Strategies for Working with the IRS When Your Dental Practice is Audited

The Transcript

Art Wiederman, CPA: Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of The Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. I'm your host, Art Wiederman. I am a dental division director at the CPA firm of Eide Bailly. We are a regional CPA firm located primarily west of the Mississippi River. I said east at one point and I've got the East and the West all figured out now. So we're mostly west of the Mississippi.  

And I have a great, great guest for you today. One of the great things about joining this firm is, as I've told you guys before, imagine you're a general dentist and then you have access to the best periodontist. The best endodontist, the best orthodontist right here as part of your team. Well, one of our wonderful, wonderful tax partners is Ben Peeler. Ben is out of Salt Lake City. He is a partner and he runs the IRS Tax Controversy Group at Eide Bailly. And he's an expert on everything and anything having to do with the IRS. And we're going to talk about a lot of stuff we're going to talk about. What does the $80 billion and 87,000 new employees coming to the IRS mean over the next ten years?  

What are we going to talk about? Some of the IRS Dirty Dozen, some of the things that if you guys are thinking about getting involved in, you might want to think twice about, you know, what happens if you get audited, what's important? What's not important. So Ben is an amazing resource for us. In fact, I had a problem with the IRS and a couple of his team members were unbelievably helpful in getting me to the right people at the IRS and we got the problem solved. It took 3 hours on the phone, me sitting on hold, but we got it done.  

So anyway, we will chat with Ben in a couple minutes. I want to again remind you to please, please go on to the website of our wonderful, wonderful marketing partner Decisions in Dentistry magazine www.DecisionsinDentistry.com and they have over 140 amazing continuing education classes available at a very, very reasonable price for an annual basis and top clinical content of all the top clinicians in the world. www.DecisionsinDentistry.com.  

If you need any help from us, we are recording in early October. This podcast will probably be published sometime in late November. So if we get down to your in tax planning, if you're not meeting with your CPA or you don't get a call from your CPA, give us a call. My phone number is 657.279.3243 and my email is awiederman@EideBailly.com. We work with over a thousand dentists in all of our offices. We have about 300 plus in our office here in Southern California in Tustin.  

And I also want to encourage you, we have our Business of Dentistry webinar series that's going on. It's the first Friday, I believe, first or second Friday of each month. By the time you hear this, we may be down to the last one in December. If you want to register for that series in December, we're doing year-end tax planning with Mel Schwarz and we're also doing a three part transition series. They'll be available not only live on Friday mornings, but also on our Eide Bailly YouTube page. Send me an email at awiederman@EideBailly.com and we will send you the registration information.  

