george grombacher 0:02
Mark to get us started give me two truths and a lie please, sir.

Mark Miller 0:06
Well, let’s see to truth and ally. I am the executive producer on a upcoming Mel Gibson movie. I am a big NCAA basketball fan. And I am friends with Taylor Swift.

george grombacher 0:29
Wow. Those are those are those are excellent, right? They’re big. Gotta move. You are the producer of a Mel Gibson film coming up your big NCAA said basketball basketball fan and that you’re friends with Taylor Swift. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. Okay. My goodness. I do not think that you are an NCAA basketball fan.

Mark Miller 0:59
Okay. I happen to be a very big NCAA basketball fan. All right. Yes. Yeah. My favorite sport. And I am the executive producer on a Mel Gibson film coming up called Flight risks that will be released in October. And I’ve only met Taylor Swift. I am not a friend of hers.

george grombacher 1:22
Just casual acquaintances. Yes. She would

Mark Miller 1:26
not recognize I’m sure she would not say to me. Hey, Mark, how are you doing? I’m sure that would not be if she saw me again. She wouldn’t know who the heck I was.

george grombacher 1:35
Maybe she’s got one of those big law. Yeah, yes. Yeah. So those were excellent. Mark. Well done. You. You for sure. Got me. So who is your team? Who is who is your your basketball team, my

Mark Miller 1:49
basketball team or the Kansas Jayhawks. Okay. So I, I am a big fan. I love college basketball. And I love traditional and the history of the team. And so I happen to be a big fan of theirs.

george grombacher 2:02
That’s awesome. And how does one produce a Mel Gibson film?

Mark Miller 2:07
Actually, and we’ll talk about I have worked with the Hilton family for years. And we have done a number of different movie productions. And we’ll continue to do more. And I through the Hilton’s, me and many my other clients to have joined in as an executive producing that film coming up, again, called flight risk with Mark Wahlberg in it in

george grombacher 2:32
October. Very cool. I’m sure that that was a very neat experience. So

Mark Miller 2:37
yes, it was we were just came back from the con Film Festival. And that was a very unique experience. Really cool.

george grombacher 2:44
Awesome. Well, well, I will look forward to that. Great. Well, aside from that, everything

Mark Miller 2:50
else? Well, I say that I am telling people to go to the movie. But I’m an executive producer. I’m one of the money guys. So I’m not involved in all the creative stuff. It’s not as good as say the gladiator movie coming up with Ridley Scott or something. Do not blame me. Do not get mad at me. Just sit back, enjoy the movie, enjoy what you can of the movie. But I think it’s a pretty good script. It was a script that Mel Gibson has been trying to do for 10 years and finally was able to get it done. So

george grombacher 3:21
awesome. Understood. All right, Mark. Well, what is what is top of mind for you right now when it comes to personal finance money

Mark Miller 3:31
taxes? Well, top of mine is and since we’re partnered with the Hilton family, and I’m the CEO of Hilton tax and Wealth Advisors, top of mind is just continuing to kind of fulfill the passion that Brad Hilton and I have Brad Hilton is the grandson of Conrad Hilton, the passion to really get kind of advanced wealth building strategies that the wealthiest of the wealthiest use the Hilton’s and a lot of other people kind of in their sphere use to get those strategies down to Main Street. So we’ve done that through Hilton tax and Wealth Advisors, which again is our passion, Brad and I’s passion, a lot of advanced tax mitigation strategies, again, for more average investors. And so a couple years ago, I did a book called a tax free business owner is not just for business owners for all kinds of investors and people that are paying too much in taxes, really, and most people are they don’t even know they’re overpaying in taxes. And then my second book that just was released just a couple of weeks ago, called Hilton wealth, how to invest like an American dynasty. So those are the things that are topping them on top of mind and everything that comes from that and just plugging our clients into the Hilton financial network to help them protect their money more, save money on taxes, put more money in their pockets that way and ultimately make better returns and safer returns over time. Appreciate

george grombacher 5:05
that. So what’s changed? If anything, is it just barriers have have come down to get access to these strategies. We’re just more aware of them now.

