I wanted to do. Ended up joining the military, spent four years in the military. And then after kind of going through that, I said, you know what? I probably don’t want to do this forever. Don’t like getting shot at. So went to college. I was going to be a stockbroker. And I had some buddies that were partners in this firm. And I end up performing a lot of accounting work with them in there.

  I was working with that person and their tax attorney said, look, you need to hire this guy, know, pay him whatever he wants, but he needs to help you guys with your business. And from there just kind of took off, you know, end up going back to school, getting a master’s in accounting. And then I started working at Price Wireless, Cooper’s and Conoco Phillips. And my dad was an entrepreneur. He actually got audited after he retired. And he said to me, you know, you’re never going to be happy if you’re my son working for somebody else. And he was right.

  I was in a boardroom and we spent several hours trying to work things out and they looked at us like we were crazy. And that day I was like, that’s it, I’m done. I quit my job. Don’t recommend everybody do that, but I quit my job, hung my shingle out and been doing it ever since.

  And what I noticed as I went into the accounting world is there were just a lot of returns I was looking at. like, man, this stuff is just, it’s just wrong. Not only that, there’s these opportunities to save people money.

  And from there, I took the position of I need to be more of a holistic educator and we need to do strategies. We need to be proactive. We also need to be defensive, you know? And so my firm specializes in tax strategy. Yes, we do prepare tax returns. What I tell people all the time, the tax return is the final product of all the work you did all year. And that’s where you record the evidence that you collect. So our firm specializes on educating people.

  on the tax code, making sure we get it right, make sure it’s defensible. And we’ll we can be as aggressive as you want to. Or we can be as less if people that are risk averse will kind of pull back and will will tailor things to your specific risks and your specific, ⁓ you know, needs. And I love real estate investors. I would say probably 80 percent of my clients are real estate investors, real estate realtors are in the real estate ⁓ realm. So.

  Quentin Edmonds (06:48)
  Thank

  Roderick Robeson (07:00)
  love working with real estate investors because a lot of things you can do with real estate to grow wealth and save money and taxes.

  Quentin Edmonds (07:06)
  Well, you heard him. You heard that. There’s a lot of things you can do in real estate to grow money and through taxes and keeping that money in your pocket. And I’m sure Mr. Roderick can help you with that. So I love it, man. I’m loving that our listeners get a chance to listen to your strategies. And when it comes to strategies, I just want to ask, what are some of the strategies that you have that you hold dear to kind of keep your business running smoothly?

  Roderick Robeson (07:33)
  So are you referencing to some of the real estate strategies that I recommend to clients or things that I use myself? mean, for clients, yeah, for clients, yeah, yeah.

  Quentin Edmonds (07:40)
  Yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m, yeah, well, that’s, that’s you both. Yeah. I want to know about

  your business, how you keep that strategically set with strategies, but also, yeah, for the real estate investor as well. Yes, sir.

  Roderick Robeson (07:47)
  Yeah.

  Yes, there’s a couple of things we ended up doing in my business. so one, the S-corp, which people are familiar with, you know, now before everyone runs out and get an S-corp, because I see this too, there’s certain things you want to know before you do that. There are things you can do from an income shifting perspective. because I’m an accountant, then what I have is what’s called a, it’s an STTP, it’s specialized service trader business. And so there’s a thing called the QBI deduction that it’s going to end up limiting how much of that I’m able to take.

  But what we can do is we can shift, some income shifting and carve out the income that’s not related to that specific area. And so now we can then Mac, we can then start using section one 99 is where the QBI comes from. We can start using that code to save money in taxes. So my clients, it all depends on the situation. For example, just picked up a client. He has a half million dollars in capital gains. He’s trying to figure out where he’s going to park it. And I say, look, this may be a good opportunity for opportunity zones.

  And so I have another client that’s building apartments and they’re in a rural opportunity zone area. He’s going to take that half a million dollars and invest it in the opportunity zone. And from the projections we have, he may be able to grow that as much as two to $3 million, maybe as high as $4 million. And all that 4 million will be tax free in the opportunity zone, as long as they keep it in for 10 years. In addition to that, because it’s a rural opportunity zone, there’s an opportunity to first you’ll be able to defer.

  that have me in dollars for five years, but also he may be able to reduce some of that capital gains tax by 30 % in that specific scenario. So there’s multiple things that are out there. It all depends upon this unique situation. And that’s what I tell people. They come to me and they go, Hey, give me some strategies. Hey, how do I save money in taxes? And I say, well, I can throw things at you all day long. The first thing we got to do is we got to do an assessment and have a strategy call. I got to see your numbers. I got to see your specific situation.

