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- [00:00]
A
Sometimes I hear people say, you know, you're just putting numbers in on a form spreadsheet. Yeah, you're just data entry. You know, like, why should I pay so much just to fill out a form? It's not dollars for hours. It's. You're paying for my experience, my expertise, and knowing where to hit that nail.
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B
Taran Halomo is a resilient, strategic and growth driven licensed tax strategist and the founder of Tarantax Pro. Drawing from her expertise as an enrolled agent, she helps entrepreneurs and investors maximize savings and build lasting wealth.
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A
You don't even need to sit for your cpa, which was my next step. I said, don't do that. EAs know more about taxes than CPAs do. Unfortunately, I need a license to file your nails. I don't need a license to do your taxes.
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B
How did you know that you were on the path of greatness? Like, this is it, you know,
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A
it
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B
spans the globe like a super high cold Internet Elvis. Brandon, today Apple is going to reinvent the it's not over until I win. The Living youg Legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy that's extraordinary. The impossible. Oh, that is sensational. Jordan, open Chicago with the lead. You said Paul is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your life. Welcome back to another episode of the Living youg Legacy podcast. For Inside Success, I am Ray Gutierrez. Moments before filming her episode for Women in Power is Taryn Hallamo. She is the founder of Accountable Tax Professionals. Welcome, Taryn.
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A
Thank you.
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B
Happy Friday.
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A
Yeah, Happy Friday.
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B
First of all, I have to. I have to compliment your amazing frames.
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A
Oh, thank you.
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B
Those are awesome. When. When someone does tax, or as someone says, a calculator in the corner, how does one kind of stand out? Do they start amazing frames like that?
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A
Oh, no. I mean, I always like to do something a little different. I don't want to be that nerdy, you know, tax person for sure. So I like to do a little bit fun, fun stuff when I can.
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B
Speaking of fun stuff when you can, Lolo just stepped into the room. You'll be doing your session with Lauren today.
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A
Okay, great. Hi, Lauren.
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B
So I'm just a preview. Speaking of which, what will we learn about you in your Women in Power episode?
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A
Oh, a little bit of what brought me to where I am now, a little bit of what I do, and maybe a little bit of, you know, what's to come.
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B
Oh, hell yeah. Where would you like to start? The future? The past or the present?
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A
Why don't we talk about the Present.
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B
What's going on today?
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A
Today? Today. I lead a firm that specializes in businesses and their owners. We use some aggressive tax strategies, more advanced tax strategies than you might see or know from. Know everyday CPA with his shingle out on the street. Because we specialize in businesses and, and their owners want to save money. I mean, every day I hear like, you know, I don't mind paying my share. I just feel like I'm paying too much. Sure, sure, sure, sure. So that's what we focus on.
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B
That's pain so much. You're, you're, you're the reason why a lot of these billionaires now seem to be trillionaires, don't pay tax for a couple of decades, is because they've paid their taxes all their dues. They've got geniuses like you kind of going, don't jump here. Turn it right here. Make a left there. Trust me. And wink twice when you get to this form. And you got it.
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A
Yeah, I do that so much. No, no, no, no, no, no.
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B
I do the exact same thing. Someone starts talking budget number to go,
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A
la la la la is more like when they go. Well, what I do, it's awesome.
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B
Like, can you explain to folks why all these weird numbers and these forms? Like, it almost feels like it's designed to complicate things. But it's really simple and streamlined if you're kind of trained like you are, isn't it?
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A
Some of it is simple and streamlined. You know, I always say, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And if you don't know, you shouldn't be trying to, you know, do not try this at home kind of thing. You know, there are a lot of forms. There's a lot of crazy forms. We talked a minute ago about international tax. If you have any international things, there's always some form that you might forget that has a hefty five figure penalty.
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B
Oh, gosh.
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A
So, you know, those are the kinds of things that if you don't know, you don't know. Sometimes. I recently encountered somebody who didn't know how to claim for some credit. So they just didn't. Okay, so let's just leave $40,000 on the table. Like, that's not a thing.
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B
That's another thing.
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A
Let's not do that.
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B
Yeah. What are some fun, like, superstitions of what people think you do versus what you actually do?
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A
Mm. I, I get. Sometimes I hear people say, you know, you're just putting numbers in a, on a form.
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B
Spreadsheet.
