398 : Rachel Michaelov – Face forward and get your Amazon taxes right

eCommerce Momentum Podcast

I love when a professional exudes confidence from experience. Rachel and her company have produced thousands of tax returns and many of them from Amazon sellers. Best practices come from experience and you should always strive for best practices. If you are in trouble, own it, accept it and face forward. Get some help, give Rachel a call.

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Rachel: [00:00] Now it’s not the best time to like hire a bookkeeper obviously cause you don’t have that many transactions and you don’t really need a CFO when you don’t, when you’re business makes, I would say less than $15,000 on a monthly basis. So I would think it’s always best to hire somebody to see if it makes sense for them to incorporate their business then for them to go back, start making money and you know, build their business up and once they start making at least 15 to $20,000 a month, that’s when it’s best for them to hire a CFO or a bookkeeper or someone to help them and guide them every step of the way.

Cool voice guy: [00:34] Welcome to the ecommerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today, here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen: [00:47] Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and Gary Ray’s Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out a amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no challenges. You don’t want it when you’re done, you get out. But imagine getting lists as grateful as like they call it mailbox money. I love that term. Mailbox money. It’s where you can work from your house, buy things online, have them delivered to you and then sell them on various marketplaces. But imagine you can have somebody else do that for you. So you want to buy time, you want to control, uh, what they’re buying.

Stephen: [01:44] Well, you take these lists and you can join multiple lists if you’re interested and then you can segregate them for the merchandise you want and send them to them. They can make purchases for you on your behalf. Have it delivered to you or delivered to them for prep. Boom, sent into these marketplaces and you could sell. How about that? Wouldn’t it be awesome? I spoke at their conference and there were so many million dollar sellers just using online arbitrage. It’s still available. And again, 14 days. The only way you’re going to get 14 day free trials if you come through my link. Um, it is an affiliate link. Uh, they do pay me. So I don’t want to mislead you in any way. Um, I would appreciate it, but I’d like to see you try the 14 days. I’ve had so many people that have joined, have so much success.

Stephen: [02:27] It’s very exciting to me and you know, quite humbling to me, um, that they trust me to recommend this group and I 100% recommend this group. I’ve seen the results. These are great people that will also teach you to fish. This isn’t just a, hey, here’s the list. You’re on your own. No, this is, hey, here’s why that wasn’t a good deal. Or here, hey, there’s another opportunity and you get to join their groups. And it’s just a phenomenal group of people. Um, just great, great, uh, leaders in that group and these lists are phenomenal. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, I e Finn, arbitrage, amazing, freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. Use that. Get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it, drop out, but give it a shot if you want to add that to your business. Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast.

Stephen: [03:16] This is episode 398. Rachel Michael. Love a get ready. I mean, it’s a very cool story. Um, it’s gonna be scary for a whole bunch of people because if you have tax issues, this is going to rock your soul. You’re going to sit there and say, oh my God, he’s making me feel worse. He’s making me feel worse. And maybe a little bit in the beginning you will feel worse because you realize that you screwed up. You realized that you made a mistake. You realize you’re not perfect after all. But when Rachel tells her story about midway through the podcast, you’ll understand where her passion comes from cause she’s passionate. You can hear an inner voice. She’s confident. You can hear that in her voice because she knows she’s doing what she’s meant to do. Her life has prepared her for this. Uh, she was brought into this world, uh, this accounting world, this tax specific world, uh, through very difficult circumstances.

Stephen: [04:09] And she explains it about midway through. But the other thing she talks about is that some of the bigger sellers, uh, she’s had, and she has some, a lot of examples and name them, but a lot of examples of really successful people on the outside that are in real trouble or we’re in real trouble. Um, and so you’re not so different. I think that’s gonna be the key. So you’re going to feel like, crap, I’m gonna make you feel terrible. And then all of a sudden I’m gonna make you realize that you’re not that different. Um, the difference is you haven’t made the call. You haven’t reached out for help. And I’m here to tell you that this is the place to reach out for help right now. She said she’ll do it for free. Um, she’ll give you a perspective. She’ll at least explain to you where you’re at.

Stephen: [04:49] And so, you know, so please, if you’re in trouble and, or you’re thinking about this stuff and it’s eating your soul and you’re staying up at night and you’re eating away your life or drinking away your life or doing other worse things, consider this, take an opportunity here. She’s offering a free opportunity to talk with her and to help you get some perspective. Um, so a little bit of a somber tone here, but man, just imagine when those handcuffs are free, that, that, that, that jail that you’re in is gone. Just imagine that how much better your life would be. So let’s get into the podcast. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE and podcast excited today because I get to speak to another nerd who loves to talk more accounting, but for me, I’m not a tax guy, but we did bring on a tax professional and I’m very excited about, uh, the amount of knowledge she has in our industry.

