Hidden Money Podcast

On this week's episode: how a D in religion, a Corvette on a first-job salary and getting fired from audit led one CPA to tax strategy.You'll hear why Kevin Schneider took a significant pay cut to join Revo, why no client ever thanked him for an audit but every client remembers a strategy that saves them money, and the client he sent to Mike Pine before he'd even signed on. Kevin also opens up about the diagnosis that finally explained how his brain works, and why Mike calls it his superpower.From Ticking Boxes to Finding Money:Nobody thanks you for an audit. Audit keeps the bank and the investors safe, and in audit, thinking outside the box gets you in trouble. Kevin could tick and tie every workpaper and the client didn't care. Bring that same client a tax strategy that saves them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you're their favorite person.The standard playbook saves money. It rarely moves the needle. As an assistant tax manager, Kevin's go-to moves were the Augusta rule and paying your kids. Then, before he'd signed with Revo, he sent a well-known client to Mike instead of his own firm. Mike's question, "What if we did a defined benefit cash balance plan?", led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax savings Kevin says he wouldn't have thought of.Knowing the rules isn't the same as using them. Kevin's first job paid about $48,000 to $50,000. He rented a $1,500-a-month high-rise across the street from the Dallas aquarium's penguin tank, bought a Corvette and lived paycheck to paycheck, without even maxing out his 401(k) match. If a CPA can leave free money on the table, anyone can.The tax strategist's tax strategist. Mike Pine runs a tax strategy firm, and he still hands his own tax planning to Kevin. Mike calls him the best tax CPA he's ever worked with ("next to myself") and says Kevin sees the bigger picture in ways Mike often doesn't.Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ep-35-get-to-know-kevin&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1Connect With UsWebsite: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/revotaxpayer/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/revotaxpayer/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/revo-taxpayer-advocacyYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenMoneyPodcastChapters[00:00] Cold open, then two weeks off tax and why tax is your biggest expense[03:02] The LinkedIn message and the pay cut that brought Kevin to Revo[08:02] Baseball, a D in religion and the roommate who picked Kevin’s major[14:42] First job in audit, a Dallas high-rise and a Corvette[18:37] Fired from audit, and the moment tax started clicking[22:27] 75-hour weeks, and why Revo caps tax season at 50[23:38] Thinking outside the box: the client Kevin sent to Mike[25:47] What makes Kevin different, and why Mike calls it a superpower[32:53] Why Kevin got fired (coming on Unleashed), and who does Mike’s taxes

On this week's episode: how a kid who got kicked out of school for demanding fairness grew up to build a tax firm on the same fight.You'll hear how a PwC internship Mike Pine talked his way into turned him on to partnership tax, why he told every partner he worked for that the CPA model was broken, and what it cost him to build a firm with time for proactive tax planning. Mike also shares the story of buying a bookkeeping firm and amending most of its clients' prior-year returns for free, and the one fact about him nobody knew.The Fight Behind the Firm:1. Tax is law, not accounting. Mike nearly dropped his accounting major six months before graduating, on his third try at Advanced Accounting. Then PwC's venture capital and private equity group turned him down for his grades, he hounded the managers and a partner until they gave him a three-week shot, and he landed in partnership tax for billion-dollar funds. A 2.87 undergrad became a 3.9 in his master's, once he could see how the law applied.2. The model is broken, so he built another one. Mike told partner after partner to hire more staff than they needed, so CPAs had time for proactive planning instead of grinding out returns at 70 to 80 hours a week. They laughed him out of the room. He built Revo that way anyway, with no income for four or five years, payroll made on 0% credit card offers and his 401(k) funding the firm.3. A few hundred returns, most of them amended for free. When Mike bought a bookkeeping firm, its tax returns had been built by running the QuickBooks categories through consumer tax software. So many opportunities had been missed that Revo amended roughly 70 to 80 percent of those clients' prior-year returns at no charge, and a lot of them are still clients today.4. Fairness was always the fight. Kicked out of elementary school three times, Mike was told life isn't fair. His answer: "No, we're gonna make it fair." Today that's the mission: as long as there's death and taxes, nobody should pay a dollar more than they're legally obligated.Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ep-34-get-to-know-mike&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1Connect With Us• Website: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/revotaxpayer/• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/revotaxpayer/• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/revo-taxpayer-advocacy• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenMoneyPodcastChapters[00:00] Intro, then Kevin puts Mike in the hot seat[02:41] Football scholarships, shin splints and a move to Montana sight unseen[09:43] The accounting major Mike almost dropped, and his grandfather's advice[11:22] Talking his way into PwC's venture capital and private equity group[13:44] "Tax is not accounting"[15:14] Office politics and rebelling against the widget model[17:46] Starting Revo: credit cards, payroll and the excess-capacity bet[22:30] Buying a bookkeeping firm and amending returns for free[26:36] What Mike first thought of Kevin, and what he'd do if Revo disappeared[31:11] Kicked out three times: where the fight for fairness began