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A
Yeah. You're just data entry, you know, like, why should I pay so much just to fill out a form? Well, it's, you know, the old story of the boat that was broken, they couldn't get the engine to fix, and they brought all these high dollar people in to fix it. And finally they get this one guy comes in, takes a hammer, hits it in this one spot and it fires up and hands him a bill for $50,000. And they're like, $50,000? And he's like, yeah, it's $1,000 for my time and 49,000 for knowing what to do and where to do it. And that's kind of what it is. It's not dollars for hours. It's. You're paying for my experience, my expertise, and knowing where to hit that nail to knock off a couple grand.
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B
Yeah, right. If celebrities can do it, why not the real heroes?
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A
Exactly. The people out there making the money and making the world spin.
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B
For sure. For sure. What's the difference? Someone doing tax for business versus someone for personal. I know it's very like rudimentary, like, oh, obviously. But I'm a 5 year old when it comes to these sort of things, so explain it to me.
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A
Okay. If all they have is a W2, maybe some bank interest, not a big deal. TurboTax is your friend.
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B
Right on.
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A
You know, don't, don't waste your money paying for a specialist, you know, honestly, because they're not doing anything more than what you can do. However, if you have rental properties, if you have a business, if you have crypto, if you have any kind of complexity to your tax return. Absolutely. Having a professional in your corner not only is going to get you better savings than you can find on your own, or, and, or is going to do it right where Everybody, you know, Dr. Google, you know, Facebook friends. What should I do? You know that those are not, you know, authority.
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B
No, no, exactly. Yeah. And it's funny because it's almost like predetermined. It's like now we've got the chatgpts, the Google universities. I know you're several steps beyond a cpa. It's almost like, you know, a real estate lawyer versus doing real estate. But that's a different podcast for a different. You are. You are not just. You are academically weaponized to protect ourselves. Ourselves. From ourselves. Really?
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A
Yeah, exactly.
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B
Talk about a little bit some of that experience, you know, where that $29,000, it really goes into what it was 39. That's the way I got the numbers. But talk about Some of that experience and what you versus the other, the tiny version of you that is trying to mimic you. What does expertise sound like?
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A
Education, for sure. You know, my, my license is a federal license. Right on. CPA is a state license. An enrolled agent is a federal license. And I've gotten very active with educational organizations. I go to no less than three tax conferences a year, one of them being an international tax conference that I try to hit every year. Very cool. And then I serve on the board for the Texas Society of Enrolled Agents, the local DFW chapter. And I'm very active in the state chapter. And in fact, the Texas Society of Enrolled Agen awarded me their EA of the year this year.
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B
Nice.
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A
So. So I try to give back to our community as well as, you know, taxpayers in general and, and the community in general. But the difference is the education. I don't, I don't take education. Continuing education on how to fill out a 1040. Yeah, some people need that. Absolutely need that. But after nearly three decades, I don't need that anymore. What I do need is the more advanced level of what's coming down the pipeline. And Absolutely. With this current huge tax act that's hitting us right now as we speak, some of it hit this year, a lot of it hits next year. And on. There's a lot of education that's required around that to understand it because it's so complex that Congress is even still hashing it out. And yeah, we're going to see changes to it all of this next year.
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B
Very cool.
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A
As they firm it up. So I would say that if you're interviewing a tax professional, you're looking for, like, who should I look for? Definitely somebody who stays up with the current tax trends, current tax law, somebody who gets at least the minimum tax requirement for professionals is 24 hours a year. I'm currently sitting at just shy of 100 hours this year. But that's because, you know, like I said, I go to a lot of conferences and I chaired this tax conference in Mexico this year, so that was a lot of fun too. So we can have some fun while we learn.
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B
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
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A
Yeah. But that's what I would look for. There's a lot of, you know, unfortunately, I need a license to file your nails. I don't need a license to do your taxes, but you should have one to do your payoff.
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B
That's such a great Instagram hook. If I was dual scrolling and I heard you say, I was like, wait, what? I didn't know that. Such an Amazing hook.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Yeah, dude.
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A
Unfortunately. Very true.
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B
Oh, for sure. Yeah. Good old America. The usa. Oh, gosh. I don't even know where to pivot this conversation, actually. When I'm sure. Did you start this on your own? Were you just solo? Were you lone wolfing it? And then you started building your team? Talk about your experience when it comes
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A
to running your lone wolfing it. So I started out as a single mom. I had four young children from newborn to seven years old. Right on. And I became an instant mom, going through a horrendous divorce from a man who told anybody who'd listen that he was going to destroy me. Been there with her, you know, as the oldest daughter, the oldest granddaughter, the oldest niece, the oldest, you know, sibling, everything. Don't tell me you're in destroyer.
