Which Option is Best

Episode 948: Which Option is Best, with Craig Cody

Which option is best for your business? The PPP or EIDL? Listen and learn from Craig Cody to understand which option is best.

Craig Cody is a Certified Tax Coach and the owner of the New York City based accounting firm, Craig Cody & Company. Craig belongs to a select group of tax practitioners who’ve undergone extensive training and continued education on various tax planning techniques and strategies. Craig is passionate about helping business owners understand which option is best by teaching the difference between tax planning — and tax paying — by helping them save significant money. Craig is also the co-author of the Amazon bestseller, “Secrets of a Tax Free Life.”

What you will learn from this episode about which option is best:

• How the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan has changed recently, and what you need to know about the program
• What further changes Craig anticipates the government making to the PPP loan and forgiveness requirements
• How the government has created new options for partnership business that could result in those businesses getting still more money
• How to reach out to Craig if you have any other questions or need clarification on these new changes and know which option is best
• Why additional money for business partners may not have any cap, starting at around $40,000 for the first partner and going up
• Why Craig sees the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) as “cheap insurance” to help protect against whatever may happen in the near future
• What changes Craig believes might happen to the EIDL, and why it is taking a while for small businesses to get approved for EIDL
• How the use of the EIDL funds can potentially increase your business tax liability due to the use of EIDL funds cutting into your tax deductions
• How many of Craig’s clients are operating under business-as-usual with relatively minor changes, with the exception of restaurants which are still struggling
• How to access Craig’s free course “The Five Simple Ways to Save Thousands on Taxes and How Business Owners Can Start Today”
• How to know which option is best for your business and why you need to take advantage of it now

Resources:

• Free Course: www.craigcodyandcompany.com/course
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.theprogressivedentist.com
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/craigcodycpa
• Know which option is best by signing up for a free analysis with Craig Cody

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Learn from Craig Cody about which option is best for your tax savings

 

 

Which Option is Best: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success and how to know which option is best from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built in, and how they scaled their business. In fact, my team at Predictive ROI while I’ve been talking about it now for several months, but this is an ongoing sort of rebuilding, reconstructing, and added improvement.

 

However you wanted. Describe it to our free resources section on PredictiveROI.com. In fact, it’s turned into a resources library. So you can download free practical and tactical guides for everything for how to build out your own authority sales machine. Everything from how to create your ideal client avatar, how to create a value ladder, a sales funnel, how to make sure your content strategy aligns with the ten truths to what makes someone in authority within their niche.

 

Just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources. And as always, it’s all free and everything you request. We will send it right to your inbox. 

 

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Which Option is Best: Craig Cody’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s very special on core guest Craig Cody, I want to share some context around why, when Craig and I talked about him coming back for an encore, why? As that conversation continued to unfold, I got more and more excited about having Craig’s insights, wisdom, and smarts again as part of this conversation in front of you Onward Nation, here’s why.

 

So I want to be able to get Craig’s take in front of you. In his point of view, he’s on the front lines every single day with research and interviewing other experts and collecting facts and tools and processes and procedures around the various stimulus bills. He has been a hawk around Covid and how that relates to things like PPP and EIDL.

 

I mean, PPP forgiveness has been a big concern. First, how do we go out and get the funds? How do we participate in the application process? And as we all know, it became lengthy and so forth. How do we do that with excellence? And then if you did and if you did receive the funds now, how do you manage that with excellence to make sure that you’re going to have the forgiveness when it comes time to be evaluated?

 

So if you’re on our email list, then you have no doubt received some of the updates, some of the tools, some of the insights and wisdom and guidance that I’ve received from Craig, and then I’ve passed that on to you. So we’re going to talk through the latest and what he has seen as it relates to the PPP forgiveness process.

 

What you need to do to make sure that you’re in the best position possible to know which option is best, as well as, we all know that this guidance sometimes is vague. Sometimes it’s ever changing. Anything that he has seen to date regarding ideal funds, realizing that that is a changing landscape. So we’ll get his initial guidance on that. Plus, also, I want to be sure to get Craig’s take again in front of you on the shape of the economic recovery.