So some interesting things that are happening at the IRS as kind of a setting the table to talk to Ben. The most recent bill that was passed by Congress basically allocated $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service over the next ten years. Much of that, according to some of the things I've been reading about 46 billion is going to be used for enforcement activities and trying to cut down the 600 plus billion dollar tax gap. And the tax gap, folks, is, you know, the amount of tax liability, the amount of income that is not reported that should be reported on people's tax returns. So they say they're not going after anybody who makes more than $400,000. They say that they are going to hire 80,000 people, of which the IRS is losing. A lot of people want to talk about that. So we've got that going on. And so basically what we're talking about is. What is the IRS? What do they do? How do they do it? And how do you need to prepare for your taxes? So Ben Peeler from Eide Bailly, welcome to the Art of Dental Finance and Management.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Glad to be here.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, thanks for thanks for coming on today, Ben. And let's start off by sharing a little bit about your. Well, let me before I do that, let me let me give you a little bit about Ben. Ben joined the firm early in 2014 at Eide Bailly with many years of tax experience, both as an attorney and an accountant. He specializes in federal tax controversy and procedure work, helps clients in the areas of income tax, estate and gift tax, property tax, sales and use tax, estate planning and other tax matters. I think we covered all the big taxes. Ben's vast experience includes representing clients before the IRS, as well as representing the IRS, representing the IRS before the United States Tax Court and during litigation before the federal district courts. As a special assistant to the United States attorney, that sounds like really important. Today, Ben leads the firm's IRS practice and procedures as a federal tax controversy and procedure specialist and serves on Eide Bailly National Tax Office team that's committed to helping clients resolve tax issues. So Ben, add a little bit to that. Tell us a little bit about your professional journey.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Sure. So obviously I worked for the IRS for eight years, but prior to that, I worked at a couple different law firms that were tax specific. And before that, I was an accountant for an internal accountant. When I was an internal accountant, I had a tax director that kept telling me, you need to be a lawyer, you're not an accountant, you need to go to law school. She had me work on the tax return there for a large corporation and convinced me to do that. So I went to law school, found out that I did like it, but I was still focused in the tax area. It was just a natural fit coming from accounting. So I worked for a while for an estate and gift tax planning, an income tax work for a law firm. When I came out of law school and then I switched to another one that was primarily focusing on captive insurance companies and developing them, providing those models for clients. And I worked on the tax side of that sort of thing.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: When you were at IRS, what did you what what were you a revenue agent to field? What were you?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: So I was I was in the office of the IRS, Office of Chief Counsel. So attorney for the IRS. Okay. The different jobs that my career one thing you find out about the IRS is if you're willing to do work, then they'll give you lots of work and promote you as fast as you can. But you can only be promoted so much. So I was I started out in the small business self-employed division, ended up in what's called L.B. and I, large business and international. And when I left the IRS, I was a special trial attorney handling the significant case litigation. So that's large cases, those cases the IRS didn't want to lose. So. Right.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, so you're the guy. If they don't want to lose, they have a you what you're saying is they have attorneys over there that if they want to lose a case, you send it to Joe. Right. Is that works?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: There's a lot of attorneys that they would say retire in place. Right.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, my wife's cousin was an attorney for the IRS. And she would always I would always call her with, you know, hey, can you kind of help me? I got a problem. No names, you know, and it would be kind of kind of cool about that. So let's jump in. We got a lot to talk about then. So the IRS has this thing called The Dirty Dozen, and these are things that you get involved with, folks that you've been approached by promoters for. And I've had clients promote, you know, been approached. I've shot down more bad investment and tax fraudulent ideas than I care to remember in almost 40 years of practice. But I want to hit some that dentists are generally going to have to deal with. So let's just kind of hit them pretty quickly. But explain let's start off with conservation easements and then explain a little bit about what they are. And there's a little loophole in the partnership tax rules that allow a deduction. But talk about that a little bit.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah. So conservation easements, pese. Ah, not a bad thing. What the IRS and when I worked for there as I was on the group that handled a lot of these cases, they like they go after all sorts of easements, but the main one they're worried about or what are called syndicated easements. And that's what you're talking. Not when there's the partnership rule exception that allows a deduction. What they tend to do is they markets you know, the conservation easement is basically donated. A piece of property of some sort could be real estate. It could be. And, you know, actually. You know, it's not the whole piece of real estate is just an easement protecting it from being changed. I mean, there's every state has a has a law that allows it because there's a policy in place pretty much everywhere that people want to preserve land or the beauty of land or the building. Actually, it could be or some other kind of item that the people you know, that there's a political reason to keep them around the way they are. But what people start to take advantage of is first, it was kind of just the valuation of things. And they because there's in the courts, there's this process of valuing those easements and they would value them at the highest and best use. And they might pick a best use that, you know, New York skyscrapers out in the middle. Right. The Montana builds best. So the IRS that's kind of progressed over time and it's gotten to the point where now they syndicated easements. The IRS doesn't like it. If it offers deduction, that's more than two and a half times what you actually invest into the business.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: I've seen a couple. And the ones that I saw were 5 to 6 times.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah, that's very typical because it's also a very competitive thing. There's the they'll go up and up because they're trying to get more investors as the IRS sort of tighten the noose, as you say. But when I was with the IRS, we thought we had won this in 2011. There was a case that was an important case then that kind of set where the court said, hey, you got to have a really good reason why the highest and best use isn't just what you're using it for now. But that didn't dissuade anyone. There's still many of these. The one thing that people don't realize is as many people go in, we are working to settle them out and they usually don't come out so well now.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: And so talk about let's say somebody does this, they invest $50,000 and they get a K-1 with a $250,000. And it's a charitable donation. And this is with any of these dirty dozen. So let's say IRS goes in. They do this. It doesn't get settled. Maybe it goes to trial, whatever. And the taxpayer flat out loses. Right. What happens? I mean, the taxpayer doesn't go to jail or do they? I don't know. How much does it cost them penalties and how does that work?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Well, if they went to trial and lost, what the IRS is asserting now is up to 40% penalties for overstated, overstated valuation. And then they might allow you, because a lot of times what happens is you put the money in and you don't get it back. Right. The promoter's taking the money or maybe they spent the money defending the case, depending on how they work it. But so the court the IRS has settled out. A lot of those there's a settlement tranche, they call it now where you get your deduction for what you put in out-of-pocket costs as what is usually termed. But then, you know, you're going to lose your deduction and the tax you avoided because of that, plus penalties and interest. So.