  Quentin Edmonds (09:32)
  Yeah.

  Roderick Robeson (09:39)
  Then from there, we can build out the things that fit and work for you.

  Quentin Edmonds (09:42)
  Yeah, yeah. I love it, man. Thank you so much for sharing. I appreciate that. Again, giving us some strategies, some end look. I can’t get my word out. A look in or some strategies that can potentially help the people that’s listening. Please forgive me, man. My tongue got tied a little bit. But listen, I’m going to continue to dive into a little bit.

  Roderick Robeson (09:53)
  You

  Yeah. That’s right. All right.

  Quentin Edmonds (10:10)
  more about you because of course we have business people from that have businesses and they got different they’re from different angles. And one thing’s for sure within business is that everything doesn’t always run smoothly. Right. There’s a moment when things get real, when things go sideways, when you had to fast. And I try to show people that there’s journey to success. Sometimes we just want to talk about the success, but we don’t want to talk about the journey to success.

  Roderick Robeson (10:18)
  Yeah.

  Yeah.

  Quentin Edmonds (10:38)
  So within the journey to your success, has there been moments when things got real, when you had the pivot side bleeds, when deals are broke down? Are there stories that maybe you can share? Eight stories that you can share with us.

  Roderick Robeson (10:49)
  Yeah,

  I mean, again,

  I just I don’t advise people just run out and start their business. But that was a very emotional decision. But I was so frustrated ⁓ if I had to do all over again. What I would have done is I would have slowly built that business and I would have built out processes along the way. So let me give you an example. I shared this, ⁓ you know, with clients and I’m always transparent about the things that happen. So I had a client that was a realtor.

  I didn’t have the best processes in place and I got something wrong. They gave me a document and the documents looked exactly the same. They really did. And so I thought it was a duplicate. What ended up happening, and this was years ago, we don’t have this problem anymore, but it taught me something. then the IRS sends a notice to the client and says, hey, you didn’t report this income and you have this penalty. And I think it was almost $10,000 in penalties.

  client reached out to me and said, Hey, I got this notice and it says I owe this amount of money in penalties. And so I’m like, there’s no way I went back and looked at it and sure enough, I missed it. So what I did was I said, look, I found out how much the penalties were. I said, look, I’ve already sent a, I’ve already sent the payment to the IRS for the $10,000 penalties. That’s done. Here’s the mistake I made. Here’s what, how it happened. Here’s how we’re going to fix it. So it never happens again.

  Now the tax is still yours because I made the mistake, but I’m taking accountability for the mistake that I made. Hopefully this will be, and I’ve had that client for a long time. She ended up getting married and her husband wanted to have his own CPA, but you know, if you don’t build out processes and systems now after that, that, that $10,000 lesson said, here’s how I bring in the documents. Here’s the process to review everything. Here’s how we get more detail or and, and drill down on everything that we ultimately have.

  And now I have very robust processes around reviewing documents and tying things out. ⁓ So are we perfect? Nobody’s perfect. However, what my firm will do, what I demand that we do is if we make a mistake, we take accountability for that mistake. Then we let the client know, we talk about how do we fix it. And then if we’re able to fix it, we fix it. And then we tell this is how we’re going to prevent this from happening going forward.

  You know, sometimes there were cashflow days, you know, you got to make payroll and things like that. So business, I would not do anything differently. I take that back. I would have started my own business sooner if I had to do all over again. But there’s just, there’s just no way you’re going to have a business and not have any hardships. it’s, all about the journey. It’s not about the final destination.

