Podcast: Dr. Denis Waitley on the Psychology of Winning and the Pace of Change

Tax Changes Real Estate Investors Need to Know About

We’re back with one of our favorite people … CPA Tom Wheelwright!

Tom is here to share important updates on current and proposed changes to U.S. tax law as part of the war against COVID-19. 

We’re also discussing the details … and potential repercussions … of proposals currently being floated around during this controversial election year. 

There are changes that real estate investors like YOU need to know about. 

In this episode of The Real Estate Guys™ show, hear from:

• Your up-to-date host, Robert Helms
• His taxing co-host, Russell Gray
• CPA and tax expert, Tom Wheelwright

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Let’s talk about taxes

One of the biggest elements that affects cash flow and overall return of real estate investments is taxation. 

And yet … nobody really likes to talk about it. That needs to change! There’s lots you can do to reduce taxes and make more money. 

Our good friend, CPA Tom Wheelwright, always says, “If you study a nation’s tax code, you can see exactly the behavior they want, because they reward it.”

The tax code is a series of incentives. 

There’s so much going on right now in the world … and in an election year, a lot can happen. 

We don’t have a political argument to make of any kind … but when you start talking about tax policy and you have different parties with different opinions, politics are going to come up. 

We’re here to wrap our minds around some of the proposed tax changes that real estate investors must understand. 

New tax changes you should know about

Going all the way back to Obamacare, there was a tax impact for real estate. Then, the Trump administration came in and made the first major overhaul. 

It’s no secret that with a real estate guy in the White House … we got some very favorable breaks for real estate investors. 

Then, the COVID-19 crisis impacted the tax code. 

Basically, since 2008, the tax code has been a roller coaster. There have been extreme changes in public policy, public behavior, and financial markets. 

All of that means that as a real estate investor, you’ve got to be looking a little bit farther down the road. And, you need to be well-advised by a great tax professional. 

Tom Wheelwright is here to get that conversation started … but remember to sit down with your own tax advisor and get their expert views for your personal situation. 

There have been some really important changes recently for real estate investors. The most obvious one was the qualified improvement property change. 

This was in the Cares Act correcting a mistake in a 2017 act in which the government didn’t include leasehold improvements on commercial property as qualifying for bonus depreciation. 

The Cares Act now said that they do … and you can take advantage of that retroactively all the way back to 2018. You can amend your return, and there can be a lot of money in that. 

The Cares Act also said that if you had to reduce your hours … either business hours or working hours … because of the pandemic, you can pull out up to $100K from all your accounts put together. 

Then, you have two choices. You can either pay tax on that money over three years or you can put that money back in three years and not be taxed at all. 

“You could literally take money out, buy a property, take care of the property, sell the property, and put the money back. Or, you could keep the property and borrow against the property and put the money back,” Tom says. 

Tom adds that anybody who is a real estate investor and seriously doesn’t want their money tied up in their IRA or their 401K should really look into this and see if they qualify. 

The other big change involved the net operating loss carryback. 

In 2017, real estate investors lost the ability to carry back net operating losses. In 2020, we gain that ability … and we gain it for 2018, 2019, and 2020. 

And, now it’s a five-year carryback. We’re talking about going back to 2013, 2014, 2015 … years that were really good years for a lot of people. 

And let’s say you weren’t a real estate professional in those years and now you are … you’ve got bonus depreciation. You can carry back to when you weren’t a real estate professional to offset your income and get a refund. 

Tom says that this particular benefit isn’t popular in the House of Representatives … so you better look into it quickly if you’re interested. 

The other tax benefit that people don’t often talk about is the charitable deduction tax benefit. 

Typically, individuals can only deduct up to 60% of charitable contributions … in 2020, it’s a hundred percent. 

“If you want to give all your money away this year, the government says to go for it. They’ll give you a deduction for it,” Tom says. 

Tax changes that could be coming

The tax changes that real estate investors got under the Trump administration were favorable to a lot of folks. 

Now, with an election year, Joe Biden has come out with his own tax plan and ideas. 

“Biden’s tax plan is basically a tax everything tax plan,” Tom says. “Really, he would eviscerate the tax law if he had his choice, which leads me to personally wonder if he understands the tax law at all.” 

Tom says that, for example, all the real estate benefits would go away. It wouldn’t eliminate cost segregation, but it would eliminate bonus depreciation. 

Biden has also proposed eliminating 1031 exchanges, the basis step up when you die, and oil and gas tax benefits. 

But remember, President Obama also proposed eliminating a lot of these tax breaks. Just because they are proposed doesn’t mean they’ll get enacted. 

Either way, it’s important for real estate investors to be vigilant and stay tuned in. 

For more on tax changes and how they can affect you … listen in to the full episode!