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B
Yeah. Don't mess with me. I'll be like, don't mess with me, motherfucker.
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A
Hold my beer.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Hold my beard.
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B
This is my elbow. That's what we start with.
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A
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I'm like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. So now I've got to find a job that helps me raise my own children, support my children, because he wasn't gonna pay child support if he wasn't forced to. So I needed a good income, and I needed to come out not just as a survivor, but as a thriver, and I needed to have an income that gave me that flexibility. And so one of my instructors took me a very long time to finish college, but one of my instructors told me that I had a propensity for this, you know, like, wow, you. You know, accounting. You really get this. This concept that was accounting. It wasn't tax, but he was a partner in a tax firm in a CPA firm. And he said, you know, take a QuickBooks class, and then I'll go over some stuff with you. QuickBooks at that time was. We were in the 90s. That's a long time ago. It was desktop. And. And so he started giving me jobs at their firm, started having me work on tax returns at their firm. I started showing me how to get clients and started giving me clients. And at that time, I was making $50 an hour in 1997. That was a lot of money.
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B
Oh, yeah.
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A
And I was at home with my kids.
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B
Cool.
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A
And so that's kind of where I started. And from there, working at that firm. Love those guys. They were super supportive of me. They were. They believed in me, and they were like, you know, you don't even need to sit for your cpa, which was My next step, I said, don't do that. EAs know more about taxes than CPAs do now. That's what he says. It's not my quote. That was what he said. There's a lot of very smart CPAs that know a lot about tax. So that's not my point of my story. What he said was, you can learn more, know more, and be better at taxes if you do this.
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B
Oh, for sure.
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A
And so that's what I did. So I sat foreign, passed the exams, and. And so then my kids saw me do that. They saw me fight through. They saw, you know, mom did this in a time when that wasn't a thing. Working at home was not a thing in the 90s, it just wasn't. Most people didn't have computers. We had the old dial up Internet, you know, the whole.
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B
I was in middle school making websites, so just. I was part of the Webbies. This is a different time. Yeah, 97 was a good year.
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A
Yeah, it was. It was so. So my kids have watched me do that. And though through the years, I live in a southern state, I'm part of the LGBT community, so I feel like I have to set myself a little higher, you know, to be respected in the heteronorm society, which is tax. Honestly, it's a very conservative industry with a lot of old dinosaur CPA men. And so in Texas, with old men, being a girl, being a gay girl is a whole nother thing, you know. And so I needed to prove to myself that I'm better, stronger, smarter, you know, so that I would be respected in those fields. And I am.
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B
And look at you go.
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A
Yeah. So. And now my oldest daughter and my youngest daughter both work for me. My oldest daughter is following my footsteps and in fact came to me as a single mom with two daughters and said, hey, mom, you know, you were 27 when you started your tax firm. I'm 28. I'm already behind the eight ball. I want to do what you do. And I'm like, let's do it. So she is studying for her exams. She is doing some lower level tax stuff. If it's not a business, you know, just kind of getting her feet wet. She runs my office. She manages the bookkeeping that. My youngest daughter does bookkeeping for me. And she's a rock star. She's my right arm.
- [14:32]
B
Some folks have a knack for the numbers. They just see the numbers everywhere, and those are the folks that just make, like, authentically honest, you know, CPAs. Sure. But I mean, folks like you that are strategists and see the numbers and go beyond just tomorrow. They go a decade, even a decade into their legacies. It's really powerful stuff. How did you know that you were on the path of greatness? Like this is it like your origin story is quite literally death and time. You were going to destroy this man that was willing to destroy you and your children and you said, no, I'm going to attack you with the numbers. I guess I just answered your own question.
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A
I love it. Keep going. Tell me about me.
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B
But how did you just know that?
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A
Wow.
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B
I can truly see the numbers. Folks are affirming my power. Let's use this power for good. How did you know?
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A
You know, I guess I have to go back to those, you know, those two guys that I worked with at the beginning. Leon has now passed away. He then became my resource partner. So in our industry, resource partner means we had our own book of business, our own clients, did our own thing. But we shared an office, we shared software, and we shared a receptionist. And through that we also bounced ideas off each other. And that was invaluable. It was, you know, iron sharpens iron. And you know, I tease about him being my work husband, you know, and he was, he was a great, great man. I miss him terribly, you know, because he, he passed away on March 11, which is a very detrimental time in our industry. It's four the business corporate tax deadline. But I owe a lot to him for the support and the encouragement from day one. He's like, you're smart, you can do this and I'm going to help you get there. So that was great that I had that. I'm also a self starter and unfortunately a little bit of a workaholic. So I think that I feel like you should do what you love and you should do what you're good at and you should stay in your lane. And you know, too many business owners spread themselves too thin doing too many things. And that's why I focus on businesses. I think it was a natural progression from doing bookkeeping. I'm doing bookkeeping for businesses. Now I'm doing taxes for businesses. Now I'm doing the taxes for the owners of the businesses. And that's just kind of how that came. Quite frankly, a W2 only tax return is boring to me.
