WS670: Unknown Tax Strategies For The Passive Investor with Noah Rosenfarb

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.0] ANNOUNCER Welcome to the Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:24.4] WS: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Noah Rosenfarb, thanks for being on the show again Noah.

[0:00:33.2] NR: Yeah, of course, happy to be back.

[0:00:34.7] WS: Noah was just a guest very recently, show WS645 on July the 27^th. I would encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. But today, we want to talk about some specific things that he’s really become an expert in. He’s able to provide a ton of knowledge today on some tax stances that he has and ways he’s benefited by having things structured, maybe a specific way to lower the tax burden that I think will be beneficial to all the listeners.

But a little about him, he helps the rich get richer so they can supercharge their impact. He started investwithourfamily.com where you can see details about the 3,500 plus doors he owns across the country. He’s a third generation CPA, founder of an SCC reporting company, FIGIroyalty.com that acquires revenue based royalties in internet businesses and the chief investment officer at freedomfamilyoffice.com, where he advises entrepreneurs with a 20 to 100 million dollar net worth.

Noah, welcome again to the show, grateful to have you on and just your willingness to share your expertise, grateful for that. You know, let’s jump right in. I know we’re going to focus on some tax stuff today and that you’re going to just help enlighten us on and I want us to jump in to your stance on 1031, I hear that it’s a little different, maybe it’s something that’s not talked about on a lot of podcast but I’d love for us to just jump right but you’re welcome to sharing the updates from the last show. I know it wasn’t that long ago if you want.

[0:01:59.4] NR: Sure. I think one of the takes that I have that is somewhat unique is around section 1031. You know, it’s very common for people that begin investing in real estate to utilize that tax code section which enables them to roll in to a new investment without paying any capital gains tax on the sale that just took place.

That’s really advantageous and I don’t want to take away from the advantages that it can provide to investors. Another great advantage, especially when clients are older, let’s say they’re in their 80s, maybe even approaching 90. And they want to exit an asset that requires some time and attention for them and they don’t have that effort to put in anymore — but part of their escape plan is to leave that asset to their children.

They want to benefit from the 1031, they could roll into a DST or a passive asset where they can wait until you know, mom or dad passes away, the kids will get a step up in bases, there’s no tax, there’s no state tax. 1031 has some really great applications but what I find for a lot of the clients that I deal with, which are successful entrepreneurs that are making good money, seven figure incomes, they put 250 into a deal, they put 500 into a deal. That deal is done really well.

Now, their money’s worth two million and then they rolled it into another 1031 and now that money is worth four million. The challenge they start facing is that one asset becomes a significant portion of their total net worth. And in order to continue to do those 1031s, they’ve got to continue to concentrate all of that wealth into one individual asset. That by itself presents its own problem because we all know the adage — we don’t want all our eggs in one basket.

I’m an advocate for, oftentimes, breaking up that investment in the year of a sale, into multiple LP investments, where the sponsor is going to be doing a cross segregation study. And you’ll receive anywhere from you know, 75% to sometimes 125% of your equity investment as a depreciation deduction. Let’s say you sold that asset for two million and you broke that up into eight investments at 250 each. As a result, you’re receiving K1s that are going to pass through depreciation of let’s just say, a million five.

Well now, you’re only going to pay capital gain stacks on that 500,000, the difference between the two million dollar capital gain that you had and the million and a half of depreciation you took. But you now got to step up in basis, you’ve diversified your assets, you’ve been able to maybe enter different markets or different types of asset classes so you can reduce your risk and increase  your potential future liquidity — without kind of kicking the can down the road on this huge embedded tax that you or your heirs might face.

[0:04:56.9] WS: Could you just break that down a little bit more there, just that process that that investor just went through. You know, you got 500,000 I think you said or 250 invested and then after a few years, it’s 500 or 1031 now, it’s two million. Okay, you know, now what happens, he does actually sell out, is that correct?