Mark Miller 5:17
So George, that is a, that’s a great question. And you kind of hit on it there, kind of the information revolution has allow that to happen to where there is more information out there. I do caution people, because really, what we do is we plug people into the smart money side of investing, tax mitigation, and all of that, which really wasn’t available at all, maybe 20 years ago, 15 years ago. And now, with the information revolution, it has come down a little more to Main Street, but they’re still not access to it. Like if you go on on the internet and try to do find strategies and do all of that, it’s still pretty impossible to to get cohesive plans and do it properly. But what’s happened in that process is wealthier people and even institutions have realized now that there is a big market on the retail side. And it’s okay to start letting some of these strategies in. If you’ve got, let’s say, a portfolio 250,000 500,000 or more, as opposed to having to have 1015 $20 million to access these types of strategies. So I would say if anything, it’s more just kind of the information revolution and the speed of information. And it’s kind of in some ways, they’ve been forced to a little bit to kind of tap into that market now and go for kind of more quantity rather than, you know, bigger chunks of money. Now, district quality money is money, but bigger chunks of money to be able to access these things.

george grombacher 7:01
Got it. Okay. So what, what is tax mitigation, and then we can get at some of the strategies ourselves, yeah, big words,

Mark Miller 7:09
saving money on your taxes. Make it simple. Basically, what we do, and kind of what the wealthy do is they treat their taxes like, like they would have an investment plan. They also have a tax plan, usually written tax plans, we help people design written tax plans, and do a deep dive into the codes for various strategies, they help Financial Network has 128 different strategies, tax mitigation strategies, many those are proprietary, but many of those are just kind of deep dive into the 178,000 pages of codes, that the myth that people think is they think if they have a CPA or an accountant, or somebody that does their taxes, even a preparer that they know everything about taxes, and they’re going to be able to save them as much as they can. So, you know, and rightfully so people think if you’re really good at doing taxes, and understand the codes a little bit or even can fill out advanced, you know, forms in depreciation, things like that, that these people are brilliant. The fact of the matter is, that’s not what most CPAs are designed to do. Most of them are just advanced tax preparers. They may do four or five 600 tax returns in a year, and have a great practice, make plenty of money. And that’s what they’ve all been doing for the last 50 or 60 years. And it’s a good model and they can make you know, most of them are not, you know, business, you know, want two or three businesses or anything. They’re not huge business people, they’re technicians. They do though that preparation and that’s where they stop, you’ll get a few things like entity planning, put your money in a 401 K, things like that the regular stuff that everybody knows about, but they just want to get to the next tax preparation case. That’s all there to them. That’s how they make their money. So they’re not tax planners. And the wealthiest have a design tax plan. Usually us ours are about 60 pages long with some Bulwark strategies make up maybe about six or seven Bulwark strategies, and then we’ll put some proprietary Hilton strategies in there. Of course all of this stands up to IRS scrutiny. It’s all legal moral, ethical, you can only guess that what the Hiltons and stands up to that scrutiny that the IRS would have. And that’s a big myth too, is that most people think if you do anything different because they’re told that by their CPA, that they’re going to be audited. It’s just the opposite. By doing it in a design plan formalized tax plans, we actually reduce a client’s risk of getting audit not Audit did not make it more likely that they’ll get audited.

george grombacher 10:04
I think that would probably surprise people, but to your point between the actual Internal Revenue Service laws code, and then hundreds of 1000s of pages of case law, I don’t want to say that it’s asking for it. But they’re inviting strategies, and they’re inviting planning.