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The big story is getting BIGGER …

As Ernest Hemingway famously wrote in The Sun Also Rises …

“How did you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways: Gradually, then suddenly.”

Of course, this isn’t the only great excerpt from this classic book …

“Everyone behaves badly … given the chance.”

These two excerpts sum up the world’s financial condition … and the policymakers who’ve been driving the ship … into the ground.

More of Hemingway’s writings seem fitting for this day and age …

“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”

“Do you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it?”

Ahhh … where to begin?

Last time, we said silver is signaling weakness in the dollar, which at the time was the only currency not already at all-time lows against gold.

Of course, the ink was barely dry on our computer screen when the dollar dropped hard against gold … as gold blew through its record high in dollars to flirt with $2000 an ounce.

If you agree with J.P. Morgan when he told Congress, “gold is money” … which relegates the dollar to merely a currency useful for trading (at best) …

… then you probably understand gold didn’t move. The dollar fell.

Of course, ever since Nixon broke the global gold standard in 1971, currencies “float” … which means currencies change value in relation to each other.

If that’s confusing, that’s because it is. And when you lose your bearings, it’s hard to tell up from down.

Imagine jumping out of an airplane with a team of skydivers. You’re all in free fall. But as you look at each other, you appear to be floating together.

But if someone opens their chute and slows their descent while you don’t … from your vantage point, they went UP. But did they?

Of course not. They’re just falling more slowly than you.

The reference point of the solid ground rising up below is how you know. The ground appears to be rising, but it’s not moving up. You’re falling. And so is the person who pulled their chute and appears to you to be rising.

So if you’ve ever wondered how gold could be rising in one currency and falling in another, now you know.

Gold is the solid reference point which exposes what’s really happening with currencies. It’s accountability.

That’s why we watch it … and think you should too.

Right now, gold is shining a bright light on something all investors … real estate and otherwise … should be paying attention to.

But don’t take our word for it. Check out these recent headlines …

Goldman Sachs boosts gold price target, says the dollar’s reserve status is at risk
– Yahoo Finance, 7/28/20

Goldman warns the dollar’s grip on global markets might be over
– Bloomberg, 7/28/20

US dollar at risk of sudden collapse? Ex-IMF official warns “blow-up event” could sink currency as debt mounts
– South China Morning Post, 7/24/20

How might the dollar lose its reserve status? How might America go bankrupt?

Gradually. Then suddenly.

Meanwhile, professional money watchers are baffled …

Gold prices hit all-time high, and it’s a bit of a mystery why
– MoneyWatch via CBS News – 7/28/20

Yes. Things make no sense when you have the wrong reference point.

When you can’t think outside the dollar … when you think the dollar is eternal, immovable, invincible, the center of the monetary solar system … it’s confusing.

A similar confusion plagued astronomers who believed the sun and planets revolved around the Earth …

Retrograde motion [planets moving backwards in orbit] … had early astronomers … thoroughly confused … it was impossible for them to come up with a solution that also fit with the popular idea that Earth was the center of the solar system. Not until … Copernicus placed the sun at the center of the solar system did all that retrograde motion suddenly make sense. – Livescience

We’ve previously discussed ways real estate investors can be directly affected by a falling dollar. So we won’t repeat that here.

But it’s not just real estate investors affected. It’s everyone everywhere …

King dollar’s decline ripples across the globe
–Reuters, 7/28/20

“ … adding fuel to a global momentum rally that has boosted prices for everything from technology stocks to gold.”

No wonder Americans are enamored of the stock market … even in the midst of what is likely an economic depression, everything is UP … in dollar terms.

It makes no sense.

This is “asset price inflation” in NOMINAL terms … it takes more dollars to buy the same assets. “Nominal” means in numbers … unadjusted for inflation.

So the nominal value of a 3-bedroom house might go from $50,000 to $250,000. But the actual utility value … how many people it will sleep … is exactly the same. The house isn’t worth more in the real world.

Obviously, when you measure your entire everything in a currency whose value fluctuates, it’s easy to suffer from “nominal” confusion.

In fact, bankers and politicians make their living on creating and capitalizing on nominal confusion.

Nominal confusion tricks people and societies whose wealth is falling and economies are shrinking into thinking their wealth and economies are growing.

Because they are growing … in nominal terms … denominated in dollars. But there aren’t more jobs, more production, more real world value.

Nominal distortions can show “growth” in dollars, while employment, production, and purchasing power all fall.

In real world metrics, wealth is shrinking. The only thing growing is the number of dollars. Trillions of them in fact. Conjured out of thin air.

The cure to nominal confusion is to think outside the dollar …

When you ask Ken McElroy (Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Advisor for Real Estate) how much real estate he owns … he doesn’t tell you a dollar amount … or even how many properties.