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B
Oh, for sure.
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A
It just doesn't stimulate me.
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B
Yeah, exactly.
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A
So it's not my thing. It's just not. So. But what does stimulate me or what do what? I really just like, you know, want to get into this. You Know is when I see a complex tax return with, you know, a mover and shaker, somebody who's just go, go, go, you know, bring it in the business, hand over foot, and then stuff kind of falls away. Right, the bookkeeping falls away. Oh, yeah. Without good books, we don't get good taxes. Right. So, you know, we got to start with that. But then I love seeing the complexity and, like, where. Where are you not taking advantage of the legal. I don't want to call them loopholes, but the legal tax strategies that are advantages. The strategies and advantages that are out there, we stay definitely legal. Everything that I do, I can fight with the IRS for you because I know the statute and the IRS rules and regulations to be able to get you there. But our strategies are advanced, and they're. They're primarily for people who want to pay less taxes and not just, oh, I'm paying a couple hundred bucks, I want to pay less, but I'm paying, you know, five and six figures every year in taxes, and I need to pay less, for sure. And there are strategies out there. You know, I mean, you mentioned the billionaires aren't paying as much.
- [18:16]
B
Oh, no. And everyone's on Twitter or whatever it's called today going, why is that happens? Like, because you're not paying what's due to figure out the actual knowledge of what's happening all around you.
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A
Right.
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B
So keep doing whatever it is on your phone and go away.
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A
Right, right.
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B
Speaking of staying on your phone and going away, how can folks learn more about you and discover you? Do you have a website, a social.
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A
I have a website. I have an Instagram that I'm not as good as I should be with it, but I do have a website and I have a fairly active Facebook business page, and I have a calendar that's open to people that they can schedule a get to know you appointment with me. Great. For free.
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B
Oh, that's awesome. A discovery call, as you will.
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A
A discovery call. Yes. And that's exactly what it calls. Get to know you to see if we're good to work together. Because you may not be my ideal partner in this, and I may not be your ideal partner. So.
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B
So who is your ideal partner for folks that are watching, listening to this, who is the person that you want to go ahead and click down this amazing video funnel to get to learn to learn to schedule that call with you? Who's ideal client?
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A
Definitely a business owner. Definitely somebody who, you know, we do consultations, too. You just want to ask me questions and learn more about what your situation is. We can, you know, you can buy an hour of my time, and we can do that. But ideally, the clients that I work with are growing. They're sometimes growing too fast for their own good, but they're growing, and they kind of all of a sudden found themselves in this position like, oh, wow, this business really does make good money. And now look at the taxes I owe.
- [19:51]
B
Yep.
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A
And, you know, we. They get to tax time, and they're like, oh, crap, you know, what can I do? Well, on April 15, it is too late. We are too late. We are just recording history. There are little, tiny things we can do that will hit last. Little tiny fees, maybe not big fees. You know, maybe there's some retirement venues that are available to us that we can still hit from last year, you know, But I tell clients, like, the end of the year is the best time to make sure that you're on track for what we thought you were gonna do at the beginning of the year. Because in my opinion, a tax return is just a report card.
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B
Yep.
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A
You need to know where you're going and how you're getting there before you get there. And, you know, once you got there. And we've missed last year's tax planning, it's an oopsie. So my ideal clients are people who have, you know, maybe medium to high complexity and then return a couple of different things going on multiple investments. You know, those are probably the ones that. That get the most value from me.
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B
Absolutely.
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A
But anybody who's a business owner just wants to know where they need to go, what they need to do, and who they need to hire to get it done.
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B
Right on.
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A
I can help with referrals too.
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B
Cool. And what's that website that people can find you on?
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A
The easiest one is Tarantax pro. Com. So it's T A R Y N T A X xpro dot com.
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B
Perfect. Cool. And all right, I guess that concludes our amazing episode of the Living your legacy podcast. Thank you, Taran Tax pro. Ray Gutierrez, Podcast semi pro. And we are inside Success.