To many, taxes feel like a hindrance: something that just gets in the way of the resources you’re trying to gain by making a sale. But maximizing savings on taxes doesn’t have to be all that difficult—provided you’re working with the right people. Domenic Rinaldi is joined by Dr. Bart Basi, a taxation expert working with The Center for Financial, Legal & Tax Planning, Inc., to discuss how you can get smarter about doing your taxes. Hiring an expert who understands the tax ramifications and all legal precedents related to your potential sale can save you so much in the long run. In this present period where lots of accountants, businesspeople, and brokers don’t quite understand the big picture as well as all the details regarding the circumstances of your sale, make sure you’re steps ahead.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Getting Smart About Your Taxes With Dr. Bart Basi

One of the common sayings in mergers and acquisitions is, “It’s not necessarily how much you get for your business, but rather how much you keep in your pocket.” We have an expert in matters related to tax, business succession, retirement and estate planning strategy and the tax aspects of business decisions for closely held and family businesses, Dr. Bart Basi. He achieved so much in his career that reciting his accomplishments could easily take up the entire show. My personal experiences with Dr. Basi have been life-changing for my clients, who retained him to help them better structure their M&A transactions. Dr. Basi, I could go on and on about your impact on the M&A industry and it’s such a pleasure to have you here.

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Dr. Basi, maybe you could start with a brief overview, a bio on yourself and on your firms so that the M&A Unplugged audience has a sense of what you do.

When you hear my bio, you can say, “Maybe that’s $4 to get you a cup of coffee.” I’m a CPA. I’m a licensed attorney. I don’t practice law as a litigator at all, but I’m a licensed attorney in several states. I hold a Master’s Degree in Tax. I’ve got a PhD in Economics. I’ve got a postgraduate work in Tax from Stanford University. I was a university professor for 36 years or so. I taught mergers and acquisitions to entrepreneurship and taxes. Currently, I teach continuing education courses for attorneys in 31 states and some continuing education courses for accountants. For the past few years, the Internal Revenue Service has a program where if you’re a tax return preparer and you want to be registered with the Internal Revenue Service, you need to take eighteen hours of continuing education each year and pass an examination.

I took the eighteen hours of continuing education in 2018 and passed the exam. In 2019, I registered with the IRS to file tax returns for 2018. For the past few years, I’ve been teaching the classes and writing the exam for the Internal Revenue Service. Having said that, I’ve also been involved as an advisor to business law firms, accounting firms all over the world. As a matter of fact, Canada, Mexico, and I was talking to someone from Sweden and assisting them in structuring the transaction. As Domenic has said, the key objective is to make as much money as possible and pay as little tax as possible in a transaction when you’re selling. When you’re buying, it is extremely critical to structure the transaction properly because of the tax application. Especially in the United States, it’s extremely favorable if the buyers handle the transaction in a certain fashion. Domenic, that’s about it.

It doesn’t even scratch the surface of your knowledge. It’s overwhelming, but in practice what you’ve been able to do for clients for so many years is amazing. One client in particular that I can think of many years ago, I don’t even know if you remember this transaction. It was a C corp and we had taken that deal to the client’s accountant. They did the tax workup and essentially had a net tax effect of 52% for our client. We knew because we had taken some of your seminars at IBBA and some other places that there was a better way to structure that deal.

We got you engaged in that client account and lo and behold, you saved that client about 75% of the tax bill that their accountant had given them. It was amazing and well worth every penny that our client paid you for that analysis and all the ensuing work that followed. That’s the result that can come from having an expert involved. Let me start there in launching the first question. Are you surprised after all these years how little preparation owners do around the tax ramifications of a potential sale?

I’m amazed every day. A lot of times, it’s not the client, it’s the advisors that they have that don’t understand the tax ramifications. Many accountants, many business people, many brokers I work with say, “If you sell your business, you’ve got to pay your taxes.” Yes and no. That’s not necessarily true. The structure of the transaction is important and there are many tax benefits. Let me give you one quick illustration. There’s a tax law in effect right now. By the way, this show is being done in December of 2019. This is important for me to inform everyone of the date of this show because tax law changes.

