After discussing the direction of rents, learn about an ominous new tax that’s proposed. SCOTUS and Congress are considering a tax on unrealized gains.  For example, if your gold or furniture appreciates from $5K to $8K, would you have to pay a tax on the $3K gain, even if you keep owning the gold or furniture? Tom Wheelwright from WealthAbility joins us to discuss this. Though this is considered a “wealth tax”, the middle class would have to pay it. The tax case being heard is called “Moore vs. United States”. We expect it to be decided this year.  Tom & I discuss how few people understand marginal income tax rates’ progressivity. The last dollar that you earn is taxed at your highest rate. The first dollar that you earn is taxed at your lowest rate. Timestamps: Factors Driving Rent Growth (00:02:45) Inflation, lack of inventory, expired rent freezes, shifting workforce, demand for single-family homes, high employment, barriers to homeownership. Promising Development in Multifamily Construction (00:05:33) Multifamily construction reaching a 15-year high, new supply likely to slow down apartment rent growth, inclusionary housing requirements for new construction. Current Rent Trends (00:08:04) Single-family rents up 5%, apartment rent growth at 3%, highest rent price growth in the northeastern quadrant of the US. Supreme Court Case: Moore v. United States (00:11:47) Overview of the case, implications of taxing unrealized gains, arguments for and against the taxation of unrealized income, potential impact on everyday investors and citizens. Challenges of a Wealth Tax (00:18:07) Discussion on the problematic nature of a wealth tax, potential impact on individuals and assets, comparison to estate tax, and potential implications of a wealth tax on various assets. The tax on unrealized gains (00:22:43) Discussion on the potential impact of a proposed wealth tax on unrealized gains and the complexities of taxing assets while they are still held. The regressive nature of wealth taxation (00:24:38) Exploration of the regressive nature of wealth taxation and the challenges in implementing and managing taxes on wealth. Tax laws and equal protection (00:27:19) Insights into how tax laws apply equally to everyone and how billionaires benefit from better advisors to minimize tax payments. Tax rate misconceptions (00:30:15) Clarification of misconceptions about tax rates, including the progressive nature of tax tables and the impact of earning more income. Tax strategies and investment decisions (00:32:17) Exploration of tax benefits related to investment strategies, including the impact of deductions and the suitability of IRAs for different investment types. Updates on tax laws and book release (00:34:57) Announcement of the third edition of the book "Tax-Free Wealth" and the incorporation of major tax law changes into the updated edition. Wealthy's tax contributions and future episode preview (00:36:03) Discussion on the tax contributions of the wealthy and a preview of a future episode topic on the feasibility of abolishing property tax. Conclusion and show updates (00:37:13) Closing remarks on upcoming content, including the landmark episode 500, and a call to subscribe to the show for valuable insights. Resources mentioned: Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/482 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold (00:00:01) - Welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, and it's a new year. We talk about what drives the growth of rents. Then a gigantic new tax is being proposed that could fundamentally change virtually every current investment you own and future investment you make today on Get Rich education. When you want the best real estate and finance info. The modern internet experience limits your free articles access, and it's replete with paywalls. And you've got pop ups and push notifications and cookies. Disclaimers are. At no other time in history has it been more vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that actually adds no hype value to your life? See, this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of hours myself. It's got a dash of humor and it's to the point to get the letter. It couldn't be more simple. Text GRE to 66866. And when you start the free newsletter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate course completely free. It's called the Don't Quit Your Day dream letter and it wires your mind for wealth.   Keith Weinhold (00:01:18) - Make sure you read it. Text grey to 66866. Text GRE to 66866.   Speaker 2 (00:01:30) - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold (00:01:46) - What could go from Beckley, West Virginia, to Boise, Idaho, and across 188 nations worldwide. You're listening. To get rich education, I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. What about this new proposed wealth tax? Should there be one? How big is it? As you're gonna find out, you would probably even have to pay this huge new proposed tax. If you're in the middle class. That's all. If it gets legislated, that's coming up shortly. But first, last week I told you about the future direction of home prices. As I revealed our 2024 National Home Price Appreciation Forecast this week, let's talk about the direction of rents in America, higher prices for everything that could make tenants feel tapped out. Although we have now had a few months of wage growth picking up before we get into the rent trend, this is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold (00:02:45) - So focusing on the education part as we often do, what are the factors that drive rent anyway? What drives rent growth and how did rent get to feel so expensive