 

Obviously nobody has a crystal ball and we’re all sort of trying to make sense of this together. But I want to get his, take on that because, again, he’s got his finger on the pulse and he’s seeing some things probably faster than what you and I are seeing in the media. And so I want to be able to get his take as well as the lens of expertise that he’s looking at.

 

All these data points for or through. Excuse me, about the economic recovery and specifically why this recession feels different than 2008 and 2009. So we have a lot to cover with Craig. I think this is going to be one of those conversations. You’re clearly going to be able to take golden nuggets out of and be able to apply directly into your business.

 

So without further ado, thank you, Craig, for saying yes. And welcome back to Onward Nation, my friend. 

 

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Which Option is Best: Tax Plan for Taxes

 

Well, thank you very much for having me again. Oh my gosh, it is a delight and honor to have you here. So let’s start with, just kind of, I don’t want to say just kind of let’s bring the audience up to speed.

 

Let’s bring Onward Nation business owners up to speed. I know it’s been several months since we’ve had this opportunity for conversation. The last time we got together was certainly pre Covid. Bring us up to speed over the last several months. If you can kind of summarize the sort of body of work this research does in the trenches that you have been doing.

 

So give us kind of a 30,000ft view and then we’ll start to slice it apart. Oh, there’s a lot of new stuff going on. Obviously we have PPP EIDL, you know, figuring out how to tax plans for taxes with, you know, the PPP and kind of losing some deductions. As of right now, you can’t deduct expenses that are paid with the PPP.

 

So some businesses could actually show, you know, a higher net income. So there’s been a lot of going on, very limited information out there. A lot of research needs to be done. And, you know, really just keeping people up to speed with the changes to a point where sometimes on a daily basis, well, I first want to be able to thank you.

 

As we step into this conversation, I first want to be able to thank you for what I know has been a ton of work for you, but how very grateful I am for this. What is really felt like this constant stream of updates from you, whether it was a, hey, check out this new tool and just created this calculator and and here’s some guidance we just got from the, SBA or hey, we’re still waiting for the guidance, but you might want to consider this the the way that you have just dug in and continued to be like this beacon that I know that I have, as well as Drew McLellan and others that we have looked to to get sort of the in the trenches information has been super, super helpful. 

 

So thank you very much, Craig. Quite welcome. I mean it’s just been awesome. And Onward Nation, if you’re on our email list, you’ve no doubt received those updates and tools that I just mentioned. So let’s shift our focus to PPP forgiveness.

 

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Which Option is Best: The PPP Forgiveness

 

So what are some of the latest and biggest highlights that you’re seeing right now as it relates to PPP forgiveness? So there’s two big things about PPP. Originally you had basically eight weeks to use that money for certain expenses. Let’s just say at the beginning it was 75% that had to be used for payroll over eight weeks.

 

And there was a slight difference in time periods. But you had eight weeks to use this money. A few weeks ago they passed a new act and they extended that to 24 weeks, which what what that really does is it gives everybody a lot of breathing room on how to use that money, how to use it efficiently, and how to use it to keep your business, you know, not only afloat but profitable.

 

So that’s the one biggest thing is okay, went from eight weeks the need to use this money to 24 weeks, and from having a forgiveness form that was, I think was 11 pages long to something that has not, been rereleased yet, but I think it’s going to be a much more streamlined, because basically what the government is doing is they’re basically saying, well, we want to give it all.

 

We’re giving you 24 weeks, so you should be able to use it all correctly especially if you know which option is best for you. That’s number one. Number two, a little lesser known fact is originally when people were filing for the PPP, if they were a partnership, there was really no way for them to figure in on this compensation. So they’ve come back and said if you filed as a partnership and did not include owner’s compensation, you could go back and get a second try.

 

So you could go back and ask for more money. And if you’re a partnership, that means you’re at least two owners. So that means you could, at max, compensate when you’re talking about an extra $40,000. So that’s a big number. Wow. Okay. So all right. So that is a big number. All right. So there’s a couple of things to come back to both of these.