This week we go unscripted, with three recent tax stories that caught our attention.First, the fine print on "no tax on overtime": why only the premium part of time-and-a-half pay qualifies for the new deduction, and what that means for a $300 overtime check. Then Kevin tells the story of a new client with a 2,000-square-foot basement full of bourbon, and how one question turned a hobby into a business worth documenting. We finish with a Wall Street Journal story about a man with Florida paperwork whose estate is fighting Connecticut over more than $13 million in estate tax, and why states are getting more aggressive with people who move away.Dig a little deeper:1. $300 of overtime, $100 deductible. Earn $20 an hour, work a 50-hour week and get time and a half for the last 10 hours, and you've made $300 in overtime. Only the $10-an-hour premium counts toward the new overtime deduction, so $100 qualifies and the other $200 is taxed like the rest of your paycheck. The deduction is capped at $12,500 ($25,000 for joint filers), phases out above $150,000 of income ($300,000 joint), and Social Security and Medicare still apply.2. A basement full of bourbon can be a business. A new client had thousands of bottles in a finished 2,000-square-foot basement. He wrote paid reviews of bottles people sent him, bought inventory and sold bottles. "You do not have a hobby, you have a business," Kevin told him. Hobby expenses generally aren't deductible, but a business run like a business is treated differently, so step one is an inventory of the bottles, the revenue and how he sells.3. A $100 client gift is a $25 deduction. Send 20 clients a $100 gift and only $25 of each is deductible as a business gift. The other $75 per client gets added back. Personal gifts follow a different rule entirely, with a $19,000 annual exclusion per recipient.4. Florida paperwork didn't settle a $13 million question. Jack Anderson had a Florida driver's license, voter registration and declaration of domicile. Connecticut still assessed his estate more than $13 million in estate tax, pointing to his three condos there, and a trial court found he spent about five and a half months a year in Connecticut versus three and a half in Florida. The case is headed back for a new trial. If you plan to retire somewhere with no income tax, where you spend your time matters as much as your paperwork.Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ep-33-the-variety-hour&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1Chapters[00:00] Going unscripted: the 10 PM tax article[02:43] "No tax on overtime": what the IRS guidance actually allows[05:30] The math: $300 of overtime, $100 deductible[07:34] Kevin's client and the 2,000-square-foot bourbon basement[10:05] "You don't have a hobby, you have a business"[12:27] Client gifts: the $25 rule vs. the $19,000 exclusion[14:03] Connecticut's $13.2 million estate tax claim[16:30] States chasing people who leave, and retiring to a no-income-tax state[18:40] Gulf Shores, South Padre and a SpaceX retirement plan