for a lot of people? Well, the fast growth of rent costs since 2020 that derives really from a number of factors, including inflation and also including a lack of inventory. There is a shortage of vacant rental properties in general and of affordable ones in particular. You've also got those expired rent freezes and expired discounts. I mean, landlords are making up for pandemic era rent freezes and steep discounts in urban areas. And by doing that, what they've done now is hiked up prices on new units and on lease renewals. Another factor that drives rent growth is what's happening with the workforce. And we've had a shifting workforce. As the pandemic increased, the popularity of remote work, you had deep pocketed renters that sought out larger homes, often single family homes, in areas that had previously been pretty low cost. So this migration then it increased the rents in suburban and outlying areas more than it lowered them in urban ones.   Keith Weinhold (00:04:06) - And see that trend overall that yielded a net increase in rents. And then another factor is that you have more demand for people to live alone. Prospective renters are increasingly looking for studio in one bedroom apartments, driving up demand for available housing, and that drives demand for space and therefore rent growth, because living alone, that means that rather than two people demanding to live in one unit, two people demand two places to live. And of course, high employment like we've had. That's another factor that drives rent growth over time. And the last factor that I'll share with you as a rent growth driver are barriers to homeownership. Yeah. Prospective homeowners, they remain renters for longer because they face high demand and low inventory on those existing homes. Like I've talked about before, higher mortgage rates. And you had those supply chain disruptions that really began a few years ago. Most of those are alleviated now, but that made it more expensive and more difficult to construct new homes. And then as mortgage rates rose starting back in early 2021, housing prices, they cooled off faster than rents, and rents are finally rising at a slower pace now then they did in the past two plus years.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:33) - And so those are the factors that drive rent growth. Now. Back in 2022, a promising development began, promising for those that are looking to pay less for housing in the future anyway. From their perspective, and that is the fact that multifamily construction reached a 15 year high nationwide, and that new supply is what's likely to slow down apartment rent growth. And since many cities require really this inclusionary housing, that means that a portion of new housing needs to be affordable. Well, therefore, new construction also means new affordable housing. Again, that's predominantly on the apartment side. But see, many families, they want a single family home. They want that privacy. They want that separation. They want to live in something that feels like their own, but they can't afford a single family home to buy. So they rent one. And, you know, I thought Zillow recently pointed it out really well when they said that single family rentals are the new. Their homes. They appeal to those that are priced out of buying.   Keith Weinhold (00:06:49) - And now you can see this reflected in rent growth. So now that we talked about some of the longer term drivers of growth, let's talk more about the current period of time. We don't have Q4 numbers in yet, but through Q3 we can see that the growth of single family rents is 5%. All right. That sounds healthy. And it is. And that's per John Burns research and Consulting. But that 5% increase is down from two years ago when it had its recent peak of between 9 and 10%. So again, right there, we're just talking about the annual growth rate in single family rents. It's about 5% through the latest quarter that we have stats for now. Compare that 5% to apartment rent growth, which is about 3% today. Even in an economic slowdown, rents rarely fall. And by the way, if rents ever do fall, I call it falling rents. Or perhaps I use the phrase declining reds for some reason. If price is contracting anything, some economists and analysts and others, they refer to this as negative growth.   Keith Weinhold (00:08:04) - I don't tend to use the term negative growth. That's confusing. I just call it a decline. Okay. Negative growth. That makes you wonder if someone means slowing growth rates or do they mean an outright decline. So negative growth is an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp or black light or friendly fire, or telling someone to act natural, or perhaps a working vacation? Okay, that's what negative growth means to me anyway. Now rents, whether it's single family rentals or apartments, when you blend those together regionally, you're seeing the highest rent price growth in the northeastern quadrant of the United States, which oddly contains a good chunk of the Midwest. So you just look at the northeastern quadrant of the United States. So leaders in red growth we're talking about here Providence, Rhode Island, Hartford, Connecticut, Cincinnati, Columbus, Saint Louis, Milwaukee and Chicago, they are all on that list. The highest rent growth blended together, single family rentals and apartments. By the way, two months ago I was in Hartford, Connecticut for the first time in a while.   