 

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Which Option is Best: Filing As a Partnership

 

So let’s go back to the forgiveness form. I remember receiving the original version of that and scrolling through it and thinking, you’ve got to be joking, because it was 11 pages, like you said of just what felt like bureaucratic being super candid here, bureaucratic nonsense. And it almost felt like, okay, I got to jump through all these hoops because I feel like, then, you know, sort of like, wasn’t wanting to be forgiven.

 

Like I was going to really have to be scrutinized. I was going to be on the hook. But I think if I understand you correctly, it sounds like that 11 page document is going to come down to something different because the government wants it to be forgiven. Yes. And I would not be surprised if they pick a number, let’s just say $150,000.

 

And this is just my feeling and say, you know, if your PPP is less than $150,000. We’re going to forgive it. You’re not even going to have to apply to have it forgotten. Maybe you might have to sign something to say that you use the money. But that’s my take on it, because now banks are going to have this responsibility to monitor this for even a longer period of time.

 

And I think the banks are going to put some pressure off there. But that’s just my take on it. Well, I mean, that would create a lot of additional quote unquote monitoring and oversight. And granted, that’s going to turn into, you know, five year loans and that kind of stuff. But it’s not a profit center for the banks.

 

Right, right. They made their money on their fee when they basically processed that loan, they made somewhere between 3 and 5%. Okay. So then just the ongoing sort of monitoring is just a cost then to the bank. So okay, that makes total sense that if that would be not only an advantage for the business owners, but also the banks that were processing the loans. That if the government just came out with some sort of blanket forgiveness, that would be really helpful to everybody involved.

 

Right. And I believe it’s going to be the banks that are going to press for that. Okay. So that’s really great news. So let’s go back to the piece about the partnership. I had not heard this. This is really huge or potentially really huge. So you mentioned the $40,000. So with respect to partnership, does that mean that somebody is a legal entity has to be an LLP or could it be something different, something that would be taxed as a partnership.

 

So they filed form 1065. And if I was a schedule C filer. So I’m a single member LLC and I apply for the PPP. Before they actually included that, I would go back and ask again, the worst thing they could do is tell, you know, all right. But if you didn’t include owners comm. So let’s just say for forgiveness, it’s capped at $100,000.

 

So you, that’s about $7,500, monthly. Okay, so if we take that and we multiply it by about 2.5, that puts us close to 20 grand. And if you have two partners, that’s 40 grand. If you have multiple partners, you know, that’s even more. So. What if the partners were originally included in the FTE headcount? Does that matter to what you’re talking about now?

 

No, it shouldn’t matter on the left side. All right. because they were either rightly counted or wrongly counted. But when it comes to money, they’re not included on the W-2s and they’re not included on the 940 ones. And that’s what the banks were looking at. So, you know, if you applied before this, the bank, you know, they were going off a W-2s, there was no W-2 for finance.

 

So you would have applied, would have received money that would not have included your compensation. Okay. This is fascinating. I had so when did this change? I have not heard anything about this. This is awesome. Yes. It’s been a couple of weeks now. 

 

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Which Option is Best: Learning More From Craig Cody

 

Okay. So if Onward Nation business owners want to learn more about this, and I sure as heck do.

 

So where do we go to like, is there an IRS? Publication that we need to read? Like where can we go and learn more about if we qualify, do we just talk to our lender who processes PPP? Like how do we find this out? Well, you can go to the SBA site and search through it.

 

I don’t have the particular document handy, so I’m not sure which, they came back with a bunch of FAQs. But if you reach out to us and send us emails, we’ll send you that documentation. And then I’d reach out to the banks because, you know, the banks are bankers. All right. they may not be aware of this, but when you share it with them, then they could go back and apply.

 

Okay. So I know that we’ll get your contact information at the end, but go ahead and give us whatever email address you want Onward Nation business owners to use because I suspect that many of them just heard that and said, okay, I want to email Craig right now. So what is your email address you want us to be using?

 

So there’s a lot of C’s in this email. It’s [email protected] okay. Give us that one more time [email protected] okay. Thanks very much. This applies to partnerships. If you file form 1065. And it may apply to single member LLCs who have filed. Okay that is awesome. Had no idea. And I, like many Onward Nation business owners, are going to be investigating that.