What I say, I can’t promise will be the law in a year, six months, or even two weeks after. It’s very sensitive. To give you an example, the law says that in 2019, if you form a corporation or buy a company, buy the assets of a company, and set them up as a C corporation and run that corporation for five years or more, would you believe that you pay no income taxes on the first $5 million to $10 million of profits? Correspondingly, if you have a C corporation for sale and the structure is proper, when you sell that business in 2019, the tax law that was in effect at the time you created the C corporation will control the taxes that you pay when you sell.

Tax law changes so quickly that it may be a different in just a week or two. Click To Tweet

Let me make sure I understand this. If you formed a C corp in 1972 and you sell that C corp in 2019, you’re going to be under the tax laws that were in effect in 1972.

There’s a special tax law. This is a special Tax Code. It’s not just the general laws as such. It’s the law that controls the profit when you sell a company. I’ll give you a specific example, instead of generalizing. Nashville, Tennessee, I can’t identify companies, but I can give you cities or states. In 2018, someone comes to me and says, “Bart, I’ve got a client. He’s selling his business in Nashville, Tennessee. Can you help?” I took a look at the company. The company was formed in 1996. He had formed a C corporation back in 1996. He had been not paying taxes accordingly and selling his company in 2018. I was able to go back to 1996 and found that in 1996, there was a special law that said, “If you ran the company and sold it in the future, like 2018, 50% of your profits would not be taxed in the United States and the other 50% of profits could not be taxed any higher than 28%. It could be taxed lower but not higher.”

Think about that. What we did was this gentleman sold his business. We filed his tax return in 2019 for 2018. He made approximately $5 million of profit in the sale of his business, so $2.5 million was not taxed at all. It is absolutely free. He had $2.5 million of profit and this is net of all the expenses of selling. His profit might’ve been $6 million, but he had $1 million, let’s say for the expenses. He’s now got $2.5 million that’s taxable. Capital gains apply in 2018, so he paid 23.8% and that 23.8% was only on 50% of the profits. If you take a look at it, he actually paid an effective tax rate on the net profits of 11.9% on his entire $5 million profits by applying the 1996 law and applying the capital gains law in 2018.

We may be getting too far in the weeds here, but let me ask this one clarifying question. Was the tax at the corporate level or did that $2.5 million flow-through to him personally and get taxed at 23.8%? Was that the corporate tax?

What it is that I’m referring to is the individual tax, not the corporate tax. There’s a difference. If you sell assets, then the profit goes into the corporation and then it has to come out of the corporation. That’s a different structure. If you sell stock, then the profits go directly to the individual. If you sell stock, the tax laws I’m talking about right now with this Tennessee operation, what’s for the individual.

To be clear, that was a stock transaction.

Yes, but be aware that in many cases that happened in Tennessee, there is an elective provision that allows the buyers to convert a stock transaction to an asset transaction for their purposes so they can get a stepped-up basis. It’s not as simple as you think. I guess I tease my staff, that’s why I get the big bucks.

What you illustrated, we’re talking about one state in one simple transaction. Take that out to 50 states. It gets very complicated. I think you’re illustrating the point that having the right advisors. The advisors really matter.

I’m working on a case. I had a meeting with the CPA and I’ve got another meeting this week with a CPA from Dallas, Texas. They sold the company there. I’ve saved them a little over $5 million on the transaction alone. I’ve got it structured such that on the remaining profit, which is about $14 million, a fairly good size operation. They will pay no income taxes at all. This is federal. This is the individual. This was a partnership structure.

 

When did you get involved in that transaction? Was it already on the market and was there an offer in place?

On that one, there was an offer in place. They were negotiating. They contacted me in that particular case, their professional advisor had heard of me, I never met the man by the way. It was a gentleman. He had heard of me and he called me and he says, “Can you look at this before we go any further and help us structure it?” I said, “Sure, I’ll take a look at it.” I looked at it the way you would go and look at a contractor, the way you would look at a job to see whether he could take it or not and if he could do anything. I said, “This looks like there is some room for negotiation.”

