Tax planning for 2025

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week coming to you from Syracuse, New York. You know, April 15th has just gone by. And for many of us, that is a day we remember in infamy. It's the day we have to write the check to the IRS, at least here in the United States. And so today is the day tax planning for 2025 needs to start if it hasn't already started. And what I mean by that is I want you to get with your tax preparer or your tax strategist – and I hope you have a tax strategist– I want you to get with your tax preparer, your tax strategist and say, based on my ‘24 taxes, what could I or should I have done last year that would have reduced my tax burden in this year? So in other words, I need to start planning right now. I don't want to worry about it in November or December when I'm like, uh-oh, looks like I'm going to be more profitable than I thought, or our billings are going to be higher than I thought. I don't want to have to scramble to buy a car or prepay rent, or do all the things that we do to try and reduce our income at the very end of the year. I want a strategy throughout the year that helps me better mitigate my tax risk, that helps me get more money into my pocket rather than into other people's pockets throughout the year. That helps me reward my employees rather than paying more taxes.

There are a lot of things you can do – other than sort of pre spending dollars to reduce your tax bill – that are much better, much greater benefit to us as agency owners and leaders than it is to scramble at the last minute. But when you wait until November or December to have that conversation with your tax preparer or tax strategist, then you are – you have very few options. Now, if you talk to them in April and you say, all right, let's look, let's look at 2024. Let's look at the first quarter of ‘25. What strategy should I deploy – be deploying throughout the rest of the year to make sure that I don't pay another extra dime or penny than I should or could for my taxes? Am I saying, should you do something illegal? I am not. Am I saying we don't all have an obligation to pay part of our taxes? Of course we do. There's a lot of things we all count on that our taxes pay for. But there's no reason to overpay because of a lack of strategy. That's all I'm saying. Money that could go in your pocket, your employees pocket, be invested in other things in the agency, are far better spend and investment in your business than just turning around and pay – over paying your taxes. So the time to start tax planning for this year, if you haven't done it already, is today. Pick up the phone, shoot an email, get an appointment scheduled with your tax preparer or strategist, and figure out what the game plan is for 2025.

Okay? All right. See you next week.