Mark Miller 10:24
That is interesting, you say that, and I can tell you’re a smart guy, because a lot of people don’t get that. That there’s a reason why there’s 178,000 pages that first of all, the majority of all of those, some of them are kind of, you know, bureaucrats in the IRS that kind of design them, and then they get rubber stamp and everything the ISD IRS does has to be rubber rubber stamp by the legislatures, and the legislature, both in Congress in the Senate, all of those individuals, there’s some of the richest people in the world. They’ve put those strategies in there, too. Let’s I mean, I don’t want to be cynical with this. But let’s be honest, it’s reality, to a lot of them to help themselves and help their friends and their cronies. But there’s no reason then why we can’t take advantage of those same strategies, techniques, you know, deep dive code things to do the same and save as much money as they save on their taxes.

george grombacher 11:27
So if you have some money saved up $250,000 or more, there are some opportunities and probably quite a few opportunities in that you referenced. Quite a few. So you said maybe six or seven Bulwark and then a handful of the Hilton strategies. Do you have some favorites? Or can you share a couple

Mark Miller 11:48
with let me let me first make a point here, I was kind of talking about portfolio investing. And we do do a lot of smart money investing kind of on the institutional side, on the tax side, if you pay 25 30,000 Plus in taxes, we can design a plan for you. Okay. So and that’s a lot of business owners, high paid execs, you know, physicians, individuals like that, that that make enough money to pay that where they pay substantial taxes. I mean, I literally just got off the phone, we finished a play with an individual, we saved them over a million. This first year I’ll save ultimately the goal, though, is to get them to the zero tax bracket, which were the is where the majority of the wealthiest of the wealthiest are

george grombacher 12:37
not personally saved a million dollars for was was Was he or she pretty happy? What’s that say that? Uh, yeah, person you saved a million bucks for pretty high. Yes,

Mark Miller 12:47
was actually shocked. And a lot of times people don’t even although everything they see, and even sometimes, and this individual had their own CPA, though, they’re moving over to us now. Because our CPAs are, are more tax planning focused and their other CPA, but their CPA even reviewed it and said, Hey, there’s nothing wrong here. Everything is the way it’s supposed to be. So so they were a little shocked, and they had to double check. But I totally understand that I get it.

george grombacher 13:23
For sure. Trust but verify. Mark. Yes, trust but verify, like, and can you share a couple of the couple of strategies or opportunities?

Mark Miller 13:33
Yes, absolutely. So everyone knows about a for instance, like home office deductions. And on the surface, people go, Oh, well, I’m already doing that my CPA RDSP setup actually allow others to, to save on home office expenses, and two of them are going to be the minimum amount. The third one gets you the maximum amount of deduction. And most CPAs, don’t even share that with individuals, because there’s a little bit of complexity to it, implementation complexity. But of course, we know how to do that. And we know how to take advantage of that code. There’s another Bulwark strategy that some people might know about, but others don’t we call it tax free rent, where you basically kind of rent your home back to yourself your business does to get a direct deduction there. We also dive into fringe benefit deductions for business owners. And there’s about five or six different fringe benefits that most business owners don’t take advantage of. Plus we design accountability plans to where their their businesses or can pay themselves back. We also have some tax mitigation, direct tax mitigation strategies. Interesting that you asked about the the the lies in the truth earlier because actually on the film side I just met happen to mention that we have some tax mitigation strategies that are federal based mitigation strategies, not just state strategies, which many people know about to where we can get three or four times more in tax savings by investing in certain types of movie projects. That’s advantage of maybe an advanced tax mitigation, and we’ve got a slew of those two that we use for our clients. So that gives you a little taste of some things they can do. But what we do is we package that all together. So all of those work synergistically together, and they complement each other. And it’s a plan, it’s a design plan that can be used year after year.

george grombacher 15:43
Nice. I imagine that most everybody that you talk to that this certainly piques their interest if they’re having to write a check to the government for 25 $30,000. And then you can potentially get to the point where they’re writing a smaller check, or maybe even none, that that does say this is something I want to pursue, what what stops people from going through with it just momentum. And this is what most