[0:05:15.4] NR: When you sell, you have the option to — if you’re going to do a 1031 exchange, you’ve got 45 days to identify your asset and then you know, it’s like 90 days to close on that asset. I forget the specific day counts but basically, a clock starts ticking on you. The downside of that clock ticking on you is oftentimes, people are making sub-optimal investments because they’ve got that time pressure. And it’s like, “I better just get the deal done because I don’t want to lose my tax deferral.”

I see that same sentiment often with these opportunities on investments and maybe we can talk about that a little bit later. Where people are making sub-optimal investments in order to attract a tax benefit. But when you sell an asset in a given tax year, if you invest in other real estate projects in that same tax year, you’ll receive all the depreciation benefits for that tax year in the year of acquisition. It’s a little bit more difficult. We’re facing, you know, the last few months of the 2020 tax year. If you’re going to have a sale in September or October, you might be better off with a 1031 transaction because it will be hard to identify the number of investments you need to make for an alternate strategy to offset your taxes.

But, if you have a closing in January and your proceeds come in January, you’ve got 12 months to reallocate that capital into new investments that would benefit from a cross-segregation study and benefit from accelerated depreciation which would offset your game. I’ll give you an example, we closed on a deal in November of last year and it was a pretty plain vanilla deal for us, there wasn’t a lot of heavy lifting to it, it was maybe a million dollars of cap X improvement on top of an eight million dollar acquisition. But, in that particular deal with our cross-segregation study, we bought it, middle of November.

The K1 comes out December 31^st so we only asset six weeks and everybody got 75% of their initial investment past through their depreciation losses on their K1. For someone like me, that’s an active real estate professional, I’m able to offset 75% of my investment against my ordinary income from my other businesses. That’s a huge advantage.

Now, for someone that’s sold a property in 2019 that invested in that property with me, with their gains, you know, they watch 75% of their taxes that they would have owed and they still paid the 25% in capital gains stacks on what was left. But the advantages — they now have a step up in bases in this new asset. And I think as we’re looking to this next election and doing what I call Biden-proofing your taxes, you want to start thinking about what are the potential tax laws that are going to impact your personal financial situation. And how might you plan around them.

And one of the things they’re talking about is taking away section 1031. One of the things they’re talking about is a wealth tax where you’ll pay a tax every year on the value of the assets that you own. Some of the strategies we’ve been relying on for decades, we want to make sure that we’ve got a plan B in case they’re not around when we need them.

[0:08:26.4] WS: Could you speak to that just a little bit if you’re aware of them like taking away the 1031 option. I heard that just briefly, have you read anything about that or what to expect?

[0:08:36.5] NR: There were some news articles that have come out in the past few weeks with Biden’s plan. Tax plan and part of his tax plan is eliminating some beneficial real estate tax treatment. Trump’s presidency has done a lot to foster real estate — tax situations. And it’s not surprising given his own personal circumstances that he would enact tax codes that would favor his family.

You know, I think there might be a little bit of a role-reversal with the next administration if it’s Biden led. And if it’s not, you know, it’s like the warning signs are all there that any time we do tax planning, we want to look at the existing tax code but we also want to think backwards and think about what’s happened in the past and how might that impact our future, the same way we do when we’re making any investment.

We want to look at the past performances, not indicative of future returns, the history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. The same thing is true with tax law and we’ve gone through periods of time in the US where our highest ordinary income tax rate was above 80%. And for most of the second half of the last century, that tax rate averaged 60%. Right now, we’re still living in this historically low, high-income tax bracket being under 40% and I think we’ve gotten accustomed to living with the highest tax bracket under 40%. But it’s not unrealistic when we look at our debt, when we look at the sentiment that’s going around culturally between the wealth gap that exists between our highest income earners and our lowest income earners and how disparate it is.That a 60% tax could help make up for some of that difference.