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Right. And it gets very, very, very. And yeah, so so that's a that's one folks. You know, conservation easements is on their list. And so let's go to one that most of our clients are involved in is corporation basis. So let me explain and I'll let Ben explain kind of how this works, too. So doctors were coming to the end of the year, right? And you're an S Corp single member. S corp. You own your practice and your Henry Schein rep comes to you and says, Hey, listen, we got a special on a CBC team machine. It's normally 150 grand. We're going to sell it to you for 100. And, you know, we can get it in there. It has to be placed in service, folks. Remember, if you buy a piece of equipment and they say just make the first payment, we placed it in service in January, you don't get the deduction. But if you're an S corp, if you don't have S corporation basis, then you have a problem. You do not let me repeat and I've said this many times on this podcast, you do not get s corporation basis by taking a loan. I guess then unless you follow the 11 Circuit's decision, which nobody does anyway. Right. But anyway, explain how people get in trouble with s corporation basis. You can lose a big deduction if you're not careful.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah, I would say the biggest problem and this is probably the number one thing we have audited for all of our clients, doctors, dentists especially is the informality of using s a on a, you know, not following the documentation rules because you can't just you can just you can lose basis by just not being able to prove it. You might really have it. You just don't have the documentation information to prove it. That's always becomes our biggest problem. But the IRS doesn't. Like, you know, loaning money back and forth to them yourself, using it as a your pocketbook. Like you've got a bank account there, but you pay personal expenses out of it. And so those are formalities, of course, problems. But the loans especially, they're not documented and they don't follow. You know, you can borrow money from a corporation. You just have to make sure that you're paying interest back or vice versa, right? Sometimes you lend money and that and you know, neither of those give you basis either. But.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, and the other thing, Ben, is reason and this I'll jump into this one. The other things aren't always reasonable compensation folks. If any of you are operating your dental practice as an S corporation and you are not taking a salary or you're taking $10,000 a year, then that's not good, right? Right.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: These go hand in hand. Right. You can't it's either they go after you for the basis or they're going after you for reasonable compensation. So because it usually works out that you don't get one and the other, right. So reasonable compensation becomes a big problem when people do use it as a pocketbook. And they don't want to they want to record that as a distribution and they're only taking a small salary. But they don't realize there's a whole bunch of court cases. The IRS has one where essentially, if you if you're the primary provider of the revenue. Right. So if you're a dentist and you don't have as many other people that are providing it, essentially, it's got to meet a reasonableness test there. And your salary should be like if you're driving in, you know, 75% of the revenue, you can't explain how you could just pay a $30,000 salary would be is, you know, close to what you actually make.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah. And I have a rule of thumb that I'd be interested in your opinion. You know, when I mean, I've done this work for a long, long time. I'm kind of a 5050 guy. In other words, if I make 300,000 the dental practice, I'm going to take maybe 150,000 wages and maybe take 150 a distribution. How do you feel? Do you think that's okay? Do you have a do you have a number in your mind? I guess it depends on the situation.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Well, there's a lot of pitfalls. And the main the main that works because the IRS serves as a general rule with its auditors that if you're paying yourself salary up to the physical limit, then they'll tend to just let it go.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: And that's about $150,000. I think it's a little they think it's 147 for this year maybe, but you know. Yeah. So. So you're okay with that, right?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Well, I would definitely say that is a good start. But you have to you have to be careful because of your situation. Like we've had oral surgeons that had basically they're the only ones that can provide the revenue. Right. If they're not, they're doing it and they might bring in $1,000,000 in a year. It's very hard to justify that. They're not that that their salary shouldn't be $1,000,000 because you couldn't go higher. You'd have to go hire another oral surgeon to come in there and do all that work. You're gonna have to hire them, pay them something similar.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, and then. Yeah, but once you get over that hundred and 50,000, you're only looking at 3.8% as opposed to 15.3. So the numbers get. Yeah. So if you're taking no salary or a very, very little salary, folks, that's a big deal. I want to hit a couple because I got a lot more to talk to you about. The employee retention tax code. I just got another email last night from a client who says, I went out and hired a company and they told me I'm eligible for all the quarters of this and I'm going to get 150 grand. And I didn't meet any of the revenue reduction. We've talked about this ad infinitum. Until I want to throw up then is, you know, 50% reduction in a quarter in 2020, 20% reduction in 2021. And unless you've got a government order, you know, and there's companies popping up, are you starting to see some of that or is a little too soon?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: So it's a little too soon to see the audits, but we definitely know we've seen plenty of the sort of fraudulent filing claims. Right. Of course, Eide Bailly will calculate this and determine it for you and we'll follow all the rules. But there are plenty of competitors that are, in my mind, just creating fraudulent claims. People that we've told you don't qualify and but they'll say they qualify. And we say, well, how is that possible? I mean, this is the rules. There's there's very little guidance. But one thing that's sure is that since there's a five year statute of limitation on this, that you won't really get iris positions until they start it. And everyone, of course, you submit your claim it's taking forever to get your refund anyway. But you know, there there will be a hammer that comes down. It's just that the IRS, they usually work on a clock when there's two years left. And so we have a five year statute. That clock has not started.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: And I want to point one thing out then. So, folks, when you take an I.R.S., let's say you get $100,000 credit, you're going to have to and let's say it's all in 2021, you're going to have to add back $100,000 to your income because you can't take a. It and a deduction for the same wages because it's all based on wages. So here's what's going to happen. Five year statute of limitations. Four years into this, they are that you. And they say, no, this is bogus. And we're just allowing the whole thing. And you lose. And you go back to your CPA and you say, oh, well, go back and amend those tax returns that we had at the back. I'll get some of this back. No, you won't, because that three year statute for amending returns will have run. Did I get that right?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: That's true. You can make a protective claim on the other returns to protect yourself, but it seems kind of inconsistent. People don't. And the people that are pitching that don't tend to say, hey, just in case this goes wrong, maybe you go take a different position.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: And then if someone at the IRS sees the protective claim, they might put your name on the list and say, we should look at these guys.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah, I think there would be such a lot of them out there. I mean, the biggest thing people need, remember, it's just sheer numbers. There's the IRS estimates there's probably $1,000,000,000,000 of fraud in this area. I mean, I think it'll keep me in business for as long as I want to.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: I can see you on my screen. Your hair is not gray like mine, so you might be going along for a while. Let's. Let's jump in. So, guys, I'm going to tell you again, if you have a company that tells you you qualify for all six quarters of 2020 and 2021 because you had a social distance and you had to cut down and you had to do this and you had to do that, you know, if you're going to do this I told this one client yesterday, I said, you know, if you're going to choose to do this not through Eide Bailly, take that money, stick it in a money market account for five years and don't touch it because you got to be prepared if you get caught, if after five years you don't get called, then maybe you're okay. Then let's jump into research and development tax credit. I know they've tightened the rules on that. Are you dealing with some of that, too?