We started investing in oil and gas three years ago because our clients needed bigger deductions, and we kept watching deals deliver the write-off but never pay back the investment. This conversation covers what we changed.On this week's episode we welcome Cotton Graham, founder and president of G2 Petroleum and Newport Operating, and Joe Stroffolino of G2 Petroleum to walk through the Revo Oil & Gas Growth Fund 2026 LP, our fund of funds investing alongside the G2 TX-26 Energy Fund in North Texas.Deductions That Have to Pay Out:1. $200,000 of stock vs. $200,000 in a well.2. How $100,000 becomes a $91,000 deduction. Of every $100,000 invested, roughly $70,000 to $75,000 pays for the drilling itself: the crews, the fuel and the rig time. That’s deductible in year one. When G2 buys a well that’s already pumping, part of the price also covers the pump jacks, tanks and pipe already on site, and that equipment can be written off in year one too. Together, that’s how the fund targets about $91,000 in deductions on $100,000.3. Old wells still hold oil nobody bothered to pump. Picture a well drilled decades ago. In its first 2,000 feet it passed through 7 to 10 layers of rock that hold oil, but the original operator pumped the best one and moved on. The big companies wanted 50 to 100 barrels a day from a well. With its own rigs and low costs, G2 can go back in, open the layers that were skipped and make 5 to 10 barrels a day pay.4. Owning the rigs keeps the oil flowing. Three years ago, a wet Texas spring turned the fields to mud. The other Texas operators in our first fund, which relied on hired drilling crews, fell about nine months behind waiting for contractors to get to them. G2 owns its rigs and has a crew of about 25 in the field every day, so it went straight back to its own wells. Every day a good well sits idle is money lost.Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ep-32-revo-oil-gas-growth-fund-2026-lp-in-partnership-with-g2-tx-26-energy-fund&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1Connect With Us• Website: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/revotaxpayer/• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/revotaxpayer/• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/revo-taxpayer-advocacy• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenMoneyPodcastChapters[00:00] Why a deduction isn't a win unless it pays out[04:06] Meet Cotton Graham and Joe Stroffolino of G2 Petroleum[09:40] Buying production first, then stepping out 300 feet[11:35] Behind-the-pipe pay: the oil early operators left behind[17:19] Buying the equipment: bonus depreciation on top of IDCs[23:26] Why owning the rigs matters: the rainy spring[35:06] General partner liability and GP insurance[38:47] The tax math on a $200,000 investment[41:12] Royalties, operating costs and the 90/10 split[52:40] Q&A: material participation, AMT, recapture and exitInvestment in the Revo Oil & Gas Growth Fund 2026 LP is limited to accredited investors and is offered only through the fund's offering documents. Deduction targets and distributions are not guaranteed. This content is for educational purposes and does not constitute tax or legal advice. Always consult a qualified tax professional for your situation.

If you've had a gnawing feeling that your tax professional prepares your return but doesn't plan ahead to make you money, this episode is for you.This week, we unpack what happens when a comfortable CPA relationship stops being a strategic one: a founder two weeks from signing a $25 million roll-up whose firm never mentioned Section 1202, a $5 million earner researching the Augusta rule with an AI chatbot at night, and two clients with the same breakout year and very different tax bills. The conversations that never happened:1. A founder was two weeks from rolling roughly $25 million of businesses into one new company. His CPA firm of 20 years first told him it would be a taxable sale. He found the Section 351 route himself with an AI chatbot, and nobody had raised Section 1202, the qualified small business stock rule that, if the structure qualifies, could keep potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of his future gain tax-free.2. A financial advisor earning about $5 million a year, headed for a $2 million-plus tax bill, was asking an AI chatbot about the Augusta rule to shelter $15,000 to $30,000. Small strategies like that snowball over 10 to 15 years, but the first conversation should be about the big moves, and the client shouldn't be the one doing the research.3. Two long-term clients who had been earning $1 million to $2 million a year both broke out in the same year, to well over $5 million of taxable income. One was too busy to meet. The other called in March, again in the summer, and again in October, when a railroad took the $2 million property he'd just bought, by eminent domain, for $6 million. Kevin estimates the tax at around $3.5 million with no planning. Because we'd been talking all year, we're tracking closer to a 3% effective rate.4. By Mike's estimate, about 95% of the people who prepare tax returns are preparers, not strategists. If you're the one bringing ideas to your CPA every year, or no ideas are coming at all, that gnawing feeling is worth trusting.Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=s4e31-i-dont-believe-my-cpa-anymore&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1Connect With Us• Website: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/revotaxpayer/• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/revotaxpayer/• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/revo-taxpayer-advocacy• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenMoneyPodcastChapters[00:00] "I Don't Believe My CPA Anymore"[01:00] Preparers vs. Strategists: It's Not the CPA's Fault[01:42] A $25 Million Roll-Up and a 20-Year CPA Relationship[04:31] "Did Your CPAs Ever Talk to You About 1202?"[06:29] The CPA's Reply: Does That Sound Like a Partnership?[10:00] A $5 Million Earner, an AI Chatbot and the Augusta Rule[13:03] Why Tax Planning Is a Two-Way Street[14:30] Two Clients, One Breakout Year and an Eminent Domain Surprise[19:21] What Proactive Planning Costs, and What It Saves[20:37] Preparer or Strategist? Trust Your Gut