  Quentin Edmonds (14:02)
  There we go. that’s I mean, so thank you. First, let me say thank you for the gift of your transparency and vulnerability. A lot of people don’t want to share stories like that, but I think there’s so pivotal because people need to understand, like you said, mistakes are to be made. Like some things are just trial and error. Some things you just don’t know until you cross that path and cross that bridge. And so thank you so much for sharing because

  I want people to understand and listen to stuff like this is that yes, we’re talking about the success, but we don’t know what the journey is going to bring. And so if you’re in it for the long term, this is what’s going to separate you is when you, when you face adversity and you move past adversity, when you don’t let the adversity stop you, may detour you. It may put a pause, but it doesn’t have to stop you. And so again, man, thank you for your transparency and vulnerability. I really appreciate it.

  Roderick Robeson (14:52)
  Yeah, there’s a lot of sleepless nights sometimes. There’s a lot of long nights, a lot of stress sometimes, but I would, again, if I had to do all over again, I would have done it sooner and I would have built out a strategy along the way to grow my business. would have done it more incrementally and I just jumped out there and just threw my shingle out and just made it happen that way.

  Quentin Edmonds (15:08)
  Yeah. Yeah.

  Absolutely. I appreciate it. So listen, let me ask you this. What is the next real goal for your business? Like, what are you focused on, scaling or solving next?

  Roderick Robeson (16:04)
  Yeah. So we’re at a point now to where, ⁓ we can’t take everybody on as much as I would love to do that. can’t. So now what I’m doing is I’m, building out other services where people can have access to me. if they can’t afford to, for my, fees or my services, or if they just don’t need me full time. So I’m building out different things like courses and I know people kind of, I hate courses. Look, I’m gonna tell you right now, I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on courses.

  You just don’t know what you’re going to you just don’t know what you’re to learn and what you don’t know. And so I’m a big proponent of education. So I’m trying to build out courses right now, trying to build out a community where somebody has a quick question and like, don’t want to pay five hundred dollars for it’s just a really quick question. So I’m trying to build out these other revenues to have access to me and my knowledge that don’t require you, you know, if you’re not if you’re not don’t fit, you know, within.

  our model for services or you can’t afford the services. So I have other avenues where you can get access to me, get this knowledge, ⁓ knowledge you can trust, knowledge where we research things and we can back it, you know, with law and precedence. And so that’s what I’m working on, just different ways to meet people where they are.

  Quentin Edmonds (17:17)
  Yeah, yeah, I love it. so I love that you went to, you’re building our courses to meet people where they are. I even absolutely love this story when you took responsibility and you said she got married and so her husband wanted to use his own people. But who knows? Because you plan to see if that doesn’t work out, she may come back. Like we have no idea. But what it sounds like to me is that you know the value of relationships. So I just want to talk about relationships for a little bit.

  And I want to know how important relationships are to you. Like when growing your network, meeting people, building relationships, what’s made the biggest difference for you?

  Roderick Robeson (17:56)
  Yeah, I think it’s very important to build out your network and have relationships. One of the things is just knowledge. So there are a group of CPAs and enrolled agents and lawyers that, you know, I always network with. And because of that, we are able to challenge each other and to help each other. And we’re able to learn together and stay on top of the tax code so that we can be ahead. We can be far more superior than other people, other firms, because a lot of firms out there.

  They’re so focused on the work that they miss that, wait, these tax laws are changing and someone will change every quarter. You know, they’re definitely going to change every year. Definitely going to change every four years. In addition to that, like you mentioned, you know, that client, even though she went somewhere else, I still get referrals from that person, you know, to and you’re right. At some point they probably will come back. And the other thing about relationships is having the relationships with my clients.

  And so I very rarely have clients that go away. Again, that was a, that was one of those situations where I, ⁓ you know, lost a client, but it’s, was for a good reason. She got married, you know, so congratulations. But what that relationships with my clients allows them to do is they can pick up the phone whenever they want. They can call me and they know, Hey, I got a question about this and it may not be tax, but because I have this network of non-tax and other people that I can talk to.

  I can now refer them to people and say, Hey, you want a cost segregation study? Let me refer you to Jason. You know, Hey, I have a client I just picked up now and he has a legal issue. Hey, I got Xandra Thompson Co. You can go talk to her. And even though I can’t help you, she’s going to be able to help you and she’s good people. And so you want to have a network of people that you talk to, that you connect with. It’s just going to help is all it’s going to do. And again,

  Quentin Edmonds (19:29)
  Yeah. Yeah.

  Roderick Robeson (19:45)
  When you need somebody to lean on, you got a question, you’re like, man, I know, I know the question, but I just need that confidence. I just need that little extra so I can move forward. That’s what the network is gonna allow you to do.