Instead, Kenny tells you how many “doors” he owns. He measures his wealth by doors.

Doors represent the REAL asset … a tenant who goes to work every day and earns a paycheck and sends a third of it to Ken and his investors as rent.

THAT is real wealth.

If you own a 32-door apartment, you have 32 tenants. If you paid $1 million and it goes “up” to $2 million, it’s nice. Equity happens.

But you still have only 32 tenants. You didn’t add anything of real value.

And if everything else is going “up” too, your extra million may not make you relatively richer.

It’s only when you use debt to magnify equity growth faster than inflation that you can become relatively richer.

When you denominate your wealth in units of REAL value … ounces of gold and silver, acres of land, barrels of oil production, tons of agricultural production, number of tenants …

… it doesn’t matter whether you trade in dollars, yuan, SDRs, bitcoin, buckskins, banana peels, or seashells.

REAL assets always have REAL value relative to each other. And when you add units of REAL value to your portfolio, your relative wealth grows.

It’s not about collecting dollars. It’s about collecting real assets.

“Assets minus liabilities equals net worth” works in accounting class and bank loan applications, but not in the real world.

Otherwise, the Federal Reserve could just print trillions of dollars inflate asset prices, and make the United States and Americans rich … nominally.

But it’s the only tool in the Fed’s kit, so they’re printing away. But precious metals say the world isn’t buying it.

Or more accurately, they’re not buying the dollar.

On Main Street, there are folks who look at their Wall Street produced financial statements and THINK they’re rich.

They’re nominally confused. If you own 100 shares of stock in a company whose sales and profits are declining … but the share price doubles in dollars …

… you still own 100 shares of a failing company. How are you richer?

Meanwhile, there are thousands of millionaire-next-door real estate investors with 20-30% of their tenants’ income flowing to them each month … often tax-free … who are richer in a more real, resilient way.

Of course, a depressed economy creates challenges for real estate investors too. There’s no easy street in a crisis.

But we don’t think you need to be afraid of a falling dollar. Just prepared. In fact, if you play it right, you’ll probably end up doing quite well.

Income property, mortgages and precious metals in the right combination are arguably the ideal tools to short a falling dollar and build real relative wealth.

We’ll have more to say on this very soon … stay tuned.

Meanwhile, keep your head in the game. The world is changing from gradually to suddenly.

This isn’t the time to “Wait and See”. It’s time to “Think and Do”.

Podcast: Tax Changes Real Estate Investors Need to Know About

What skyrocketing silver prices means to real estate investors …

It sounds BAD… but it can be VERY good …

As we write, silver is soaring … from $18 to $23 (a 27% gain) in just a few days.

Equity happens … in metals too!

We’ve been talking about precious metals for years. Watching metals is one of the important lessons from the 2008 crisis.

What do rising silver prices mean to real estate investors?

First, silver and gold are important financial system gauges … providing valuable clues about the future of money and wealth.

Precious metals are considered attractive alternatives to dollars in the bank … and to equity in real estate as vehicles to store wealth.

Precious metals tend to combine the best features of both cash and real estate equity. There’s a LOT more to say on this, but we’ll save it for another day.

For now, remember real estate equity is illiquid … exposed to creditors and predators … and hard to protect in a foreclosure.

Meanwhile, dollars have a long history of losing value. It’s a big reason why equity happens and leveraged real estate is a great investment.

Also, dollars stored in a bank are subject to nasty things called counterparty risk and bail-ins … which few depositors are aware of. It’s a reward-free risk.

Of course, converting real estate equity and dollars into precious metals mitigates many of these risks. And done right, this strategy can significantly outgrow inflation and help you build resilient wealth.

This is a hot topic right now, so we’re preparing a tutorial on it. To be notified when it’s ready, email [email protected].

Meanwhile, back to the clues in the news and soaring silver prices …

Gold and silver are considered “monetary” metals. They’re money.

Many people confuse “money” with “currency” because they used to be one and the same.

But money and currency are divorced now. Strategies which worked when they were married don’t work so well today.

The lesson is … when fundamental parts of the financial system change, strategies, and tactics should be updated.

Right now, rising silver prices could be foreshadowing a fundamental shift we’ve been watching for.

Gold’s already there, which makes silver’s move noteworthy because …

Gold and silver are similar … but different.

It’s kind of like the penthouse and the warehouse.

While gold gets to prance around at the “monetary metal” ball … hobnobbing with central banks and uber-rich investors …

… silver is often relegated to working-class status as an “industrial metal”.

This is because silver is cheaper than gold and is an essential component in many products, including solar panels and cell phones.

So while gold finds its way into fancy jewelry and safe deposit boxes … silver ends up conducting electrical current before being buried in a landfill.