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yes. So this is a you know, the IRS has a lot of procedural problems that they've run into. When I worked for the IRS, we used I used to live in Southern California. You know, Southern California. Everybody has a screenplay. Right. So my friends and I, we thought, well, you need to make a screenplay out of the IRS and then let that show the office. Yes. Yeah. There's definitely could be a movie made out of that. We said it was it should be created just for the government stuff. And that's what we've got here with the research and development tax credit, because when you have turnover in the IRS, they let people come in and they literally don't know what they're doing, they don't know what they're talking about. And it's up to practitioners like me to educate them. We educate them one case at a time, and that's what we have for the R&D tax credit. I used to work in these cases when I was with the IRS and we trained everybody. Everybody knew what they were doing and it was working like clockwork. Well, they all retired. And now there's a whole new crop of agents that basically they don't understand it and they deny it all. So we have to take a lot of these cases to appeals and tax court.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: And yeah, yeah, you and I have educated more IRS agents and we care to remember probably.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: And it doesn't help that there's a lot of fraudulent filings for that credit as well.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, I mean, that's true. And I think well, let's get into some other topics here. So I know there have been big frustrations. I mentioned it earlier in the podcast. We have a pandemic. The IRS is basically shut down for over a year, if not longer. They've gotten way behind. The last number I saw was 5.1 million amended returns that have not been processed. I know they're getting caught up. What's going on right now? Let's not talk. We'll talk a little later about the new employees and budget they're going to get. But what's going on right now? What if a taxpayer calls the IRS, what can they expect? What's going on right now with the IRS?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Well, before COVID, we used to be able to call in and it would still take a long time to get in and fix a problem. But now it takes many hours and we actually have to pay a service that can get us in line so that we can wait and get a hold of the IRS. We get in line ahead of time. You know, we hate those things, but we have to pay for them now.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, and that's what you did for me. And it was golden.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: And I still had to wait almost 3 hours. But imagine if I didn't have that.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Right, it could take days. Other people, I don't think it is possible to even get in. We use an East Coast phone line number so that we can get in because backed by area code they assign you to different. Phones are scarce. So we have to do all these different tricks. It's almost as if you just can't do it on your own anymore. And I hate that because the biggest problem is with all those back returns, the way the IRS has set up all of its automatic penalties and application of payments. It worked fine when the IRS would actually process returns in a reasonable timeframe. Right. And the IRS would then process your payments and put them in the right place. But now, because returns cleared from 2019 and amended returns for 2019 or 2018 still haven't been processed then the IRS keeps applying the payments to the wrong places and we have to spend 5 hours just getting the payment put in the right place. We've had situations where that's taken 14 months just to straighten out a simple, misapplied payment, and then the IRS doesn't apply it to the right date. It becomes a huge mess.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: And then you have to explain to your client, why did it take this long? And it's our time and all this kind of stuff. So is it I mean, and the pandemic just put them further behind, right?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Oh, and it's and they're losing personnel at the same time, so they just can't catch up. So they're right. It's just mounting amounts of returns and we don't know how they're going to fix it. Obviously, we hope so. Bill helps. But yeah.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, we're going to get into that new bill and what it's going to mean. But I've heard statistics that as much as 40 or more percent of all IRS notices are incorrect. And I mean, we're going to talk about the new employees and the money they're going to get. But the IRS computer system, for those of you who don't know, is circa 1960. From what I understand, Ben, talk about their system and the problems that they're having with that.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Well, yeah, it's funny because when I worked for the IRS, I volunteered for I tried to fix a lot of things and nobody wants to fix things, but I volunteered for a committee that would help sort of put all of those processes into one, because it's not just one computer system. They basically have five separate databases that are built in old IBM RPG programming and where they have to pay consultants huge amounts of money because no one does that anymore.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Nobody does. There was this thing called DOS when you were when I started.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: This article, RPG. And I'm not a computer expert, but all I know is that I spent six years on that computer and we finally got it to give us a report, which was a whole bunch of computer gibberish. But if we learned to read our code book, we could interpret it enough that we could find out this data. So there's data that the IRS has. They just don't have the tools to get it out. I mean, they from what I understood, it's been almost $1,000,000,000 a year on those things. But it was just to maintain the status quo.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: So if you if you were in charge of the IRS, I mean, you would put in a circa 22 new computers. I mean, is that something that this government is willing or able to do at some point between now and the year 2100?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Social Security did it. So they paid a lot of money. They have a bigger budget than the IRS. They paid a lot of money to fix their computer system and it changed things night and day. We used to have to deal with Social Security a lot because there was a lot of fraud back and forth. And when they change that, it was great. I could certainly think they could do it, especially if this money, they use a lot of this money to do so.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, we'll talk about them. We'll get to the money. So.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: I mean, you literally had to sign on to different databases to get different reports and you couldn't. And also the way it works is I was not allowed to sign on to the computers only by the because the union rules you had to it was designated to certain people. So you had to like put in a paper request for them to pull up a report for you. And then it might take a couple of weeks because, you know, they've got to go do everybody else's report. That's the system they work under. There's not you can't just go to your computer, type it up, boom, you got it. You have to wait until you get it oftentimes mailed to you.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, it was funny. When I was on the phone with the IRS, I said to the lady, after 3 hours, I said, So can I give you my phone number in case we get disconnected? No. Can you give me your phone number unless we get disconnected? No. So I said, what happens if we get disconnected? Will you have to start all over again? Oh, that's wonderful. You know, so it's kind of crazy. So, Ben, I've been a CPA for almost 40 years. You have a long history of not only with the IRS, but in this business and as an accountant, a tax accountant, you know, I hear that business owners sometimes run things through their businesses that maybe not exactly qualified under Section 162, which is ordinary, necessary business and things like that. I mean, we all know that that happens. So maybe some advice for our clients who just don't think they're going to get audited here. Well, the audit rate is 1/10 of 1%. And my. But he did this. So let's talk. I want to talk about both the expense side and the income side. Let's start with the expense side. What is Irs? What are they looking at when they audit a dental office, you know? And what should our clients be thinking about when they're thinking about, am I going to run this through?  