The buyer had a law firm in Boston, Massachusetts that I work with. We were able to structure the deal and then I worked through the whole transaction. I’m working with the CPA, filing the tax returns for them, and making sure I can’t guarantee what I do unless I’m involved in helping the professional file, the tax returns after the transaction. That’s critical. You can say, “I can save you taxes or I can structure the deal.” Structuring the deal is important. The letter of intent or term sheet when you first start, that’s the best time to get me involved in it. I can help structure the transaction and work with the buyer and the seller.

In some cases, I can save the buyer some money by lowering. In this particular case, I actually saved the buyer some money, but save the seller a tremendous amount in taxes because we make fact, as I said. I’m not exaggerating when I say this, it’s about a $14.8 million deal. There will be no income taxes paid to the federal government. It’s legal. I don’t want to tell you. It’s ethical. It’s legal. To let you realize because I’m a subcontractor and I work with you to a level of service, I get on it occasionally and as a retired university professor, the last two times I was audited, I was audited by former students of mine. Be aware, I’m very sensitive to how I structure these transactions.

I know you stand behind whatever work you do as well. If the IRS shows up, you’re willing to go side by side with a client to defend them. Let me ask you, you mentioned the best time to involve you is when there’s a letter of intent in place. Is there some merit to having come into the process early on while the intermediaries or investment bankers are prepping the deal before it gets to the market?

Yes. I’d like to give specific examples, instead of generalizing. I was called by a firm in Salt Lake City, Utah. They’re being sold to affirm in Brussels. They called me because they knew about me and their banker said, “Call Bart before you do anything.” They have done nothing yet other than having an inquiry from this company that wants to buy them a very serious inquiry because the company that wanted to buy them said, “Can we send our people in to look at your operation?” I said, “Slow down.” They have no letter of intent yet. They have no broker involved. This is strictly one of their people.

I’ve got to be careful how I word this. A related operation in Brussels says, “We want to come into the United States and buy this company. This is the only company we want in the United States.” What I’m doing is I had a meeting with the people out there. I flew out there to Salt Lake City. We sat down and we came up with a complete game plan. We’re hiring another firm, an independent firm to value all the equipment in the business to the manufacturing facility. We’re valuing everything in the business, even if it’s not on the books that they’ve depreciated. We’re going to go ahead and restructure all their financial statements. I’m working with their accountant.

I had their accountant make some adjusting entries before they close the books in 2019. We’ve also been in communication with the buyer and asked them if they would wait until the end of January. We can then go back and take a look at the closing of the books of December 31st of 2019 and restructuring the financial statements since they’re all properly organized and then being able to present them with a complete package. These are the assets. This is goodwill. We calculate two kinds of goodwill. In this case, we calculate the company’s goodwill. A lot of people refer to as enterprise goodwill. There’s also personal goodwill. They’re separate items and they get taxed differently in the United States. To a buyer, they love it because if you create goodwill in a company, you can’t put it on your books.

If you buy goodwill, whether it’s enterprise goodwill or whether it’s personal goodwill, you can put it on your books. This is a specific example of where I’ve gotten involved even before they had anything in writing, but the buyer has been identified and it’s a very good buyer. As a matter of fact, my clients have had a meeting with the buyer’s president, and CEO of the Brussels company. They have said, “Justify whatever you want. We’ll pay whatever is necessary as long as you can verify everything.” This is the reason I’m asking them to get an independent appraisal of all their equipment before we even go further and then we’ll adjust the books because everything’s been depreciated over the years. Does this give you an idea? This is a specific going on right now.

In a privately held company, no matter how small or large, there are personal relationships that add value to the business. Click To Tweet

You’ve brought up a term that I think a lot of people in the audience will be very curious about, which is personal goodwill. In the case that I referenced at the beginning of the show, where you came in and helped one of our clients. If you remember, it was our property management company. This was the strategy that you deployed. In that particular case, it’s a C corp and you determine that they could allocate personal goodwill in that situation. It saved our client a tremendous amount of money in taxes. Maybe you could talk a little bit about personal goodwill. What’s the hurdle? What is the metric to determine if it’s personal goodwill? What’s the net effect for people?