Mark Miller 16:11
people do when they go through the process, though, it’s kind of in we’ve set it up. And the Hilton’s have it, you know, we do not outrageously charge, like tax attorneys do to do this type of thing. Most of them when they go through the process, it’s kind of a no brainer. So the vast majority of the people that actually come to us, we can save, generally, if they qualify, we can save about 50% The first year on their taxes, and then we’ll work over time, and when they engage with us, you know, over two or three year period of time to then get them to the zero tax bracket. That’s we don’t guarantee that but the vast majority of people that we work with, we get them to that place. But that takes a little bit of time and layering of strategies as we go forward and getting to know the client better and being able to, to design and add things into their tax plan their basic foundational tax plan. Got

george grombacher 17:06
it, I imagine it does take a little bit of time, in order to get something done for a a current for a an upcoming tax year, how much lead time is typically required.

Mark Miller 17:19
So with the one thing about proactive tax planning, we call it proactive on purpose, because it’s not reactive tax planning or after the fact stack planning. So a lot of people come to us and go, Hey, I paid so much money in 2023 and 22. And can you look at those returns? And can you do all the planning, we can’t go backwards now. Now, oftentimes, because the CPAs that we work with are probably you know, top tier in the entire country. And oftentimes when they bring a client on board, they’ll go back and they find mistakes and various things, because they’re really good at what they do. But that’s relatively minor tax planning is the current year forward. So right now we’re we’re going into the heaviest part where we start to go back with all our clients layer strategy, but new clients we bring in, this is where actually we start middle of August. And that’s what we call tax planning season getting everything done and implemented before the end of 2024 to save for 24. Okay, does that. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah, so that’s different than So, you know, once December 31 2023 ended, you can’t go back and do planning. There’s a few things we can do some, for some very wealthy people with some advanced tax planning strategies, we have to go back, but those are kind of specialized strategies. But for the most part, we’re going from 2024 and that every year being proactive on that same schedule.

george grombacher 18:56
Got it. Excellent. Well, Mark, you’ve given us a handful already. We’re ready for that difference making tip. What do you have for us? Well,

Mark Miller 19:05
I would say and we’ve talked mainly about tax planning today. I’d say the difference maker is not automatically relying and just because most people have a gut feeling that they feel like they’re paying too much in taxes. About 95% of the people that come to us when we again if they qualify. We look and they are overpaying substantially. So that gut feeling you have about overpaying is and the big tip is the courts have consistently for decades, the Supreme Court district courts have said over and over and over that you do not have to pay more in taxes than what is legally required. And that’s what tax planning is all about putting a plan together Didn’t take advantage of those codes and various strategies where you’re not overpaying. You’re paying exactly what you should be paying.

george grombacher 20:09
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets like come on, aren’t ask you so thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can engage and where can they get? Where can they get their copy of Hilton wealth, how to invest like an American dynasty?

Mark Miller 20:25
Well, they can. It’s real simple, they can just go to our website, which is Hilton wealth, Hilton wealth.com. Real simple to remember Hilton wealth.com. And on there, there may be some pop ups, I don’t do all the technical stuff in my business, there’s probably some pop ups in there and so forth, where you can go in there, and or one of my two books, again, the tax free business owner how to zero out your taxes. And then also Hilton wealth, which is my newest book, How to Invest like an American dynasty. Excellent.

george grombacher 20:57
Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, show, mark your appreciation, share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to Hilton wealth.com. And check out a lot of the things that Mark and I have been talking about today, get your copy of Hilton wealth, how to invest like an American dynasty. And if your gut is telling you, I should look into this because I think I’m paying too much in taxes. We’ll then take the first step and schedule time to chat with Mark. Thanks. Good Mark.

Mark Miller 21:25
Thank you, George. Appreciate it. Have a great day. Finally, a

george grombacher 21:29
friendly reminder never going to be anybody more interested in your financial success than you are. So act accordingly.