My favorite. My favorite, by the way, before you tell my favorite story, real quick. So one of my clients, my staff accountant, came to us, came to me and said, well, there's a check made out to the doctor for $9,500. And he didn't code it with our chart of accounts. And we don't know what it is. What should we do? I said, we're going to have some fun. I called the office manager, Ben, and I said, All right. Office manager. And before I could say anything, he she said, because I never call. She says art. He said you were going to call. And he said not to tell you what it is. And I said, Great. So I threatened her with jail and all kinds of torture and everything. She's all right. It's his hair transplant. And I said, you know, the hair transplant goes right between dental supplies and dental. I mean, I mean, we see stuff so talk about Ben dentists who get too aggressive on their taxes on the expense side. And then we'll talk about the revenue side in a second.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah, well, obviously, the reasonable compensation is the biggest problem we see. But beyond that, it's very common for people to deduct their second home and or different like I don't know who it is that promoted it, but there's a whole bunch of doctors and dentists that are told that if they store records in one in that second home, that they can somehow write it off, which of course not appropriate. But, you know, that's one that's very common. Any there's the same thing like you're talking about their baseball tickets and things like that. They used to go through that's a little and curbed a little bit by changes in the law. But it was very common for people to buy season tickets, then go and sell them and deposit them, you know, then into their own pocket when they got when they sold them to someone else.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: I'm shocked. I'm shocked to hear that. Oh, go ahead.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: That amounts to, you know, thousands of dollars. And, of course, it's a big problem if you underreport your income, that's essentially underreporting your individual income because you took a deduction at that level, passed it on and then pocketed it and didn't report the difference. Anything like that is can be a big problem because the IRS doesn't even if it's a small amount, they attack that aggressively.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: So and we have the 20% underreporting penalty and talk about the penalties for a minute then that people could end up getting. I mean, there's I mean, there's fraud. There's a fraud penalty. And there is no statute of limitations on fraud, right?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Correct. And so if you if you. Well, there's the if you underreport your income by 25%, then you have a six year statute. Okay. And if you and if you if it's fraudulent deductions or income, then there's no statute. So they are asking after your any for any length of time. And they could also, if it's large enough, make a criminal case out of it. We've had that situation where the rent there's the multiple the rent's deducted for one practice, but they rent it out to other people. And then they personally deposited the rent checks and didn't report it and that the IRS referred criminally. So I mean, it doesn't have to be that large, just if it's blatant and obvious, then they can get after you. I mean, one story I had from the IRS was we had an ice cream man that falsified his invoices. And I mean, he only had like $36,000 of revenue for the year, but he claimed a loss and more than a third of those were false invoices that he created. And so they put him in jail. So, I mean, it's egregious, they will do it. Yeah.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: They do not. And again, folks, if you're going to play the audit lottery and Russian roulette, that's up to you. But I sleep very well at night, not only with my own tax return, but the way I prepare. We've prepared returns over over the years. Let's get into the revenue side, because this is where you can really get in trouble. I mean, I tell I tell people I had a client then who the dental consultant that they were working with came to me and said, You need to know that this client is not reporting 8 to $9000 a month of cash that's coming into their dental practice. She says, What do you want to do? I said, I want to have a meeting. So then after a little small talk, I confronted them with that and I said, So can you tell me why? And the answer was amazing, because you would have made me pay taxes on it, art. And I said, okay. And the next sentence out of my mouth was, Be aware that both you and I have signed this tax return under penalty of perjury, and it's right on the return, and that is criminal and that is serious. And you have put me at risk and therefore I am terminating our relationship immediately. Please tell me who your new CPA is and I will cooperate in sending the records over. Talk about. Talk about what happened. So if you get caught not reporting income.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Well, I have a story a quite a few cases I had when I first started. The IRS were based on whistleblower claims and those might be from the CFO or in most cases, it was the ex-wife. Oh, yeah.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Or had extra boy guys. That's the best tax planning we can do. The better I can give you. Watch out for that ex-wife. Don't get an ex-wife. I've been married 37 years, and in my contract, there will not be an ex-wife. Lynn, I promise there will not be an ex-wife. I love you to death. Go ahead.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Well, this in this case, it was a co-op, a farming co-op. Right. And so there's several members of the co-op. And one of them decided he was going to sell a lot of the farm products out the back door. And not a lot of people know. But a lot of the when you go to a the little farm, what are those called, where you go to the little shop. The little yeah.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: The little farmers market. Yeah. Yeah.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Farmers market. A lot of the damaged products from a large farmer, they sell to these guys who sell to the farmer's market. And he sold all the stuff for the farmer's market, which amounted to about 300,000 a year. Unbeknownst to his other co-op members out the back door and in his divorce, his ex-wife said, hey, you know, he personally pockets all this money. And so she wanted a portion of it. Right. And so I ended up getting back to the IRS. And of course, they went after him criminally, but he lost his entire business. The rest of the co-op members kicked him out, which virtually ended his ability to make any money. So, I mean, that's I mean, a horrible I think an egregious example. But it was just because the small money I mean, they made hundreds of millions of dollars in the co-op itself. Right. And his portion was well over 30 million. So that was pennies that he was, you know, not reporting compared to the money, but it was a big deal.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Now, I've been involved, as you have been in business audits, and I know that a lot of them I was involved in ah, two day audit and the first day unless they've changed it is a, an income verification process that the auditor goes through. So they're spending half their time looking for unreported income. They're looking, you know, they're looking for, for matching up production reports to to collection reports to your panel, to your bank statements. I mean, they have a process. And so the best advice, I think, been and correct me if I'm wrong is, guys, if you're going to be aggressive on your taxes and nobody says you should pay one dime more in taxes than the law legally entitles you to pay, that is absolutely what you can do. But don't not I mean, that's a double negative report every dime of income. And if you're going to be aggressive, you know, I mean, we say bean, there's black, there's white, there's gray oak. You know, white will do all day long. Black we will never do in gray. We'll talk about how do you feel about that?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Well, I think it's important for people to remember that that income is very easy for the IRS to find. So that's a very basic agent can easily find your income that you don't report. They do two things a bank deposits analysis, which they just compare all of your claimed income to what you actually deposit into your bank account and the courts will accept as a default. They'll say everything in there is reportable as income. If it doesn't match what's on your return and you have to go back and prove that it's actually not a tax taxable deposit. The other thing is the cash tea. When they if someone is using cash only, they'll use the cash to, you know, just figure out how you live and what it would cost to live that way. And then they use that as the measuring stick. And that actually is accepted by courts in certain circumstances as well. So it's just not you know, it doesn't make any sense to do that because it's easily detected and.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: They have process to do that. I want to take a second, but I want you to talk a little bit about what you and your team do at Eide Bailly and who would be appropriate if you're listening to this podcast, if you've got IRS trouble, if you haven't filed tax returns in a long time, if you're in an audit that is just not going well, if your CPA isn't able, what do you guys do? And then I want you to give out your contact information, please.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Sure. So we basically handle four separate things I like to separate into. One is the exams. That's when the IRS is actually auditing you and we can assist to that. It's a big deal to sort of buffer the agent. You don't want to ever talk to the agent. You should be represented because of what you say. Can't be misconstrued because even if you ultimately win, it can cost you thousands of dollars to go through all the way through the process. To prove a misunderstanding is a misunderstanding. Then we also do collections. That's where the IRS has special rules. You know, where you can pay on your own terms, so to speak. And you hear lots of people say, well, you can pay pennies on the dollar and we can go through that process and get someone an offer a compromise. But you have to make pennies. Ticket and is on the.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well we're going to hit that in a minute.