It’s a good question. It’s a very important topic. Whenever you’re dealing with the C corporation, partnerships are another matter. Let’s say you’ve got a C corporation. Remember, I mentioned that there’s a company goodwill or what we call enterprise goodwill. That’s the ability of the company to make a return that’s greater than the average in the industry. They’ve created a goodwill because of their products, because of their management, because of their bank relations and what have you so they can increase their profitability. Separate from that is the goodwill that’s created because of the personal relationships of the owners of the company. I’m talking now about private companies, not publicly held companies.

Normally in a privately held company, no matter how small or how large, there are personal relationships that create value to the business. An example would be an owner, who when you talk to the clients, the buyers of their products or their services and they say, “We know the owner. We know Fred. We know Mary. We know them personally. They’re so good. We would be happy to work with them anytime. That is what we call personal goodwill because there’s value to the knowledge of this. I can give you two examples of this. One is in Connecticut, a funeral company. Stop and think of a funeral company, what creates personal goodwill?

Business comes to a funeral company because unfortunately someone passes away and they need to have a funeral company handle the transaction. The owner of the funeral company, if they know the chief of police, if they know the administrator at the hospital, if they’ve done other business in the past and people are very happy and they know this person who owns the funeral operation, that individual is the reason people go there. Otherwise, it looks in the yellow pages and picks anything out like buying a kitchen chair. You can buy it from different stores. This is different from personal service in that particular case.

In funeral parlors, oftentimes, the owner has their name on that business or it’s been a generational business. It’s the third or fourth or whatever generation is running in the names there. Does the name always have to be on the business too to generate personal goodwill?

Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I recommend that you don’t have your name on your business because it also increases your liability. I like to have businesses self-explanatory. For example, the company that I’m the Founder of is called The Center for Financial, Legal & Tax Planning, Inc. It doesn’t say it’s Bart Basi’s firm. It is called as such because we provide financial, legal and tax advice on transactions as what we do for a living. A personal name helps in some for personal goodwill, but not necessary. I don’t mean to be belligerent in this at all with the statement, but I would like to think that you call me and other people contact me because they know Bart Basi and they say, “We want Bart to help us.”

One of my sons is running the company now. We have several attorneys and CPAs working for us doing business transactions and tax work. Every once in a while, someone will say, “I know Roman is good. I know your staff is good, but I want Bart to be there.” That helps to understand that it’s because of me. That’s personal goodwill when an individual’s reputation is such. Let me give you a second example. Louisiana, I won’t identify the company or what they do. You’ve got to bear with me on this one. This is a very large corporation where the two individuals formed the corporation years ago and made personal relationships with purchasing agents of the Shell Company or Exxon Corporation. They knew the purchasing agents of these large oil companies in the world because of their personal relationship when these purchasing agents wanted to buy these particular products that these two individual companies created and started up years ago and I’ve been running. They went there.

I was able to get letters from the purchasing agents to put in my file in case the Internal Revenue Service ever came back and said, “Why did you create $15 million of personal goodwill?” I could justify the fact that this company that was being sold had created such revenue because of the personal relationship with the two founders, with purchasing agents of publicly held oil companies in the world that that was worth. I could justify it mathematically, $15 million. By the way, that alone saved us over $5 million in income taxes. I’m not exaggerating. This is absolutely specific. I can’t identify the company because people may recognize it.

I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve seen your handiwork and I’ve seen it play out several times.

 

That’s personal goodwill. That’s very important. It’s the personal relationship of an individual that assists in generating revenue for the company.

There’s been a little bit of a C change in entity formation over the last several years. I see many more LLCs popping up these days than I ever did before. C corp I think has gotten a bad rap because of the potential double taxation issues associated with it. What’s your perspective on if you were starting a business now, looking at and starting it up as a C corp?