But sometimes Cinderella silver gets invited to the monetary ball. And it looks like it just happened.

It’s a safe bet industry is suppressed. Lock-downs do that. So the big spike in silver probably isn’t due to industrial demand.

Of course, we’re not precious metals experts, but we know several.

One of our favorite commentators monitors an esoteric metric which helps distinguish paper trading from physical demand. It’s an important distinction we’ll delve into shortly.

In a recent article, Keith Weiner writes …

“… the [silver] buying which drove the price up so much was … buying of physical metal.”

What does this mean and why does it matter?

Seems to us if physical demand is up, and it’s not from industrial demand, then it may be silver is now on the MONETARY metal bandwagon.

That is, people and institutions could be buying silver to stack in their safes.

Perhaps a clue that dollar holders are losing faith in the dollar. And there are several trillion reasons why this would be.

Of course, gold’s surge supports this. Gold is quickly approaching the all-time high last reached in 2011.

As we noted then, central banks bought physical gold in record amounts in 2019. As the ultimate currency insiders, maybe they knew something?

In any case, it seems today more people are trading in dollars for gold.

If true, you’d expect dollar weakness … and along comes this Reuters headline …

Battered U.S. dollar ‘hanging by a thread’ as coronavirus cases grow

Here’s the concern … something we’ve watched for a while …

The primary reason the Federal Reserve can create unlimited dollars without disaster (think Zimbabwe or Venezuela) is the U.S. dollar reigns as the world’s reserve currency.

This “exorbitant privilege” creates huge demand for dollars all over the world.

So although those newbie dollars might be Made in the USA (who says we don’t make anything?) …

… but they’re funneled around the globe through federal spending on military, foreign aid, international loans, and a host of the things.

Even those stimulus dollars deposited directly into citizens’ checkbooks find their way to China … as consumers buy Chinese stuff from Wal-Mart and Amazon. U.S. trade deficits funnel dollars overseas.

This means Americans don’t feel the full devaluation of their dollars … the rest of the world soaks up much of the excess.

But consider this …

If sending dollars overseas suppresses domestic inflation, what happens if (when) those excess dollars come back?

Ironically, as chronicled in our Real Asset Investing Report … China is leading the charge to de-dollarize the world. Russia’s on board too.

Rising gold prices … and now soaring silver prices combined with physical demand … could be indicators of a growing migration out of dollars.

This is a big deal when set against the backdrop of unprecedented Fed printing … and public officials’ denials. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

In 2008, we were told the sub-prime problem was contained … how’d that work out?

‘We want a stable dollar,’ says U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin: ‘It is the reserve currency of the world and we’re going to protect that’

– MarketWatch, 7/23/20

Here’s the problem …

The way we understand it, to save a struggling financial system, the Fed MUST create MANY TRILLIONS of fresh dollars … more than ever.

Those new dollars buy bonds to suppress interest rates … another topic we’ve addressed before.

Of course, as long as enough people trust and accept all these brand-new dollars, it’s business as usual.

BUT if dollar-holders revolt, then a lot of SHIFT HAPPENS …

Interest rates could rise. When lenders think they’ll get paid back with highly depreciated dollars, they’ll demand compensation.

Are you prepared for the possibility of spiking interest rates?

Credit markets could implode. Think 2008 on steroids. Rising rates are kryptonite to the mighty-but-leveraged balance sheets of nearly every financial player.

Are you prepared for a world without cheap and abundant credit?

Commodity and energy prices could rise faster from inflation than they drop from depreciation based on depressed demand.

Are you prepared for tenants to have more of their income consumed by food and energy?

We’re not saying all of this will happen … maybe none of it will. But there are rational reasons to think it could.

As we often say …

“Better to be prepared and not have a crisis, than to have a crisis and not be prepared.”

Except this time, a crisis isn’t a “maybe”. It’s here … moving methodically through a progression of crises aimed at a currency crisis.

Ironically, the Fed’s attempts to stop it could cause it. Peter Schiff has been warning of this for years. Now we’re here.

Of course, we certainly don’t have all the answers. But we’re paying attention and working hard to stay ahead of it.

And it’s not all bad.

In fact, there should be a lot of opportunity. We’re sad for those who get blind-sided but excited for those of us who are aware and prepared.

Quality properties will likely be available at great bargains … IF you’re in a position to purchase them.

Many affluent folks could be looking for syndicators to help them move money out of Wall Street onto Main Street.

The landscape for syndication just got better.

NOW is the time to prepare for these possibilities. But it may require thinking outside the box you’ve been in for the last decade.

The world is changing in BIG ways … and very fast. Your investing strategy and tactics probably need to change too.

So stay tuned … and we’ll keep the ideas and insights coming.

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