[0:10:17.0] WS: All right, I’m grateful for that explanation, thank you for going into that and I think it’s very educational for a lot of people listening, including myself. If you haven’t been taught to think that way, you know, look at the past and what’s happened with taxes and numerous things, just like comparing it to your investments and thinking forward, right? And then having an exit plan and a plan B.

You know, let’s move into just some general taxation stuff and you know, taking most advantage as possible for the passive investor and I think you can speak a lot to that as well.

[0:10:45.1] NR: I think one of the predispositions I had — because I was a practicing accountant. I come on the third generation CPA as you mentioned, my father had an accounting firm that I was a partner in for a decade. My father in law is a practicing tax accountant. This is the type of dinner table conversation we had was around the tax code. That’s somewhat unusual.

One of the things I learned early on is that the uniqueness of our tax system is that it’s self-reporting. Although a lot of people report to the government through different forms like, you know, our K1 that we receive in an investment. It’s provided directly to the IRS by the company that we invested in but then we take that cable and we have to report it on our form 1040. People sometimes issue a form, 1099, if we collected interest. They’re reporting that to the government and then we report it on our 1040.

A lot of the things that we do as individuals and as owners of enterprises is not reported directly to the government and the government’s relying on us to self-report. Because we’re self-reporting, we get to make our own judgment as to what is it that we’re going to report as income, what is it that we’re going to report as expense, and how do we classify that. And the way that our system responds to that is by — if they have a question, the IRS will write you a letter and say, dear taxpayer, you know, you took this deduction or you — we believe you have this income, can you please verify by providing us with your evidence.

Because of the nature of the way that we report, it gives us as taxpayers a lot more freedom than other tax jurisdictions, where the government tells you exactly how much you owe. They complete the forms for you because everything’s being reported on your behalf.

We want to use that flexibility to our advantage. We want to come up with ways that we could consider expenses to be business expenses or ways that we could consider our activities to qualify us as real estate professionals. For individuals that are investing, either as an LP or maybe sometimes they have a few units that they own directly and then they’re making LP investments with other sponsors — if you can become a real estate professional, which doesn’t require you to have a real estate brokerage license, but it does have other certain requirements. Then the government allows you to deduct all of the depreciation from all of your assets against any other ordinary income you have.

That’s a massive advantage and so if you’re listening and you’ve been actively engaged in the investment and real estate but you’re not currently a real estate professional, maybe you’re still at a job that you get paid every two weeks and you receive a W2 at the end of the year, that doesn’t preclude you from being a real estate professional.

You want to be sure you’re talking about that with your accountant and figuring out if there’s some way that you or your spouse could qualify as a real estate professional.

[0:13:42.3] WS: I’m glad you just mentioned, you or your spouse. It’s a potential that if you don’t qualify, maybe your spouse does.

[0:13:48.3] NR: Yeah, we see that a lot of times, you know, you’ve got maybe a doctor or a lawyer and their wife is predominantly a homemaker. But if we can get them to classify as a real estate professional, it might be able to save them 50,000, 100,000, 150,000 a year. So if we can keep a journal of the wife’s activity looking for property every week, if we could keep a journal of the wife’s activity, interacting with tenants or discussing investment properties with their spouse or with their financial advisor, with their accountant, then we could start to build up their resume as a real estate professional.

[0:14:22.3] WS: What about thinking outside the box a little more there, ways that you’ve seen for people to be able to find expenses that they can count as business expenses that we may not typically think of.

[0:14:32.3] NR: You know, I think there’s a lot of things that we miss when it comes to the tax code and it’s not really the fault of our accountants. The accounting profession in general has been taught how to look very clearly through the rearview mirror and make out all of the details of what’s happened in the past but we’re not taught to look out of the windshield and see what’s coming.

As a profession, we’re not incentivized to help taxpayers think about “How do we avoid future taxes.” We are only paid for the return preparation in almost all cases. And I just had someone that had approached me about doing some tax planning and I told them to go back to their CPA firm to do a tax projection. And they were so miserably upset because the accountant just took their five months’ worth of numbers, multiplied it by 12-fifths and said, “Here’s your year.”