You’ve brought up two issues. Let me take them one at a time. First of all, LLCs or Limited Liability Companies been very good. It’s been around for a long time. The purpose is to limit the liability of the owners. This is important for everyone to understand. There are no tax returns for limited liability companies in the United States. Anyone who creates a limited liability company, their accounting firm or whoever files her taxes has to select how they want to file taxes. Do they want to file taxes on the limited liability company as a C corporation? Do they want to file taxes as a subchapter S corporation? Do they want to file taxes as a partnership? This is very important to understand if there is a single person owner of an LLC, the laws now say that that is a disregarded entity and therefore the tax return must be the individual owner’s personal individual tax return, which is terrible. There are a couple of states now that are even saying, “We will not even give you limited liability protection if there’s only a single person owner of an LLC.”

Let me summarize quickly. The limited liability companies are good because they limit the liability of the owner, but there should be at least two owners. There should be a selection as to how the taxes are going to be paid as a subchapter S, as an LLC, as a partnership or as a C corporation. That’s important. There’s one other aspect from a legal standpoint that I might mention to your readers because I find this being done improperly on a regular basis. It defeats the entire purpose of having a limited liability company, which is the use of DBAs, Doing Business As. If you are a limited liability company, you cannot use a DBA. The law is very clear. A limited liability company must have the letters LLC on every single thing they do. It must be on their stationery. It must be on their business cards. It must be on their invoices. It must be on their trucks. It must be in their buildings. It must be in every advertisement. They must notify the general public that they are a limited liability company. If they say, “I’ve got a limited liability company, but I’m doing business as a Jones’ Trucking Company,” The general public thinks of the Jones’ Trucking Company.

What is the reason behind that law?

If I’m running an LLC and Domenic, you’re doing business with me, you’ve got to know I’m limited in my liability. You can’t come after Bart Basi. If I do it as DBA, Basi Enterprises, you think, “I’m a regular corporation.” You might think, “He’s not even incorporated. I can sue him if he messes it up.” I lose that ability. Let me give you two specific examples. I work a lot in the insurance industry and I find a lot of insurance companies in the country are limited liability companies, but they operate as a DBA, Jones’ Insurance Agency, Smith’s Insurance Agency, which is improper. They are going to be held personally liable and they lose the liability protection of the LLC because they’re not notifying their life insurance clients or something that they are a limited liability company. We have a problem in one or two states with it, even counties will allow you to have a DBA. They don’t care because they’re not worried about the liability aspect so anyone can ask and file it in their local county courthouse, a DBA. I want to let you know that from a legal standpoint, not a tech standpoint, that’s critical. Having said that, let me switch gears to entities because you asked me about C corporations also.

There has been a stigma attached to C corporations in the past because people have said that it’s double taxation. The profits are taxed to the corporation and when dividends are given to the owners, the owners have to pay taxes. Be aware the dividends are issued by publicly held companies. If you own stock in General Motors Corporation and General Motors issues a dividend, they have no knowledge of who the owners are. The owners have no relationship to the operations of General Motors. They are considered an artificial person and therefore pays taxes. When that artificial person gives parts of its profits after taxes to people who’ve invested money, those investors have to pay taxes. This does not apply to privately held companies. Privately held companies, an owner is foolish if he gives himself or herself a dividend. If you need money out of the company, you take it as a bonus. You take it as an expense, you’re taking it as a loan, but you don’t give yourself a dividend. Double taxation doesn’t apply to privately held companies.

Let’s go to the next aspect. The 2017 tax law in the United States permanently changed the tax structure for C corporations only. It didn’t permanently change the tax structure for individuals. It didn’t personally change it for subchapter S. It didn’t permanently change for partnerships. It didn’t permanently change it for trust, but it did permanently change it for C corporations. The law says, if you are a C corporation in the United States now, you will pay a flat tax of 21%. You will not pay capital gains of 23.8%. You will not pay extra taxes for the alternative minimum tax. That applies to individuals. It no longer applies to C corporations. Capital gains no longer apply to C corporations. You will simply pay a flat tax of 21% plus some of the tax deductions are much greater. For example, you’ve heard of a limit on real estate taxes. A lot of states get mad at this, but the law says you cannot deduct any more than $10,000 of real estate taxes on a personal tax return. This includes whether your partnership subchapter S because it flows through to your personal return, but a C corporation doesn’t have that restriction.