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Most time we do installment agreements, which helps you pay over time. A lot of times that's just to prevent disruption of the business because they'll try to put leads or levies on your business. We do a lot of penalty payments in this day and age. The IRS asserts a lot of penalties automatically, and you have to go file certain forms to get the penalty removed. And we take care of that and make reasonable cause arguments to remove the penalties and or move the money to the right place, that sort of thing, procedural type items. But one thing we do, I do a lot of is vetting a lot of these because, you know, there there are valid captive insurance companies, there's valid conservation easements, there's valid reasons to have a lower salary or reasonable compensation, but it's got to fit the right parameters. And so a lot of what I do is analyze those and tell people, well, here's the risk, here's the pitfalls, here's what the case law actually says. Because if I've heard it once, I've heard a million times every lawyer or financial planner that comes to their client and says, hey, well, you know, I'm not a salesman, but and then they say and they sell things. So people just bounce those things off of me and I can tell them when it's good or bad. And obviously, if it works, why not go to the IRS? So one of the big things I do is say, hey, if this is a new thing and we think that it is an appropriate place in the law, you can get a deduction. I can call the IRS and ask them if they have a problem with it. That's actually, you know, a big way that the IRS works. It's anonymous. So you're not telling them that. But you can go get their position and understand it. So when I get people come to me and they pitch a plan or a promotion of a deduction, I say, Well, have you talked to the IRS about it? And they say, No. And I'm like, Well, why not? And usually the reason why not is because it really won't work.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: That's right. So do you ever do private letter rulings for clients that want to do a particular transaction?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yes, we have several that are pending. We do them hundreds of a year, mostly for late s corp elections and things like that. But we also do position players and work through them with the IRS. But we also do just a lot of informal advice on a verbal basis just to get an understanding of positions because the seal art can be expensive.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: So again, what you're saying is, is that if you if one of our doctors listening is being presented with a captive, a conservation easement before they invest, they could actually engage you and say, hey, Ben, would you take a look and give me your, like, unbiased non salesperson opinion and you can do that, right?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yes.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay. So why don't you give out? Because I got a lot more to cover. And I wish I had days to talk to you, because this is just really interesting to me, because what I've done for 40 years, how do people get a hold of you? And if someone has a question, they can give you a call or send an email. So give out your phone number and your email and it will also be in the show notes.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yup. My phone is 801.456.5476 and my email is Bpeeler@EideBailly.com.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay, that great. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. All right. Let's get back into some more topics before we have to wrap this up. So we have a dentist who's in deep financial trouble, their way behind in their taxes. Let's get into the discussion about what are their options, installment agreements, offers and compromise. Give a little. I know that's a whole podcast in and of itself. I know that. But if I have a dentist who just maybe they haven't filed returns or maybe they just owe a lot of money, what are their options?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah. So it's important to get someone to represent you in collections because the IRS, you know, we call it a poor man's bankruptcy. And that's just an ironic way of saying, yeah, there's you know, it's codified. There's law that requires the IRS to deal with someone's in tax trouble a certain way. So you essentially have rights to protect yourself. So what's really important is the IRS will do something that's called a viability analysis. And these are these are clerks that don't really know about how a business operates. They don't know, you know, really what a business needs or doesn't need. And they'll go in and do a viability analysis to say, because they know that if they go enforce a tax obligation, like put a leaner or a levy on something, you put them out of business because you effectively can't borrow. You can't. The banks will call your notes everything. So you have to if you put someone in place to protect you, they can go. Put all those leads and levees to the side and get you to a reasonable person, not one of the first level clerics. I mean, I'm not disparaging there IRS, but there's just a difference between a sophisticated attorney and someone that just processes paperwork. If you can get them to sophisticated attorney, you can save a business. You're just proving to the government that, look, it's better to let us pay a little bit less and keep this in business. Long term government will get more in taxes. People won't be thrown out of work, people won't lose their jobs. You just take a little bit less because although offer compromise is difficult to get, I mean, you have to have very little pay or money or assets to get one. You can get what's called a partial pay installment agreement where you're just paying every month the amount that you can prove you can pay. And the IRS just lets you stay in business, leaves you alone, and it can protect your business long term.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: We hear ads on the radio about companies that make claims that, oh, well, we can get rid of 95% of your IRS debt. I mean, I'm sure you've seen some of that. I mean, maybe just address what is real and what is not real.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: So when I left the IRS, one of the things that bothered me, the IRS more than anything, was that these companies with tax resolution companies would frequently their clients would come and get their cases. And they have done nothing for their client.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Many times, and they paid five, ten, $20,000 to them and nothing happens, right?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: And they wouldn't do anything. And I was, as the attorney would be like, well, this is what really should happen. And I would just call the taxpayers up and say, Hey, look, we can fix this so you don't have this problem. I don't know where your representative is. They'd never call me back, and I would just try to help them because we were tasked with trying to find the right tax, not just getting taxes. We wanted to do it the right way. And so when I left the IRS, I said, look, I mean, I'm a firm with 75,000 clients now. And so there are people that have IRS payment problems. They have a hard time paying in their business struggles, and we're there to help them. But we wanted to help all those other people because we frequently get them referred to us. And, you know, obviously we've got to get paid for our work, but we don't do it that way. We know how much it costs to do certain things. And so we're glad to have anybody call us. We would tell them if we can help them or we're not going to take a fee unless we actually can do it. If they can't, we'll tell them, this is the road you need to take. It might be a road you need to take by yourself, but. But you can do it and we'll tell them how to get there. So the people, you know, in different situations, but it's actually not that difficult each one. And the answer might be bankruptcy. We don't do bankruptcy. We might refer you to someone who would.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Go in there and we don't have time to get into the bankruptcy rules regarding taxes. That's just not we're going to talk about that.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: If you're only debt, if your debts are only taxes, then usually we can help you fix them.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. There are rules and there are procedures. And if you know your way around the IRS, it's a great thing. So if you guys are having some problems, you might consider reaching out to Ben and seeing what he and his team can do. I want to talk about interest in foreign bank accounts. I have seen this personally with a couple of clients where well, we just never reported that account. And and first of all, then people I've learned may have an interest in a foreign bank account and they may not even know it because the 8938 has to be filed in some cases. I mean, you might have a signature authority or you might have a spouse's signature authority. And so talk about I'm sure you've gotten involved with that. The IRS goes after that really hard, don't they?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yes. So we have an international group and the firm that helps with the compliance and filing and I assist them with what we call the reasonable cause portion. That's basically explaining why you didn't file on time so you don't get penalized. Yeah, this is a big problem because like you said, and one that we frequently get with doctors and dentists is that a lot of them will dabble in cryptocurrency and or different other investments that they don't realize are held in a foreign jurisdiction. And they will actually get the reporting. But it's confusing, it's complex. And like, like you said, they just don't realize that they might be a signatory on a bank account. It's in a foreign country. We've had people that were part of a group of people that would own a vacation home, like in Costa Rica or something, and that to maintain that house because they had staff help, you know, they would take care of it. They would keep a whole bunch of money in the bank account and everybody had signatory authority on it and it was more than $10,000. So they had FinCEN reporting requirements and didn't know it for 20 years. And there's programs that the IRS has to go back and report those so you can prevent the penalties. You just want to do it sooner rather than later. But I mean, that's $10,000 per form. And it's I mean, that's a lot of money, a lot more than the building was even worth.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: So yeah. So guys, these are the two things. If you have an accountant and you believe that you have any kind of relationship with a foreign bank account, the one form is called an FBR FBAR and the other is an 8938. If I have the number right, which is the specified foreign accounts form and there are very special rules. And if you don't, if you are required to file and it's just it's not like you have to pay additional tax, right? You just have to report that you have these accounts and disclose them. And if you don't, I mean, the penalties are huge, right. Then.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah. Our biggest problem is, yeah, they can be as much. They can be more than the entire bank. All right? Yeah.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: I'm not. That's all right.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah. So they can be huge. But one thing people don't realize is they might inherit something from somebody that's foreign assets. They might just have a piece of a business that's from a foreign country. So they might have 54, 71 requirements that their parents just give it to them. But they're like, well, I don't receive any money from it. They might actually report the income from on their return and say, Well, I'm reporting the income. What could be the problem? But the penalty, the income could be pittance, but the penalty for the form could be $10,000. You could receive $500 in dividends a year and have filing requirements, you know, ten years, $100,000.