And you know it’s like well there was no thoughtfulness. There was no advice, there was no counsel and I think that happens all too often in this industry. So be sure that if you are not getting tax advice from your current tax preparer, that you have someone else in your life that is helping you focus on “How do we avoid future taxes not just present day taxes.”

[0:15:44.9] WS: That was going to be something I wanted to ask you. You triggered in my mind there, even just, you know, hiring a tax strategist versus hiring our CPA or an accountant. Somebody that we are speaking with — often about what’s happening in our finances and our taxes. But, you know, should we hire somebody that is an actual tax strategist and then also, does that person then say do our taxes or they’re just more of an adviser that will help us work with our current CPA.

[0:16:13.4] NR: Yeah, I found that in most instances, a really good tax strategists make a lot of money. And because they make so much money, they’re not good people to do tax compliance because tax compliance is in some sense of a commodity. Recording history is not very valuable. So most tax strategists, either they don’t do the preparation themselves or they don’t even do it inside their firm. So you may work with the tax lawyer, you may work with a wealth manager.

You may work with an estate planning attorney, someone that is maybe a little bit more sophisticated just on taxes but not handling the preparation of your form 1040 for your personal return. Or not handling your business partnership returns. We want to let somebody in a low-cost do that type of work. And when it comes to the real creativity critical thinking that’s the stuff that maybe we’re paying $1,000 an hour or $2,000 an hour to someone who is incredibly brilliant. And we are not paying them for the hour that we are spending with us. We are paying them for the 20 years that they have spent learning exactly what to do with that hour.

[0:17:15.9] WS: Very well said. That’s with a lot of professions right? When you are hiring somebody that’s a professional adviser, it seems like a lot per hour but it is well worth it because of their experience. So you know I hear about this, you know you are getting the 4% tax rate on your income and I would love for you to elaborate on how you’ve structured this to accomplish that. So you know maybe we could think the same way.

[0:17:37.0] NR: Yeah, so bear with me because I am a bit of an egghead in some sense, that I love exploring the tax code and I love finding ways to beat the system. It is the game that gives me a lot of pleasure, it allows me, it enables me to take the capital that I am creating and use it in a way that justifies what I am working for. And that does include causes that I care about and contributing to things that I want to make a difference but I don’t enjoy funding our government.

So I came up with a strategy that is quite unique. Puerto Rico came out with tax incentives a few years ago. The island of Puerto Rico had really great incentives for pharmaceutical companies to come and manufacture their drugs there and they started that in the 1980s and they built dozens and thousands of jobs in the pharmaceutical space, in pharmaceutical manufacturing. And then they took away those incentives and what — low and behold, all of those companies left the island.

And so they looked around and said, “Oh I guess that wasn’t a good idea. Well what can we do now?” and they said, “Let’s try and invite entrepreneurs to set up their business here and for retirees to come live on our island to enjoy their retirement.” And they came out with two significant tax codes which were formerly called Act 20 and Act 22, now commonly called Act 60. And what they did for businesses is they said, “If you come and open your business in Puerto Rico, we’ll agree for 20 years, we’ll only charge you a 4% corporate tax rate.”

So think about that, right now the IRS is currently at a historic low corporate tax rate of 21%. Certain states apply an additional tax rate on top of that but Puerto Rico is saying 4% that’s all in. You don’t pay IRS federal taxes when you’re a Puerto Rico based business, you don’t pay any state income taxes when you are based in Puerto Rico. So I like that. I thought that was a unique incentive and so I went and set up a company in Puerto Rico with this 4% tax rate.

But I did one extra thing. Because a corporation, when it issues a dividend to a shareholder, that shareholder has to pay dividend income tax. And if you live in Puerto Rico and you receive a dividend from your Puerto Rican company, you don’t pay any tax. Puerto Rico exempts it. So my brother, who operates our business there, he is a Puerto Rico resident. He operates a Puerto Rico business that he owns. He receives a dividend, it’s tax-free. So he has a 4% effective tax rate on his earnings from our company.