You can deduct all of the real estate taxes. Some operating entities are operating as partnerships and they are deducting as an operating expense of the partnership. That doesn’t flow through to the partners, individual returns, real estate taxes. Be aware that there are tax benefits for tax deductions to C corporations and some partnerships depending on how they’re structured. Some S corporations, but it gets confusing. Let’s stick with C corporations. You can deduct C corporations. You can’t deduct your personal return plus how many individuals are no longer itemizing expenses and their personal returns? There was even a limit on contributions. Stop and think of a company. If a company sponsors a little league baseball team or the company donates money to someone, as long as a company uses a company check, it’s not a donation, it’s advertising.

Do not go to market until you've got your financial statements properly organized. Click To Tweet

Remember, there are two types of advertising: name recognition and special discounts. When a company claims they donate money to a charity, but they’re doing it in the name of the company, it’s advertising. There’s no limit on how much advertising can be deducted up to profits. Obviously, if you’re going to show a loss than the law, then the advertising can’t be deducted, but it’s carried forward. You will deduct it next year. Whereas, if it’s classified as contributions, there’s a limit. Also, these changes to contribution deduction on a personal tax return versus a company tax return. You’ve got to make sure your readers understand that I would never tell them something that I personally don’t do myself. Domenic, the question you should ask me is, “Bart, The Center for Financial, Legal & Tax Planning, Inc., what kind of entity structure is it?” My answer would be a C corporation.

There you go.

I practice what I preach.

We’re about to the end and we could probably spend hours and hours. There’s so much here to unpack, but I’m going to ask you what I hope is an all-encompassing question to our readers out there, who consist of in the M&A Unplugged community, buyers, prospective sellers, accountants and attorneys. What overall advice would you offer to our readers?

There are three things that people should do. First, do not go to market until you’ve got your financial statements properly organized. Private companies, in many cases, get benefits that other people don’t. You’d be surprised how we have to clean up not the profit and loss statement, but the balance sheet as well. That’s very important. Recognizing assets that are not on the books. Recognizing the existence of company goodwill versus personal goodwill that’s not on the books. Recognizing the fact that the profit may be understated because the private company wants to save taxes, so the accounting records should be scrutinized, analyzed, and make sure they’re corrected prior to going to market. Second, it is important to make sure that a buyer and/or a seller understand the tax ramifications of a transaction. The different ways you structure a transaction are tremendous.

Quickly, if you’re selling a business and you’re renting a copy machine. You can’t sell a copy machine because you’re renting that copy machine. It can’t be listed as an asset on your books. Yet, accounting rules now indicate that all leases should be on your books. Even though it may be an asset on your books, it’s not an asset that can be sold. Second, once your accounting records are structured, the second thing is to look at the tax ramifications of different alternative structures. There are cases when I can show you, it’s better from a tech standpoint to sell assets than it is to sell stocks. The taxes may be lower selling assets than it is to sell stocks. Conversely, when you’re buying a company, if you’re buying assets, then you’ve got to understand how to structure a company. The third thing people should do before they go to market is to make sure they know how far they’re willing to go, how far they’re willing to bend.

I hate it when sellers come to me, I’ll give you a specific example of a broker called me in the state of Florida. They said, “Bart, we’ve got a problem. The seller wants $5 million. The buyer said they had a valuation done at $2.7 million. They can’t be that far off.” I told the broker, “Send me how the seller decided his company was worth $5 million.” They sent me the work that the accounting firm had done. What they had done was valuation using three methods: cashflow, market value and assets. At the end of the report they added, they took a percentage of the market value and the cashflow, they ignored the assets. They came up with a value and then they added on top of that all the assets. They double-dipped.