Keith Weinhold (00:09:18) - Nice skyline there. Yeah, Hartford. You have an impressively urban feel for a city that's not among America's largest. Now. You're seeing slight rent price declines this past year in a lot of their really big, swaggering, broad shouldered gateway cities New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and also in Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm not sure what's going on in Raleigh, North Carolina, with their sluggish rent growth, but here, as testimony to the fact that rents don't often fall far, all of those bigger cities that I just mentioned, these big losers, they're only down between one half of 1% and 1% for year over year rents. So to review nationally in the last year, single family rents are up 5% and apartment rent growth is up 3%. But both have slowed from a couple years ago. Can the federal government tax your unrealized gains, also known as a wealth tax? We're going to talk about what that means. But how far could this go? If your home appreciates a 30 K in a year, but you want to keep living in it, might you have to pay tax on that gain even though you don't sell it, you just want to keep living there.   Keith Weinhold (00:10:41) - Could that even apply to you? If you own furniture that goes up in value, but you kind of like dining at that nice mahogany table of yours, could you get taxed on that every year? If the value of that goes up? And then you would have to ask the question, where are you supposed to get the money from in order to pay the tax? Might you have to sell that asset in order to pay the tax on it? So let's discuss a wealth tax that is tax on your unrealized gains. A renowned tax and wealth expert is back on the show with us today. He's also a CPA and the CEO of a terrific tax firm called Wealth Ability. He's the best selling author of the Mega-popular book Tax Free Wealth, which I have on my bookshelf. And a third edition is about to come out. He's going to tell us more about that. Hey, welcome back to Dr. Tom Wheelwright. Thanks, Keith. Always good to be with you. It's good to be with you, too.   Keith Weinhold (00:11:47) - And I think it's going to be especially informative and maybe disturbing this time, Tom, because really, it's been called the quadrillion dollar question. This is where Supreme Court justices decide whether the federal government can tax certain unrealized gains. And what this means is that these are assets that you own, but yet you haven't sold yet. So, Tom, tell us about this Supreme Court case hearing it known as more Maori versus the United States. Yeah. So this is a couple that invested in a company in India. They owned, I think, 12 or 13% of the company. And when the 2017 Tax Act was passed, what we commonly think of as the Trump Tax Act, one of the provisions was that in order to go to a taxation where you couldn't just put off bringing back the money all the time, they said, well, look, we're going to have a one time tax, we're going to have a tax on repatriated earnings. Some of you have heard that term repatriated earnings as if they came back.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:56) - Okay. So whether or not they came back as if they came back. And if you're a shareholder of 10% or more, then you have to pay that tax in certain situations. And so the laws actually had to pay the tax. This was the tax on the income of their corporation. So the corporation could have its own tax. But this is actually a tax on the shareholder. So that's actually where this is interesting because is similarly frankly we have taxes on partners and partnerships. Right. If you're a partner in a partnership you're taxed on that income. Whether or not you get the money in a corporation, typically you're not taxed on the income unless you get the money. That's a dividend. If you don't get the money, the corporation's taxed, but you aren't taxed. This was a situation where it's a corporation, but the shareholders were taxed. The Moores are arguing, well, this is equivalent to a wealth tax. And it's actually why I think the Supreme Court took this up, because it's not a case that you would normally think the Supreme Court would agree to hear.   Keith Weinhold (00:13:57) - Well, I think where this concerns people is, could this open up things so that the everyday person and the everyday investor could have to pay these unrealized gains on assets that they own, that have not sold? I mean, even their primary residence, if that appreciates from 500 K to 550 K, are they going to owe tax on that 50 K even if they plan to continue to stay there and hold on to it because they want to live their. That's what certain members of Congress would like. Liz Warren would absolutely like that to happen. Bernie Sanders absolutely like that to happen. I actually think that's why the Supreme Court took up the case, is because I don't think the Supreme Court believes that that should happen. I think it's going to come out. They're going to narrow what a wealth tax can and can't be, because I think they need to because they need to say, look. So we've had oral arguments already. So we expect a decision out sometime this year. But basically the arguments by the IRS were we do this all the time.   Keith Weinhold (00:14:56) - We have taxes, unrealized income. We have mark to market on stock trading. So that's a tax on unrealized income. We have a tax on partnerships. That's a tax on realized by undistributed income. The reality is this tax the Moores are are arguing against is a tax on realized but undistributed income. I think that's where the Supreme Court would come down. I'm actually willing to make a prediction on this because I think the Supreme Court say, well, this isn't a wealth tax, and a wealth tax would be prohibited under the Constitution because that would have to be based on population. A property tax, for example, is a wealth tax. Then the US that's reserved to the locales. We can't do a federal tax. We couldn't have a federal property tax. And that's, I think, what the Supreme Court is going to say. You can't have a federal property tax that's prohibited by the Constitution. You now have local property taxes because the locals can do whatever they want. But unless you have it apportion among the states based on population, you'd literally have to have a poll tax, which is a tax per person, as opposed to a tax on the value of what a person owns.   