Me, on the other hand, I live in South Florida. I am bedded in our community, I’ve got young children. I really like raising them here in our suburban environment and I didn’t want to move. That wasn’t appealing to me. So what I did is I set up the ownership of my company inside of a Roth 401(k) plan. Now the benefits of a Roth plan, for the listeners that don’t know, is that we pay tax on the money going in and we never pay tax on that money again.

So when I set up that company, it didn’t cost me very much to set up. I made a small deposit into my 401(k) account. I paid some tax by converting it into a Roth and that company now owns the majority of my Puerto Rico business. So when we have let’s just say a $1 million of income, we pay $40,000 of taxes, 960,000 goes out as a dividend distribution. I pay no tax on that dividend, it goes into my Roth 401(k). I can invest that in real estate, I can invest that in the stock market. I can make private loans, all of the interest dividend and capital gains on those investments are tax-free and when I turn 59 and a half, I can take as much or as little of that money out as I want, also tax-free.

[0:21:13.0] WS: Awesome, I have not heard that one on the show up to this point, you know well over 650 shows, wow, very interesting. So you are not a resident there but you can still have part ownership in a business there that is achieving the same results.

[0:21:26.4] NR: Exactly and I think for a lot of people that want to continue to live in the continental United States, you know, one of the things that’s a challenge for a lot of municipalities right now is that their revenues are going down. The state’s revenue is going down and people are mobile. So if you live in Illinois and you’re in the City of Chicago and you are paying a high tax-rate, well maybe you are going to move across the border to Indiana or if you are in Manhattan and you don’t want to pay a high city tax, you can move out to the Westchester suburbs and just pay your New York State tax.

And then some of the people in those high tax states whether it is California, New York, or New Jersey, they are saying we want to leave and we are willing to go to a place like Texas or Florida, where there is no state income tax. But not everyone is willing to make that leap to Puerto Rico and live on that island. So you could still do things to escape taxation even if you are not willing to move your tax residency.

[0:22:19.9] WS: Does it have to be in a 401(k) plan?

[0:22:22.7] NR: No but I found it to be very efficient for me because of the way the tax laws are structured. But you can set up corporations in different states and operate them in different states and there are ways to create arbitrage if you are a California resident but you want to start a business in Nevada, where there is no tax. Or you are a New York City resident but you want to set up your business in Florida, you can do that. And now that everyone through this pandemic has realized that they can still be productive.

Maybe it is not equally productive to commuting Monday through Friday, nine to five to the same space to work with all the same people, but if you are able to work remotely and that doesn’t impact your productivity so significantly, then there is more incentive to, you know, re-domicile your business in a more tax favorable jurisdiction.

[0:23:13.5] WS: Nice, well at least that gets us thinking that way, right? I feel like the listeners and myself have a lot of research to do, you know, just to discover and dig into that a little further. And I know we are almost out of time Noah but just a couple more questions Noah or anything else about just the tax strategies that you want to share with before we have to move on?

[0:23:31.3] NR: I think the most important thing is that if you haven’t had a second opinion on your tax return in the last three years, go get one. Any accountant is willing to give your return a second look at no cost for the potential that they could give you some good advice and that will woo you over to become their client and we could always go back three years to amend tax returns. I had a friend approach me recently. He asked me to look at his returns.

I was able to get him $150,000 in a tax refund from prior returns where his accountant made an error. He is thrilled you know? And that didn’t really cost him anything. So make sure to go and ask for somebody’s advice just to put it in context. Our company works predominantly with high-income earners. So we really started around taxpayers paying $250,000 or more in taxes. So that’s seven figure earners is kind of the low end of our business.

But you’ll get good advice just by shopping around and getting a second opinion and if you get nothing out of it then you know your accountant is doing a good job and there is no motivation to do anything different.