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay. So I want to know is huge.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: The percentage of the account balance.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: And by the way, if you even think, well, you know, my third cousin, second removed has a bank account in Denmark call and will tell you what the requirements are. All right. Last thing I want to talk about then, because like I said, unfortunately, this time goes by way too I have way too much fun doing this. You've been great, by the way. So the IRS is going to be hiring 80,000 new employees and they've been given 80 to $90 billion to spend over the next ten years. Tell me about that. Is that good? Is that bad or are we all going to get is this going to get worse before it gets better? What are they going to do with what do we think they're going to do with this money and the people?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: So, you know, my job is, of course, make sure people don't pay any more tax than they have to. But I would say this is a great thing and people shouldn't be upset about it because you don't want to. I mean, if you look at the IRS is underfunded compared to every other government agency. It's always been beaten down politically. And that to me is a bad thing because it creates these messes. We have to clean up messes for people that just shouldn't exist. Horrible computer systems. I think it's a great thing. They're running out of people. I mean, lots of people I know have left much earlier than they would have because it's just been so difficult. It's I think it's a very important thing. They need then not only need to hire these people, but train them, update the computer systems. But from a professional perspective, I mean, we I spend probably 20% of my year talking clients out of things that are just downright fraud. Yep. And if the IRS was better at their job, they would be able to identify and stop those people quickly. And, you know, as a taxpayer, everyone should want people to be paid their correct tax. And that's what the IRS needs to get to. Right now, it's letting people get away with things and then going after people that spending money and going after people that are probably paying their tax.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: So I'm going to read I'm going to I'm sorry, I'm going to read off of an article that I saw yesterday on CBSNews.com. So they say of the $80 billion in funding, nearly 46 billion was allocated to go towards enhanced enforcement. As the IRS looks to close its so-called tax gap, which is currently standing at an estimated $600 billion annually and seven and a half trillion over the next ten years. I believe our federal budget is somewhere in the neighborhood of about 3 to 4 trillion. So that's 2 to 3 times our annual budget, which is not getting reported as income. It's also going to be used for improving taxpayer services and technology and modernization. But I mean, this is going to take time. They have to train these people, right, then.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah. Yes. And the just the there's the estimated 150 billion of the tax gap every year comes from just the reasonable competition score.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Wow. Is that right?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah. And I mean, this is something that, you know, it's on everybody's everybody that's famous tax return. I mean, Donald Trump has it on his tax return. President Biden has it on his tax return. And I'm a tax attorney. And I'll tell you, both of them have it wrong. So, I mean, there if they went to court, they would both lose. It's something that is so bad and needs to be fixed. I mean, I don't know why that if the IRS is going to have to do it, it's going have to do it. But it's not a political thing. Right? The law is the law. Everybody's skirting it.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: So the message that I'm hearing from you and I, I didn't have to talk to you to know what the message is going to be is, folks, if you are being presented, tax schemes that are going to have you pay no taxes. I mean, if you make a half million dollars, you shouldn't pay no taxes. That's just not going to happen. And so if you have a situation that comes up are pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. And folks, if you do this and somebody tells you, your friend in the dental society said it, it was okay. And I mean, I had one situation with a company that had thousands of dentists across the United States. This is ten, 15 years ago. And one of my clients said, I'm going to go and do this company and I'm going to do this thing. And I, I was just recently married. I mean, this was a long time. It was probably 35 years ago. And I said, I can't do this. I can't sign your tax return. And the answer was, Well, all the guys at the Dental Society are signing up for it. I mean, that's like saying, you know, you can take the OTC because somebody on Tik-Tok said it was okay. Right. And then what happened? The. The C.I.D. The Justice Department came after the company, and they froze $600 billion of their assets that were all in foreign accounts. And my client got nailed. And that's what happens, folks. Now, if you want to play the audit lottery, that's fine. That's your choice. But the costs has been, as explained to you are huge and and now been with this new money and new agents, I think they're going to spend a lot of a lot of time and resources, a lot more on these issues. And that is the captives and that is the conservation easements and that's the reasonable competence corp and the RTC and the R&D. Right. I mean, that's where that's where the money is, right?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah. And even before this bill, the IRS has made a strong effort to use their data to actually go after people where they don't have the manpower to do it. They're changing their models so that they can just mine their own data and and public records to determine people that are involved in these these types of situations. So that's becoming more prevalent, whether you're being audited, not because they found the promoter and they're going after everybody that was in this transaction. Instead, they're saying, well, you had a large change in your deductions. We can tell that your bank, you know, everything changed this way and it looks fraudulent. They'll start going after the people for that. So it's changing to a digital attack.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: And under the new rules that have come in the last three or four years where before been, as I understand it, if a partnership got audited, they had to go down and audit each individual partner and it was a huge drain on the resources. Tell me if I'm getting this right. And now with some of the new rules, they can go and just assess the partnership and just assess every partner with the highest marginal tax rate is. And there are some new rules about that.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: It used to be that you ran large partnerships. The process was very difficult because even after you audited partnership, you had to go down to the partner level to find out all the penalty defenses. Now it's just all at the partnership level and the onus is on the partnership to basically prove everything up. It's much easier for the IRS. I think future legislation will keep going in this direction, making it so that the taxpayers are responsible, more responsible for the reporting. You know, we see what the international forms that we just talked about where you just have to report it, even if it's innocuous. Right. But now you don't keep doing that. So it will be more and more difficult to. You have to do more compliance, more farms, more things like that to.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Keep this what we love. Right. So last thing and then we'll wrap this up. And if you would, stay with me as I take this out, I would appreciate it. Talk about how important documentation is if someone's getting audited or you're doing things. How important is it for a dentist to have really good documentation in an audit?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Well, let's let's go back to the basis question. So a lot of times you'll have the practice will be going on for 30 years and basis is a is from inception and we'll frequently have people that are audited for basis, but we only have records for the last seven years. And so the IRS only allows you your losses and deductions up to the amount of basis that you were able to prove. And all you've got is seven years of records. We've had to go back to try to find $1,000,000 capital investment check from 1972 to basically get to the point where you were. So that I think that's the best example when it comes to documentation, because you have I can do a lot. If I have the documentation, I can prove a lot. But if I don't have it, then and I'll have got to somebody saying, well, I think I did this, I think I did that. It's not admissible in court. If it's not admissible in court, then the IRS won't consider it either.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah. Ben Peeler, you are a plethora. Plethora. That's three syllables. Yeah, I can do that word. Plethora of information. Great stuff for our listeners today, folks. Bottom line, if you have an IRS problem and that also goes, you also help clients with state problems, too, right, Ben?  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: That's true. Yes.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah. So a state or a federal problem.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Brush your best board is worse than theirs.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Oh, I should have said that, because I can tell you that from personal experience. Ben, one more time. Give out your contact information, please.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Yeah, it's 801.456.5476. My office number and then bpeeler@EideBailly.com.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah. If you have a problem or you think you have a problem or you think you might have a problem, shoot Ben an email. Give him a call. He'll be happy to talk to you. Maybe you haven't talked to one of your your team members on there, so. Ben, again, thank you.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: Anybody wants my screenplay so they can make a movie about the what we call the Department of the Interior, because everything in the government goes to them.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: I think we're going to call it annoying, annoying, annoying. You know, maybe we'll call it that. But yeah, you know, that's why you and I have a job then. And we do great work for our clients. So if you have a problem, you've been on call and do stay with me until I take the podcast out, please.  