 

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Which Option is Best: Taxed As a Partnership

 

And so, can we go back to math one more time for about $40,000? So how did you come to that again? So, basically it’s, annual compensation is capped at $100,000. Okay. So, it’s actually night. So that works out to 1923 per week. and if you divide 100,000 by 12, it’s around approximately eight grand, 7500 to 8 grand, I think. That number it’s changed so many times because of the way they calculated it.

 

But let’s just use eight grand for simplicity and for us to know which option is best. Two and a half times eight is $20,000. So that’s if you have one partner. Now remember this is not for corporations. This is for those that are taxed as a partnership form 1065 and potentially the single member LLC that filed before they included partners, compensation and LLC owners compensation.

 

Okay. So then it’s the $20,000 because the $8,000 times 2.5, the, and then the $20,000, if you have two partners. So then that’s the 40,000. So are there any. So what if what if a business has four partners or five partners does that number then just keep going up or is 40,000 a cap. no.

 

No, I’m not aware of any cap. And as long as you’re not over $2 million. Wow. Holy buckets. Okay. So that is a little known golden nugget. And I’ve tried to watch this very closely. I did not see that at all. or I haven’t seen any mention of that at all. So the fact that you have been paying attention, huge win.

 

Okay. That is awesome. Correct. Now hopefully that’s put some more money in somebody’s pocket. suspected. Just did. okay. So thank you for that. So let’s shift our focus to EIDL and things like this. This was a huge surprise, for me, like, when the EIDL, like the $10,000, that emergency grant, you know, $10,000 in three days, which turned out to be $1,000 per FTE.

 

And then it took about 30 days for us to actually receive it, but we received it. I was very grateful for the blessing. but what I didn’t realize, though, even though I was applying for that, you know, in three days, I didn’t realize that that was actually on the front end, you know, to apply for the grant.

 

You’re actually applying for the EIDL loan. so that was surprising to me. Was it always that case from the very beginning? And I just missed that. Yes. That was the case from the very beginning. So it was supposed to be $10,000 upfront. And then they process your loan, which was another up to $2 million.

 

Then they modified it to $1,000 per employee for the grant. Now that grant does reduce the amount of your PPP that gets forgiven. So that’s $10,000. So if you have a $150,000 loan, you use it correctly, but if you got that EIDL grant for $10,000, you’re going to owe a $10,000 five year note to pay. Okay. So now going back to your earlier thought about now granted, I know that, you’re putting together a best guess kind of scenario in this landscape is changing.

 

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Which Option is Best: The Idle Funds

 

Do you anticipate that sticking or if they do this blanket forgiveness that that might get wrapped up into it? I don’t think that’ll get wrapped up into it. But, you know, I would not be surprised if down the road and this is just, you know, once again, my opinion, if these ideal loans get totally vacated, then in the future.

 

Really? Yeah. Oh, okay. So that’s now you’ve got my curiosity going there. It got me thinking about which option is best. And I know that there’s a lot of speculation here, but why? Why do you think that that might be the case? You know, it goes back to my childhood. Okay. When there was a natural disaster, and the man would come, and I was a little kid and, you know, you’d meet your parents at the bottom of the driveway.

 

Do you have a checkbook? And they’d say, okay, the hurricane knocked down your fence. Did this okay? It’s $500. And this was probably in the 60s or early 70s. And, they’d write your check. And I could remember, I guess I was always attuned to numbers hearing, you know, my parents and maybe neighbors and stuff like that talking to.

 

Yeah, if they gave that, you know, they just gave that loan. So would I be surprised if it happened again? No, I would not. Interesting. Okay. So here again on the idle funds, which we then later got, which I was, again super excited and felt very fortunate and blessed that we received it. They ended up, I think if I understood it correctly, they ended up taking that $2 million ceiling and moving it down to like everybody had the potential of getting up to $150,000 on the LDA ideal that I understand that correctly.