Keith Weinhold (00:16:07) - That's the difference. So there's a lot of complications. That's a direct tax versus indirect tax, all that kind of stuff. I think the important thing is to understand that there are realized, but undistributed income, that's like a partnership, right? You can be a partner in a partnership. The partnership really uses the income. They get the money, but they don't distribute it. As a partner, you're taxed on your share of that income. It has been realized you just haven't gotten it yet. This is, by the way, very similar to the Moore situation. That money, that income was earned that just hasn't been distributed yet. And the question is the fact that they haven't distributed, does that mean they can't tax it? The odd thing is, is I think the Moores are going to lose the case. Moores will lose the battle and win the war. This is a small amount of money, right. So this is obviously the Moore is not trying to save money. There's way more money being spent on legal counsel than the tax.   Keith Weinhold (00:17:03) - So the Moores aren't doing this. This is people behind saying this is a good test case. We need to put a stop to the wealth tax conversation of Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders and Wade. And this is a case to do that. That's really what kind of the background is. That's all the background of this court case is what's really going on and what's really going on is the Ninth Circuit made it sound like any taxes find. And the Supreme Court said, well, we're going to take this up because I think a majority thinks we don't think any tax is fine because clearly under the Constitution, not any taxes. Fine. We're going to help define that. And so I think we're going to get some better clarity on what kind of taxes Congress can enact. Ultimately, I think the Morse will lose their case. Yes, the more clarity is good. I mean, the Supreme Court knows that this is a contentious issue, and I sure want any discussion to get shut down. It might lead to everyday investors and citizens paying tax unrealized gains.   Keith Weinhold (00:18:07) - I mean, with that example that I gave you of, say, a couple that owns a 500 K home and they want to keep living in it, but it just happened to go up to 550 K. I mean, where would they get the tax to pay on that. Well yeah. Well that's another problem. You can talk to any fixed income retiree and they'd have the same complaint about property tax. Sure. Yeah I don't know where this could go. I mean, what if you own rare furniture in your home? Okay. This furniture is worth more at the end of the year than it is at the beginning of the year. But yet you didn't sell it. You just continue to use your furniture. I mean, could that get taxed? It's a terrible slippery slope. And, you know, they talk about, well, don't give me I'm billionaires. I'm going okay. But let's face it, the income tax was only supposed to be on billionaires, okay. The equivalent of billionaires.   Keith Weinhold (00:18:51) - You had to make a lot of money to be subject to income tax in 1913. Yeah okay. So we know it's going to come down. It always does the tax law. You know politicians never like to give up any tax money. They always are trying to apply to more and more people more and more income. So it is problematic. You know, the idea of a wealth tax is very problematic. You know, several European countries have tried it and they've all failed. France tried it. And people like Gerard Depardieu, um, the actor, he just left France, you know, people leave now, what Bernie Sanders wants to do, this is fascinating. He wants to put an exit tax. So if you do leave, you still have to pay the tax. You actually have to pay a tax to leave. So basically what Trump is, he wants the Berlin Wall, but he wants an economic Berlin Wall. Right. That's what he wants. He wants an economic wall. He's going to complain about the wall bordering Mexico, but he's going to put an economic wall around everybody and not allow you to leave.   Keith Weinhold (00:19:50) - It'd be like somebody, California, putting a wall literal wall up and saying, you can't leave California, right. That's kind of the idea that. And if you do leave California now, California, in fact, they talked about it in 2023. And actually, interestingly, the governor defeated it. They talked about imposing an exit tax. So if you leave California, you have to pay a tax for leaving. And fortunately he defeated that. He crushed that. I mean, not sure why he did that, but he did understand the states have more power to tax than the federal government does. Federal government is limited in its taxing power, and it's really limited by the 16th amendment that allowed a pure income tax. The question and this is the argument that Sanders and Warren are making, is that it is income. And the reality is we do have billionaires who pay no tax. And the reason they pay no tax is because their stocks, which are public, go up in value. They're not required to sell them.   