  Quentin Edmonds (19:52)
  Yeah.

  Absolutely. Now I love it again. I said to me, listening to you talk, you sound very elite at your preparation, making sure that you’re on top of your game. And what I love now that I’m hearing is when somebody hire you, not only are they getting you and your elite, you know, being in preparation, they’re also getting your network. Like if I can’t do it, if I can’t figure it out, I got somebody that I can refer you to that’s going to help you out. And I love hearing that. That lets me peek into what I call like a servant’s heart.

  And what I believe is at any sustainable, at the foundation of any sustainable business is servitude. It’s like really the heart to serve the client the right way. so Mr. Roderick, listen, man, I’ll be honest with you, man. I love your mindset. I love the way you think. ⁓ Of course, you know, you’re a tech strategist. So is there any inspiration, encouragement, any word of advice, maybe that you wanted to leave the audience before we start to wrap it up? I just want to bring the floor to you and allow you to do that if there’s something on your mind.

  Roderick Robeson (20:25)
  Yeah.

  Yeah,

  I would say just keep keep pushing. know, we get on these podcasts and we sound polished and we do all this stuff. You have no idea what I’m going through. You have no idea what the person next to you is going to. And I always try to keep that mindset when I see someone who cuts me off or I’m always perfect about that. But you don’t know what someone else is going through. And when you think, man, I can’t

  Quentin Edmonds (21:03)
  Yeah.

  Roderick Robeson (21:21)
  It’s just too much. If that, if that is a dream that you have and it is, it’s like, can feel it that it’s legit. You got to keep pushing, be smart about it. You know, ⁓ be intentional about what you do, but it’s, it’s going to work. You just, you just have to keep pushing. You have to keep pushing. You have to keep pushing. There’s nothing wrong with quitting. There’s nothing wrong quitting. There’s something wrong to me with giving up. You don’t want to just give up. Maybe you got to redirect.

  Quentin Edmonds (21:40)
  Woo.

  Woo!

  Roderick Robeson (21:46)
  You know, I wasn’t going to be an accountant. Like I was going to be a stockbroker. You know, that was going to be my thing. And I was going to day trade, but now I’m here and I’m helping clients. You know, I’m seeing people call me up and I’m able to serve them and I’m, able to help them in their time of need. I’m at a place now to where, you know, I’m comfortable. haven’t reached every everywhere I want, but I’m comfortable and I have confidence. I know it can help people, but you got to go through that fire. You can’t.

  I know everyone thinks, you know, shark tank and MSE make it and it’s like, Oh, it just happened overnight. No, no, it takes time. It takes time to do it. It doesn’t matter if you’re 15, 50, 70, 80. If you have that dream in your heart and you think about it, you’re intentional and you just stick with it, you know, don’t give up. If you stick with it, you’re going to get there. You’re going to get there.

  Quentin Edmonds (22:38)
  But y’all heard it, y’all heard it, Mr. Groveson, sir. Man, thank you so much. Listen, before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?

  Roderick Robeson (22:51)
  Yeah, so my email address is Roderick r o d e r i c k at r o r c p a dot com. Or you can always go to my website and that’s r o r c p a dot com. Tried to keep it real simple. And with that email address, you can call me at 512-960-4874. All of those ways will get directly to me. Yes, I have staff.

  but I like to answer the questions for my clients. And then a lot of people say, hey, are you just gonna pawn me off on some staff guy or whatever? some things maybe, but you will always be able to get access to me specifically in my knowledge.

  Quentin Edmonds (23:33)
  Yeah. Well, listen, there he is, Mr. Roderick Robeson. Sir, thank you so much, man. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your story. Thank you for your willingness to be transparent. Just thank you for your perspective. I know our viewers are going to take a lot of nuggets from today. And so I just want to say thank you again for being here.

  Roderick Robeson (23:53)
  Glad to be here.

  Quentin Edmonds (23:53)
  Absolutely. Well, listen, you heard Mr. Robeson. You got the information. You got the knowledge and the gems. Just go ahead and subscribe. That way you can always come back and get this amazing content that we continue to give. so, Mr. Roderick again, thank you so much. And listen, everyone else, we will see you on the next time.