 

Or maybe I misunderstood. That is correct. they actually had the SBA administrator, I believe it was last week. She was in Congress testifying because, you know, they are so backed up they actually stopped taking applications. I believe it was mid-April. I believe they are going to open back up this week for applications. So they had stopped taking applications then they were only taking applications for agriculture.

 

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Which Option is Best: It’s Cheap Insurance

 

I believe this week they are supposed to start back up, taking applications again. Okay, so it was staggering to me like I was literally in a partner meeting with Erik, here at Predictive. So Onward Nation. Sorry. I just know that Craig knows Erik very well. so Erik Jensen, my business partner here, predictive. He and I were in our weekly partner meeting and getting this email from, you know, the SBA about.

 

Congratulations. You’ve been approved for EIDL. And I’m like, what the heck is this? And then going through it. And, Craig, I got to say, I was absolutely blown away when it was so $150,000. Yeah, that’s lovely. But then the term was the fact that it was a 30 year loan at 3.75%, and that the first payment of $730, if you took the full 150,000, wasn’t going to be due for 12 months.

 

I was like, oh my gosh, maybe I shouldn’t look at it this way. But I looked at it like 3.75. I mean, that’s almost like free money, isn’t it? Just staggering cheap insurance. Oh, okay. So that’s an interesting choice of words. So why do you call it insurance? Because we don’t know what is going to happen in the next 6 to 12 months.

 

You know, I have a very positive view, but you never know. But you can stick that money in the bank. Don’t touch it. You could always pay back in 12 months. Yeah. No harm, no foul. I see what you’re saying. Okay. So if it. So if it does open back up again. Like what? People are speculating.

 

Would you encourage Onward Nation business owners that even if they don’t need the money to go ahead and participate because it’s cheap insurance, I would definitely suggest applying for it. It may take 60 to 90 days to get funded because we’re in mid June here and there’s many people. I mean, they had over 5 million applications.

 

Oh my word. Totally overwhelmed. As far as that goes. And apparently they’ve just recently ramped up the staff. the administrator testified before Congress last week. They really were on her. She kind of stuck to her guns on a $150,000 cap. But you never know. And you never know whether people that, you know, applied for the grant portion and did not get the full ten when they were supposed to.

 

If they are going to get another email down the road saying that you are eligible for another $7000 on that grant, I would see that happening before they raise the limit on the $150,000. okay. So let me make sure I understand that point. So when it got changed to $1,000 per FTE, so instead of getting ten, we got seven.

 

It predicted we have a team of 15, but only seven are full time employees. And I’m one of those. So we got $7,000. So are you saying that maybe downstream. And of course who knows if this will happen. But your Spidey sense is saying that maybe they might come back to Predictive and say, here’s that other three.

 

Yes. Fascinating. Do you want it? Do you want it? That’s okay. Here again, big golden nugget. I had no idea that that might even be something that is being kicked around right now. Yeah. You know, she was beaten up pretty badly by Congress. So, she did not budge on $150,000, but I think I would not be surprised if this happens on the $10,000 original idea.

 

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Which Option is Best: The Importance of Tax Planning

 

And so Congress was what Congress was wanting her in the SBA to do more or the why being beat up? It was, you know, why is this program so slow? The whole idea was to get the money out there, you know, okay, if you need money, you know, you get wiped out today, 90 dollars, 90 days later that, you know, you may not last 90 days.

 

Yeah. Not too helpful. And, you know, Congress being politicians, you know, they’re playing the game and we’re in an election cycle. Yes. There’s see how but you know and they’re all over YouTube. The, you know, the power of testimony and stuff like that and there’s a lot of different, you know, variations of snippets and stuff like that.

 

But I would not be surprised. I would see that happening much more likely than them raising the cap on $150,150,000, because as of right now, there’s over 5 million applications. I believe once things open up that, you know, there’ll be a bunch more. Apparently there’s plenty of funds, so that’s not an issue. Holy bananas. I had no idea that it was 5 million.

 

Obviously that is a big number, but at the same point too, when we think of the 28 million small business owners in this country, then 5 million doesn’t seem like a lot, right? The formula they use, you know, was supposed to be like six months worth of operating expenses. So there were a lot of small businesses out there that that six month number is not a big number.