Keith Weinhold (00:20:51) - They can borrow against them and they never pay tax. So the argument is, well, wait a minute, that's not fair. That's a decent argument. Honestly. The challenge is yeah, if you could really say we're going to limit it to billionaires and we're going to limit it to publicly traded stock, you're fine. Not a big deal. But it never gets limited. And that's the problem. It never ever gets limited. Once the camel gets its nose under the tent it just right going on taxation all over the tent piling on and not get pulled away. They don't remove layers of taxation. It seems once the president is sent somewhere, it just seems like it continues to spread. Tom, if I could just give one last example on this. If this ever goes to where unrealized gains get taxed and how absurd this all is, just say you. Oh, gold and gold goes from $2000 to $5000. You don't sell it, you just keep holding on to it. And then you'd have to find the income to go ahead and pay the tax.   Keith Weinhold (00:21:48) - Well, you'd have to sell gold. And that's actually what they want. They actually want you to have to sell the gold. Oh, they would want gold to be sold to sell the gold. I want you to sell the stock. So the goal behind the wealth tax is to force you to sell these assets and pay the tax. Okay. Now we have a wealth tax. It's called an estate tax. That is a wealth tax. And there are businesses. There are families who have to sell their family home. They have to sell their family business. They have to sell their family farm because of the estate tax. And so this is another argument that the proponents of wealth tax are making is, wait a minute, we have a wealth tax already. It's called an estate tax. If we can have an estate tax, why can't we have a tax currently? Why do we have to wait until somebody dies to impose that tax? It's an interesting argument. I'm not a policy guy. I'm not one to make policy.   Keith Weinhold (00:22:43) - I want to explain policy. It is a question. If I can have a tax on wealth when you die, why can't I have a tax on wealth while you're alive? Sure. And I thought through the scenario as well. If the river is a tax on unrealized gains, whether that's your house going up in value or furniture or gold after you would pay this unrealized tax, then in the end, when you do want to sell it, what if you sold it for less than you thought it was worth? And then how the heck do you go back and adjust that for the tax that you are now in it? And it actually gets worse than that. Keith. Let's say we have a boom market this year and next year we have a recession. Are we going to get the money back? Exactly. And that's the hardest part because the answer is clearly, no, we're not. I mean, because think of it right now, we have a provision in the law that taxes capital gains.   Keith Weinhold (00:23:35) - There's an argument capital gains should never be taxed because especially at least if there are a capital gain because of inflation, they should never be taxed. If you actually went up in value, yes, they should be taxed. But if they're just inflated in value, why are you paying a tax on something that's not worth anymore than it was five years ago that got the same value? It's just got a different price. But we have a capital gains tax. But think about this. Let's say you have a year and you sell stocks and you have this big game. And the next year you have a loss because you sell stocks because everything went down well. You don't get to use those losses to offset your income. You have to carry those losses forward forever until you have gains again, you don't get go backwards with those losses and recapture the gains that you paid, you know, last year. So we already have this problem built into the system. And now all you'd be doing is exacerbating it. The other problem with, by the way, is that it's very regressive in that you're talking about people taxing their wealth.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:38) - Now, you can put limits, right, which is what you would have to do. And you say, well, look, your personal residence, we're not going to tax, you know, we're only going to tax the excess, which is, by the way, what income tax originally was. It was only excess investment income. You were never taxed on wages. When the 16th amendment was passed there was no tax on wages. We didn't get a tax on wages until 1944. You go, well, we'll exempt all these today. What about tomorrow? And that's always the issue. I'll tell you, the taxes just keep piling and piling on. We're going to talk more about taxation with Tom. We're right when we come back you're listening to University Kitchen. I'm your host Keith Reinhold. I render this a specific expert with income property you need. Ridge lending Group Nmls 42056. In gray history, from beginners to veterans, they provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's.   Keith Weinhold (00:25:39) - Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge. Personally, though, even customized plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com. Ridge lending group.com. You know, I'll just tell you, for the most passive part of my real estate investing, personally, I put my own dollars with Freedom Family Investments because their funds pay me a stream of regular cash flow in returns are better than a bank savings account up to 12%. Their minimums are as low as 25 K. You don't even need to be accredited for some of them. It's all backed by real estate and that kind of love. How the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains and your W-2 jobs income. And they've always given me exactly their stated return paid on time. So it's steady income, no surprises while I'm sleeping or just doing the things I love. For a little insider tip, I've invested in their power fund to get going on that text family to 66866. Oh, and this isn't a solicitation. If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to six, 686, six.   