Stephen: [05:39] And I think it’s so specific in so many ways and it’s just great to have somebody on room. Welcome Rachel. Michaela, welcome Rachel. Thank you. I didn’t put you in the name too bad. I try my best. Um, the, Rachel’s easy. All right. Okay. So you are a, you are in a company called empire tax professionals, um, and you specialize in taxes, right? I mean, yes, when, when you’re an enrolled agent, and we’ll have to explain what that is versus a CPA. Cause people always say, oh, he’s a CPA CPA. But you got to understand that the person who does my taxes is an enrolled agent too. Um, it’s very different, uh, very specialized and you tend to specialize in a specific thing. So let’s talk about that first.

Rachel: [06:18] Sure. So I’m, I’m licensed. I’m, I’m an EA and, um, yeah. So we specialize in helping, you know, Amazon sellers, e-commerce sellers with monthly bookkeeping, payroll sales tax, corporate returns, individual returns, IRS notices and all that. And we try to focus on helping ecommerce sellers on a daily basis.

Stephen: [06:39] Those things are all scary to most people. You know, that IRS note is a payroll taxes, quarterly estimated deposit. I mean, those things are intimidating to most people because it’s not easy to understand when you read a regulation, right. It’s not easy. Correct.

Rachel: [06:55] Yes, that’s correct. It’s very confusing and there’s a lot of gray areas in the law, which makes it so much more important to hire a professional to help you know anybody, any business owner, any ecommerce seller so they can under, so they understand what the IRS is really saying.

Stephen: [07:10] And you know, I mean, you know, everybody thinks they’re out to get ’em. That’s not it at all. They just want you to follow the law. But yeah, again, it’s that lack of clarity. You’re like, I’m not sure. So that’s why you get a professional. Um, you have had, I said hundreds of clients, but you corrected me and said thousands of clients. How many, how many, uh, customers do you process a year? Currently

Rachel: [07:31] we process over a thousand returns during tax season. Um, that’s just, you know, January to April. But then I, I’ve been doing this for about 14 years and we prepare, I prepared over, oh, my team prepared over a thousand returns every single year. So I wouldn’t even say I filed over 10,000 returns during my, in my company.

Stephen: [07:50] Okay. So there’s the credibility. Alright. So people get that all 50 states licensed. And so if you’re looking for somebody, this might be somebody, and we’re going to talk about different places that a lot of companies get in trouble. This is, and when you look at companies that fail, is this the number one reason? I mean maybe capitalization might be another one, but this seems to be where most people get into trouble. Payroll taxes, sales tax, uh, ignoring those nasty notes, right?

Rachel: [08:16] Yes. Yes. I mean 100%. I would think like one of the reasons that businesses fail is because they’re not, they’re not compliant. And I think like the biggest issue that we see is business owners relying on, or e-commerce sellers relying on entry level bookkeepers to do their bookkeeping. And then the bookkeeping is not on, right. So that at the end of the year they can’t really buy all the returns and they put it, you know, on the back burner, they don’t get, they don’t get it done. And then IRS comes after them, levies and put liens on their property. And then, I mean, their business businesses just closed just because they’re not compliant, not being compliant with payroll taxes. And the most important that we see is they don’t pay their pay, their estimated tax payments every single quarter. And um, if they don’t, then they owe such a huge bill at the end of the year and it adds up when, you know, as business grows

Stephen: [09:08] and then you’re stuck with penalties and interest and you can almost, I mean, it’s worse than a credit card. You can almost never get out of some of those things. Right,

Rachel: [09:16] right, exactly.

Stephen: [09:17] Hmm. Oh God. All right. The scary stuff is out there. So I want to take a positive spin on this and start with, okay, I’m a new client of Rachel’s and what’s the process for you onboarding a client? Um, because I think there’s a whole bunch of people that are new to this world and they’re starting to make money. I mean, first off, when do I need to get an expert? When’s, when’s the right time to get an expert?

Rachel: [09:37] So I would say, um, it’s always best to speak to an expert even before you even start a business. Because before you even, you know, think or, or when you’re about to open a company, you always want to be incorporated because you want to protect yourself. Now it’s not the best time to like hire a bookkeeper obviously cause you don’t have that many transactions and you don’t really need a CFO when you don’t, when you’re a business makes, I would say less than $15,000 on a monthly basis. So I would think it’s always best to hire somebody to see if it makes sense for them to incorporate their business then for them to go back, start making money in, you know, build their business up and once they start making at least 15 to $20,000 a month, that’s when it’s best for them to hire a CFO or a bookkeeper or someone to help them and guide them every step of the way.

Stephen: [10:28] Now I’m a preacher on monthly financial statements, um, because it just gives you, you know, a guidepost, right? Cause I like to look forward. I know this is a cash intense business, and so if you run out of money, which most of us run out of money, right? That’s pretty normal. Almost like every person I talked to runs out of money. You need to know what’s going to happen because you still have to make payroll. You have...