[0:24:31.3] WS: So what do we need to have with us when we go and approach the person? Is it just like a previous three year tax returns or is there anything else?

[0:24:38.2] NR: Start with your previous three years tax returns. If you are kind enough to create a bit of a narrative for the accountant, it will help them. Give them a little memo that just walks through how your business has evolved in the last three years and where you are today and maybe a little bit about where you are going. And that way they can start thinking through, “Okay, well if I were in their position, maybe I would set up a new entity and here is what I would use that new entity for.”

Or, “I’d start thinking about ownership being split between myself and maybe myself and my spouse or myself and another entity that’s going to own my interest.” And if you give them some information, hopefully they will brainstorm some good ideas.

[0:25:18.2] WS: Nice, well I am grateful for that. I hope the listeners are taking that to heart and really finding somebody that can give them a second opinion. It could be so worthwhile, like you are talking about, your friend 120,000. That makes it worth so much to pay somebody, right? For even that opinion if you have to. So, a couple last questions, I know we just talked about a few of these but we’ll talk about a couple of them again. Because I think they are important but the number one thing that’s contributed to your success, what would that be?

[0:25:43.0] NR: You know I think the last answer I gave was around learning. And I think that’s definitely my number one. I am always learning. I am always reading. I am always listening. I am always interacting with people that have unique novel ideas or approaches to the world. And I think our education can’t end when we get out of high school or college or graduate school. We got to continue getting educated and the best investments I make are $20 books because I get a lifetime’s worth of wisdom from someone that is willing to concentrate that down into a couple of hours on Audible for me. And I can get their best learning lessons.

[0:26:15.4] WS: Do you listen completely or do you have the hard book as well? What is your best way of absorbing?

[0:26:20.0] NR: I’m about 99% audio at this point. I really don’t enjoy reading with my eyes and I found that by reading with my ears I can accomplish a lot more. I am an auditory learner so I process it much more effectively and then I also have the benefit of multitasking, which is good for my ADD. So I am usually out for a walk and listening to a book or maybe even just lying in bed next to my wife when I wake up early and I can put my headphones in and listen to a book while I lay there quietly. So I found that reading with my ears has been a real blessing.

[0:26:53.6] WS: And how do you like to give back?

[0:26:55.3] NR: So my wife and I have a family foundation. We focus on education, food security, and Jewish causes. So we like to give our time and money to organizations that are focused around those three impact areas and then on a personal level. I do a lot of mentoring, people often come to me and approach me with, “Hey Noah, could I pick your brain and so usually I try and organize those calls for the weekday mornings when I am out for a walk and again, try to multitask.

Where I could give someone some good advice and mentorship at the same time that I am doing something good for my body.

[0:27:24.7] WS: Nice, well grateful for you sharing that again Noah. And just how you want to give back and give back in that way. And I feel like you have given a lot just today, just on taxes. Specifically just get us thinking outside of this box that I feel like a lot of us are in or that I can get into. And just having that second opinion and the value of that. Tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you?

[0:27:45.9] NR: Sure, so if you are interested in real estate syndication, go to investwithourfamily.com. That is our syndication platform. If you are a very successful entrepreneur that is thinking about how you want to convert your net worth into passive income, so you could enjoy your life to the fullest, you could visit us at freedomfamilyoffice.com. And then for those of you that might not have heard about the power of royalties, I’ve got a new company that I am in the process of taking public.

Which is really exciting called FIGI Royalty, figiroyalty.com and it is a unique novel business where we acquire revenue royalties in internet based businesses and we’re right now open for a 506(c) investment.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:28:25.4] WS: Don’t go yet, thank you for listening to today’s episode. I would love it if you would go to iTunes right now and leave a rating and written review. I want to hear your feedback. It makes a big difference in getting the podcast out there. You can also go to the Real Estate Syndication Show on Facebook so you can connect with me and we can also receive feedback and your questions there that you want me to answer on the show.

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[OUTRO]

[0:29:05.9] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to the Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

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