When the broker saw that he says, “I never realized that.” It is critical the third aspect before they go to market to make sure you know exactly what you’re doing and what you think your company is worth, have a proper valuation made. My company does valuations for accounting firms, law firms all over the country and businesses as an independent organization to give them an independent value. Normally, we’ll give them a range. Some of them love it. Some of them say, “Bart, my company is worth is more than that.” I said, “Prove it to me.” We do independent valuations. We’re one of the few firms in the company that are independent. We’re authorized by different organizations.

That last point you brought up is critical. I see that from time to time where people do an analysis and then they add the assets on top of it. In reality, your assets are supposed to be working for you and they’re the very thing that hopes you generate the revenues and cashflows.

 

Domenic, the broker was stunned.

You can’t edit on top. We’ve seen that before.

When we talked to the seller and we did it, the value came up to $2.5 million. The buyer had come out with $2.7 million. I said, “Take it. Don’t argue.”

Dr. Basi, it’s been such a pleasure for me to have you here. I appreciate all the information that you’ve shared with the M&A Unplugged audience. For people out there wanting to get in touch with you, how could they best reach you?

The easiest way is my email address. It’s [email protected]. If they want to know more about me, go to a website which is www.TaxPlanning.com. They’ll see what I look like. They’ll get a complete background of myself, our company and what we do. While I’m not looking for work, I’m happy to help people. I must help. We must help and sometimes, you’d be surprised we have no problems helping people if we can. The best way to contact me is by email and please reference this show or reference Domenic so I know where it’s coming from. I got a contact, someone emailed me and said, “My stockbroker recommended you because you help somebody else with their taxes. Can you help me?” It’s just a name. I don’t know who his broker is. It’s hard for me to respond to some of those contexts. It’s important for me when people do contact me by email at [email protected] or go to the website that they referenced, Domenic. I know, “They got me from the website. “

Your name is ubiquitous in our industry and I’m not surprised that you get calls from people that you’ve never heard of. Your name gets around in more places and you probably want to know about, but thank you again. I really appreciate your being here.

You’re welcome. It is a pleasure to work with you.

M&A Unplugged Community, I normally summarize here at this step, but I’ve got to tell you, there is so much there that Dr. Basi talked about. Hopefully, you’ve distilled from this conversation that there are many ways to do proper tax planning on getting to it early and often can help you understand what your walkway is. It is true, it’s not so much how much you got paid for the business, but how much you keep in your pocket. There are people probably not in the class of Dr. Basi, but lots of people who understand this you need to reference and please feel free to reach out to Dr. Basi. If you would like to learn more about the process of acquiring or selling a business, please visit our website at SunAcquisitions.com or feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. I look forward to seeing you again on the next episode of the M&A Unplugged Show. Please remember that’s scaling, acquiring or selling a business takes time, preparation and the proper knowledge.

Important Links:

• Dr. Bart Basi
• The Center for Financial, Legal & Tax Planning, Inc.
• [email protected]
• www.TaxPlanning.com
• SunAcquisitions.com
• [email protected]

About Dr. Bart Basi

Dr. Bart Basi has expertise in the areas of financial accounting, business succession, business valuation, mergers and acquisitions, retirement and estate planning, strategic planning, and tax aspects of business decisions for closely held and family businesses. He speaks nationwide, writes, and researches on all of these areas.

He has written five loose-leaf bound books, fourteen workbooks, over 300 articles, and has worked with hundreds of businesses and associations. Journals that have published Dr. Basi’s work include “Money Matters,” “The American Journal of Small Business,” “The Journal of Family Law,” “The Journal of Estate Planning,” “The Tax Lawyer,” “Small Business Taxation,” “Taxation for Individuals,” “Taxation for Accountants,” “Taxation for Lawyers,” “The CPA Journal,” and “The Tax Executive”.

Dr. Basi is the author of “The Tax Report,” a bi-monthly report on income and estate tax matters for closely-held businesses, “Accounting and Taxes,” a monthly column distributed to individuals and trade journals, and the “Tax Advisory,” a monthly tax advisory for closely-held and family businesses.

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