Tom Wheelwright (00:27:02) - Anybody? It's Robert Elms or the Real Estate Guys radio program. So glad you found Keith Reinhold and get rich education. Don't quit your day dream.   Keith Weinhold (00:27:19) - Welcome back to cash. We're talking with Tom Wheelwright, the author of the Mega-popular book Tax Free Wealth. He runs the terrific tax firm called Wealth Ability. Tom, you often like to talk about how really, in a lot of cases, tax laws can apply to everyone, but do business operate really under the same tax laws as a middle class or us in the middle class? Really take a page out of what billionaires are doing. How can we best do that? So we have a wonderful aspect of the Constitution, a clause called the Equal Protection Clause. And what it says is taxes have to be applied equally to everybody in the same situation. So what we're billionaires are different is they have better advisers. That's where they're different. So their advisors know all the rules of the tax law. They pay them hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars a year to make sure that they're paying the least amount of tax possible.   Keith Weinhold (00:28:14) - Presumably, all they're doing is following the law. Those same laws apply to you and me. So that's why, for example, somebody who owns a single family home that they rent out to an unrelated person is entitled to the same tax benefits as somebody who owns a 200 unit apartment complex or somebody who owns Trump Tower, as an example. Okay. You get the same tax benefits in the same situation. The challenge that, you know, the average person has is not enough access to those advisers and a misunderstanding of how the tax law works, because this whole idea will the billionaires get different tax than the average person is just false. That's just a falsehood that is propagated by a certain part of the public in a certain part of the administration that wants to add another tax to billionaires. The reality is we all get the same tax. The difference is, is that if you're a billionaire, let's say you made $1 billion a year and you paid $400 million in tax. You still have $600 million left over, which is more than 99.999999% of people have in a lifetime.   Keith Weinhold (00:29:25) - So it doesn't really hurt you. It doesn't change your lifestyle. Whereas if you put a 40% tax on somebody who makes $200,000 a year, now they're going from 200 to 120, and that has a major impact. And you're really just explain one reason why in the United States, we have tax tables set up that are what we would call progressive, where the more you make, the more you pay. But yeah, you're right, Tom. There are just there's such a knowledge gap out there. I have something happen to me. I bet it still happens to you a lot. Or I will talk to people and they say something like, well, I don't want to earn too much money this year. I'll go from the 24% tax bracket to the 30% tax bracket, and they act like all of their income is then going to be taxed at 30%. So they don't want to earn too much. So I'll tell you a funny story. Yeah. So I used to teach a class every month we'd have anywhere from 30 to 100 people in the class.   Keith Weinhold (00:30:15) - And I'd always do an example and I'd say, okay, let's say that you earn X amount of dollars and you get a $5,000 bonus. What's the cost of that $5,000 bonus from a tax standpoint? And I would say a good 40% of the class would come up with about $8,000. Was the cost of the $5,000 bonus, because just like you say, well, that puts me in a new bracket there for all my income is being taxed in the new bracket. No, it is progressive, meaning the last dollar you earn is taxed at the highest rate, but the first dollar you earn is taxed at the lowest rate. And that's important distinction because we're never taxed on more than right now. It's actually 40% because we have net investment income tax. So you're never taxed on more than 40% of your income by the federal government. You just can't be. So you can make whether you make a, you know, $1 million a year, $1 billion a year, $10 billion a year, your maximum tax rate is 40%.   Keith Weinhold (00:31:14) - That's an epiphany to some people to learn that tax rates are progressive, like you just explained with that $5,000 bonus example, why don't you tell us about another tactic or another example like that? We have a lot of savvy listeners. A lot of Marty realize that marginal example. Can you give us another one about how there's something relatively simple that can really elevate one's and lower their tax rate? Yeah. Let's go to the flip side of that. If the last dollar you earn is taxed at your highest rate, the first dollar you deduct is deducted at your highest rate. Great point. This is why, by the way, and if you read my book, The Windmill Strategy, I talk about this in chapter eight. I used to say for a long time that you never got a permanent tax benefit from putting your money in an IRA for one K and I ran the numbers and win win. And I was wrong. That's not true. And the reason is because let's say you put in $10,000 a year for 30 years, that deduction that you get for that $10,000 you put into your IRA for one K, you get a deduction at the highest tax bracket.   