So folks, please again go to visit our Decisions in Dentistry, our partner Decisions in Dentistry www.DecisionsinDentistry.com wonderful clinical content 140 Continuing education courses at a wonderfully low low price to get your CUE and second to none clinical content the world's best clinicians talking about the top clinical contacts and subjects in dentistry.  

Again, if you are looking for a dental CPA, give me a call. Art Wiederman. My number is 657.279.3243. We are accepting new clients, by the way. The rule is you have to be nice and most of you are nice. I love the dentists that I work with. Absolutely love them. But you have to be nice and if you're nice will take it as a client. My email address is awiederman@eidebailly.com.  

Please sign up for our lecture Business of Dentistry series. We have eight local dental societies here in Southern California that are going to be participating. We were actually recording, doing live and then recording it. The first one tomorrow. We're recording today on August the sixth, I'm sorry, October the sixth. So we've got great, great presenters, great information. They're free and they will all live on our Eide Bailly YouTube page, as did the entire series. It's still there from last year. Ben Peeler, thank you so much for your time and your expertise today and helping our listeners navigate the Internal Revenue Service.  

Ben Peeler, J.D., CPA, LL.M.: And thanks for inviting me.  

Art Wiederman, CPA: All right. And folks, with that said, thank you for the honor and the privilege of your time. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy this we get. Many of you are kind enough to send emails and asking for different topics and we've got some great stuff coming up in the coming weeks and months and I'm going to continue to do this work until they take my microphone away and they haven't said they're going to do that yet, but we'll see what happens anyway.  

Folks, this is Art Wiederman Dental Division Director at the CPA firm of Eide Bailly for Eide Bailly for the Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman. Let's try it again. The Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.