 

Sure. Okay. In a guess, if 5 million have applied now, then it was shut off. So maybe the other 23 million or whatever the accurate number is, you know, maybe they just got left out or for whatever reason, decided not to apply. There’s obviously lots of different circumstances there potentially. Right. And all the people that don’t even know about it, you know, just like the PPP, it’s shocking.

 

But, you know, there are people that don’t know about these things and they don’t know which option is best. Well, you know, I still get emails every single day if you heard about PPP. And so sometimes I’m like not and then but you know, I take that for granted. Right. And so okay. So let’s talk about the tax piece because you mentioned the fact that, you know, there’s still some debate, I think, but and here again, I know that the landscape is or the ground underneath us is continuing to shift, which probably makes tax planning that much more important to to make sure that we have our ducks in a row.

 

So from a tax planning perspective, because I know you’ve got a depth of expertise in this area, obviously. So what you see is as important as you know, people are taking in funds. How should they be preparing tax wise for that? Well, they should be planning because as it stands right now, you’re going to have $100,000 coming in as a loan, okay?

 

That loan will likely be forgiven. You will pay, let’s just say $100,000 of what are typically deductible expenses. But because you’re using the government’s money, they’re saying, well, you should not get to deduct that expense, which makes sense. It would be double dipping if they give you the money, and then you actually get to use that money to pay expenses and then deduct those expenses.

 

So all things staying the same, if your business has kind of remained steady, your income has remained steady and you got a $100,000 tip loan. And let’s just say you use it all for salaries. So you paid around $100,000 in salaries with it. Well, now you’re going to lose that $100,000 deduction. So now your income will increase by $100,000 unless you do some planning.

 

Now presumably you should still have an extra $100,000 sitting in the bank. All right. Because the income that you had that you would have spent on salaries, you didn’t because you spent the money. So it’s a little confusing. But now the bottom line is you can tax both incomes of an extra $100,000. And now look at it from the government’s point of view.

 

If you’re in that, you know, 24%, you know, they gave you 100, they get in 24 back right away. So you know in addition to payroll tax and everything else. So it makes sense. So then if a business owner hasn’t done a tax plan or hasn’t, you know, worked with somebody to create a tax plan or they’re not being proactive and thinking about this, thinking, oh, whoof, thank goodness I got my payroll covered and all of that.

 

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Which Option is Best: Keep Your Books Up to Date

 

Now I’m out of the PPP phase. You know, maybe they used all their money in the early weeks and then the 24 weeks. That’s kind of the situation that we’re in. We essentially extended it by a week because of this new passage. But we essentially consume that in the original, you know, eight weeks. And so we, as well as any other business owner that may have done that, business owners that may have done that, we need to be thinking about, oh, wait a minute, how come, you know, April or next year there could be paper that needs to be paid, right?

 

There’s going to be a bill that comes due, if I’m hearing you correctly. Right. And it can be a surprise, because if you’re keeping your books up to date and you’re tracking your expenses, yes, you’re picking up the expenses of payroll, but at the end, it’s going to have to be an adjustment because those expenses are not deductible.

 

So now all of a sudden you’re going to lose, let’s just say $100,000 worth of expenses if you’re not doing this on a regular basis. When you go and finalize your books for the year. So surprise me. Well, yeah. And that could be a really big surprise. You’ve used the number about $100,000. And for the sake of conversation, nice round numbers.

 

I mean, depending upon where somebody is at and what their tax rate is, I mean, that could literally be tens of thousands of dollars, right? Oh yeah. It can, you know, because it’s going to boost your income by $100,000. So it may put you in another bracket. Holy buckets. Okay. So then, wow, I’m trying to think of some of the questions because I’m a little bit knocked on my heels by that. That’s a really big revelation.

 

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Which Option is Best: Have A Clear Communication with Your CPA

 

So what does a business owner do? How do they know which option is best? Like how do they start to how do they proactively start to mitigate that risk, I guess is what I’m curious about. Well, they need to be communicating with their CPA and not just talking to them, making sure that they’re on the same page that they know.