Keith Weinhold (00:32:17) - When you start pulling the money out, you're going to pull it out and you get all the tax brackets. So you put the money in, you get a deduction of the highest, you pull the money out, you get basically the combination of the different tax brackets. So you are actually better off. So for example, if somebody says I want all I investment to go on in the stock market, I would say you need A41K. That is the answer because self-directed would be best. Absolutely. Because you get a deduction now at your highest tax rate bracket. But down the road you're going to pull it out. Basically, even if you have the same income you can pull out a lower rate. Now that only applies if you're going to put the money in the stock market. If you're going to put the money into real estate for one, K is a terrible idea because real estate is a tax shelter and you lose all the tax benefits of a tax shelter. If you put it in an IRA, you actually take a tax shelter and make it a tax expense by putting it into an IRA for one K.   Keith Weinhold (00:33:14) - So there are certain things you would never do in an IRA. A reformed K real estate is one of those. Energy is one of those businesses. One agriculture. You'd never do those in an IRA or for one K, it's a terrible idea. But if you want to invest in the stock market, the bond market, things like that, IRAs make all the sense in the world. So really, that's why people ask me, well, should I do it for one K I'm going. I have no idea. What's your investment strategy? What's your wealth strategy? Where are you putting your money? People all the time. I have some imitators and they'll ask this question, well, how do you make your money? We can reduce your taxes. I'm going. That's the first question you have to ask. But I'm more interested in what are you going to do with your money? Because what you're going to do with your money has a much bigger impact on how we set things up from a tax side, how much money you're going to make, what kind of investments you're going to do, all that is impact by what you can do with your money.   Keith Weinhold (00:34:06) - That question about, you know, how do I make my money is a simple question that, frankly, I can do that kind of a tax strategy on stage in ten minutes. Well stated. That is a good point. Well, Tom, this has been great. You mentioned your latest book, the Win win. Well, strategy, but in one of your very well-known books, Tax Free Wealth, you've got another edition coming out. Tell us about that. Yeah, we have the third edition. So for the second edition we did that. When the Trump Tax Law 2017 was enacted, we needed to put in fact, we did a kind of in a rush. So we just added in things. Since 2017, we've had six major tax law changes, six major tax law changes during Covid. And so what we felt we want to do is let's roll it all in to a third edition will take the Trump tax law. Changes will roll those in. We'll take all the new tax law.   Keith Weinhold (00:34:57) - Changes will roll those in. So now tax free wealth is up to date. I think it's a better book. When I went through it of course I spent hours and hours and hours going through it. This is the best version of tax free wealth we've ever released. There are so many critical updates there. Again, the name of his book is Tax Free Wealth. I recommend checking that out. Tom. We're right. It's been informative. As always. Thanks so much for coming back out to the show. Thanks, Keith. Yeah. Sharp insights from Tom. As always, you can keep following along with the more versus United States case this year. Now, sometimes the wealthy, they will point something out that you've got to consider. It's got to give you a little pause. And that is actually should the wealthy get a tax rebate yet not get taxed more heavily because in the US see the top 1% pay about 42% of federal income taxes, and you might say, okay, well, that's the top 1%.   Keith Weinhold (00:36:03) - Why don't we bring in some of the middle class and revisit this? Well, the top 25% pay nearly 90% of the taxes. And that's all from a recent year per the Tax Foundation. Should the wealthy then get a tax rebate? Because you could say that they pay more than their fair share. Whatever fair share really means. Well, that is a valid question. Ask at the least. Well, today is the first time that we've had the marvelous, successful author, Tom. We're right on the show here in more than a year and a half. That's just a little unusual because he is the most recurrent guest here in history. And so therefore, for some more catch up coming down the road, Tom is going to return here to discuss a big question that I have for him. And in that future episode, Tom and I are going to discuss, should there even be such thing as a property tax, does it make more sense to say, abolish the property tax and then the government can get their revenue from somewhere else, as well as where that proposal might not be feasible? That should be super interesting.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:13) - Asking the question should there even be a property tax? In the meantime, check out Tom's third edition of his book Tax Free Wealth. It is a good read as far as tax reading goes. You're listening to episode 482 of the get Rich educational podcast. We have got a big year in store with plenty of original, groundbreaking content planned, including a memorable landmark episode 500 Coming Up, which will release on May 6th of this year. If you haven't already, I encourage you to subscribe to or follow the show here on your favorite podcasting device, or tell a friend about the show. I think they'll find it really valuable. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Reinhold. Don't quit your day dream.   Speaker 4 (00:38:05) - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively.   Speaker 5 (00:38:33) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. 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