 

You know, we have these deductions here, all right, that are going to be disqualified, you know, at some point. So, you know, I might think my net income is 150. And I’m looking at it all year round at 150, when in reality it’s going to be 250. So are we factoring that into our panel? What are we doing about that?

 

Okay, so Onward Nation, please do not make the assumption that that is being done. Be proactive here. Do exactly what Craig just suggested that you do. Get in touch with your CPA and ask him or her about this scenario. You do not want to be having that conversation in late November, right? Craig? Correct. Okay. So now is the time to do that Onward Nation.

 

Okay. That was huge. Thank you very much for that. Let’s shift our attention. I know that we’re quickly running out of time here. I would love to get your take on. And again, I know that we’re all speculating here, but you have a pretty good feel for this, so I’d be curious to know if you’re making any sort of, or if you have any sort of expectation.

 

That’s probably the best word. Do you have any sort of expectation on the shape of the economic recovery that we might be in for, like, you know, there’s lots of speculation around that. It’s going to be a V that is going to be a you, that it’s going to be an L, that it’s going to be some other shape.

 

Like what? What is your best take on that? As it stands today. So what I’m seeing from our clients is it’s pretty much business as usual. you know, I’m in New York, you know, we have clients across the country. So we’ve had clients that have opened up at different points. And, I had a conversation with NI in New York.

 

Dentists were able to start operating. I think about, a week and a half ago and one of, you would think, okay, New York’s, you know, been pretty hard hit. You know, it’s going to be slow. Okay. They didn’t, it was just like the day before March 15th when they shut down. It was just back to the way it was.

 

Now there’s a couple things they had to get used to with patient flow and stuff like that. It’s PPP. but you know, they were shocked. And you know, we are seeing, you know, the majority of our clients are just back to, you know, where they were maybe, maybe a slight decrease in the beginning. But just to get everybody back on board now, I think if you’re not a restaurant, that’s probably a good scenario.

 

Restaurants are going to be a different story. Okay, I am pleasantly surprised. But I am surprised to hear that because I know that you have clients all over the country, but you also have an epicenter, you know, right there like, sort of a clustering, if you will. I’m choosing all these really bad words because we’re talking about pandemic cheese.

 

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Which Option is Best: The Fundamentals of Recession

 

Forgive me Onward Nation, but, he has a concentration of clients, in the New York City area, which is where you are based, like you said. And so I guess I’m really pleasantly surprised that it’s, you know, back to business as usual. As usual as it is, or can’t be that quickly. So that’s great.

 

But I’m just surprised. Were you surprised by that? I was shocked, and this one, New York City, that it is not some it’s not a young guy that’s been out there marketing and stuff like that. You know, he doesn’t have a young clientele and you know, and I think he was just as shocked. But that’s a good thing.

 

So I think this is very different from the recession in, you know, oh seven to oh ten, which was a long drawn out recession. I don’t think this is going to be long and drawn out. The government is definitely, whether you like them or not, trying to, you know, make sure that the economy is, you know, back up to where it was.

 

They’re looking at another stimulus package and who knows what that’s going to be. Everybody has a, you know, 1, 2 or $3 trillion package that they want out there. But I expect, you know, for, you know, what I’ve seen is people are going to be kind of right where they were and just the fundamentals of this recession.

 

And, you know, oh 7 to 10 are just completely different, too, right? I mean, fed policy, the fundamentals, like what took us into the recession, just completely different scenarios. Right? Right. I mean, look at I mean, people you know, basically people knew they weren’t losing their jobs. Business owners knew they could spend because they had this money coming in so they could do what they needed to do.

 

People that were unemployed were getting that extra $600 a week. All right. So, yeah, the government bailed just like they bailed out the banks. And they, you know, they bailed everybody out, but they put this money in. So people weren’t, you know, and let’s just talk about those business owners who weren’t so afraid to spend money, whether it’s on advertising or doing what they needed to do.

 

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Which Option is Best: Receiving of Unemployment Benefits

 

So when we were, you know, released from the house, we could go back to the way we were. Yeah. And you and I were talking the other day about that $600. And I know there’s some debate and argument right now that, you know, some of the people who are receiving those unemployment benefits are actually doing better now than they were when they were employed.

 

And depending upon what side of the aisle, you know, there’s just a lot of arguing there as far as when to get people, you know, back to work. But the jobs aren’t there, what to cut off benefits and whatnot to. There’s just all kinds of dizzying debate around it. But the economic reality is, in some instances, people are doing better than they were when they were working.

 

And if I understand correctly, is that true? Yeah. I mean, I would say on the lower end, yes. Okay. But that will end in July. And these people need to, you know, get back to work. So, it’s and it’s the business owner that’s going to employ these people. Right? Wow. This has been fascinating. And and so I know that we’re, again, quickly running out of time.

 

But this has been so insightful. I knew that it would be, a couple things, a couple resources, and one in particular that I want to make sure that we mentioned to Onward Nation business owners, you just recently finished a course. And I want to make sure that Onward Nation business owners know where to go, where to receive it because it’s free, which is just a hugely generous offering from you. But, you know, totally consistent with who you are and how you’ve been sharing your insights all along the way.

 

So, give us a highlight about the free course and where Onward Nation business owners can go and get access to it. Sure. So it’s the five simple ways to save thousands on taxes and how business owners can start today. 

 

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Which Option is Best: Free Course from Craig Cody

 

So it’s a very basic course, based on Covid, where right now it’s still going to be a free course.

 

That may change in 30 to 60 days, but it’s free right now. There are you know, it’s we’ve taking taken some things we’ve talked about, expanded on them, given some documentation. and, you know, now is the time we need to start planning and, you know, to save taxes because otherwise it’s going to sneak up on us and we’re going to save some money, so they can go to craigcodyandcompany.com/course/.

 

We’ll give you a link for your listeners so they have a little bit longer time to get that for free. Awesome. And it’s just good information. Yeah. And I think you shared the best word there when you said proactive and I’m blown away by the $100,000 scenario and the tax planning impact or implicit implications.

 

Excuse me, regarding PPP. so you’ve really highlighted some things that, yay, we received the support that we needed. It may not have come at the speed at which we all would have loved to have received it. But wonderful blessings. Yay! You got it! Now run your business and so forth and continue to grow and get back to business as usual in whatever shape and form that feels appropriate for you Onward Nation.

 

But in taking that, in accepting it, that doesn’t mean that it’s like, whoa, you know, hands off the wheel and and just enjoy the ride. It means that it comes with a level of responsibility and planning. And so, Craig, you really underscored that and highlighted some really specific things that we need to do. That was smart. Thank you very much for that.

 

Oh you’re welcome. You’re welcome. So before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, I mean, I know that we covered a lot, but any final advice that you want to share? Anything you think we might have missed? And then please tell us again the best way to connect with you, my friend. 

 

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Which Option is Best: How to Connect with Craig Cody

 

Yeah. So the whole idea behind all this is you need to be proactive.

 

You need to make sure that your CPA you’re working with is being proactive and knows how to help you, you know, navigate this. I mean, you make your money in your business, okay? It’s not doing tax returns or tax planning and that kind of stuff. And you need to know what’s going on, but you need to be, you know, speaking with your professional and making sure you don’t get surprised by any of this.

 

And as far as reaching out to us, my email is [email protected]. The website is CraigCodyAndCompany.com Onward Nation Encore and so I’m sure you have all the information in your notes. That is awesome. And onward. And no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and relisten to Craig’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do, the key is you have to take these golden nuggets.

 

This is the insights, the wisdom, the expertise, the recommendations that he so generously shared with you. Take them, apply them into your business right away and be better for it. In Craig, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day, and I am grateful that you took the time to come back to Onward Nation to share what you are seeing and researching and all of these tools that you’re building, everything that you’re taking in from the front lines.

 

I am so very grateful, my friend, to help us move Onward Nation business owners to that next level and for teaching us about which option is best. Thank you so much, Craig. Well, you’re quite welcome. Thank you very much for having me. And helping us get that information out there. 

 

This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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