Understanding tax credits can be hugely beneficial to taxpayers. Tax credits are reductions in the total amount of tax owed and can provide a welcome relief to those who owe a large amount of taxes.
By understanding how these credits work, taxpayers can strategically use them to their advantage and reap the benefits such as increasing profit, and having more money to invest back into their business, their employees and the future of their company.
We had the pleasure of interviewing David McMillian, founder of McMillian and Associates, in this episode of the Optimized Law Firm podcast: “Tax Credit Strategies for Attorneys. McMillian is dedicated to helping clients find all the tax credits you deserve, and sending more money to your bottom line.
If you haven’t looked into Tax Credits, or you are not sure how they can benefit your law firm, tune into this episode.
Key Takeaways:
- Understanding Tax Credits and The Benefits
- Difference Between Federal and State Tax Credits
- COVID and Tax Credits for Law Firms
- When is the best time to work on your tax credits?
Transcript:
Patrick Carver:
Welcome to the Optimize Law Firm podcast. My name is Patrick Carver and thank you for joining us. This is the podcast where we talk about how to run a more profitable and enjoyable law firm. And today I’m pleased to be joined with David McMillan. He is the tax credit king of Georgia. I’m giving you that name officially. Take it or leave it, but we are going to be talking about tax credits specifically, and they are an amazing way to be able to generate more profit for your business and ultimately pay less to the government in a legal way, of course.
And the sad fact is that most companies don’t utilize them or really understand what they are. And so we’re going to talk with David today, who is an absolute expert on tax credits. He’s built a firm all around that purpose, McMillan and Associates. And so really pleased to have and would love to welcome you to the podcast. And I’d love to hear a little bit more about how you got into this space and your background with the tax credits.
David McMillan:
That’s awesome. Thanks, Patrick. Yeah, glad to be talking about this. I think it’s a great tool that really is that well known or talked about, especially for just the average business owner. So I love that you have this podcast kind of helping business owners run a better business, which I think is awesome. You know, really, there’s something I’ve been spending most of my professional career working with companies to capture these tax credits.
David McMillan:
And actually this year is our 25th anniversary as a business. So we’ve been around for a while and really we just had the simple goal that we want to try to help businesses create new opportunities by finding money through these tax credits, and we try to make sure that people are looking at all tax credits, you know, especially since I would say since COVID, I know you’ve experienced this, you hear this stuff all over the place and people wonder, is this too good to be true? What’s the catch? But there’s a lot more out there for businesses besides some of these things you might hear on a radio or on a commercial. And so that’s really what our goal is. We want to try to help people figure out what’s available. But also, I think equally important to us is making sure people get these tax credits, is making sure that the process is simple, easy, repeatable versus, you know, I have a copy in my jaw right here of the tax planner that my CPA gives me every year.
And it’s all digital now, but nobody wants to fill out a big giant packet of information. So that’s something that’s influenced. How we try to help people is making sure companies know like, “how do you get a process in place to capture these things?:
Patrick Carver:
Yeah, I’ll just give you 2 minutes short of my experience with tax credits and why this is such an interesting and I think valuable topic. For the past two, we’ve utilized tax credits at some level. And, you know, looking back, we’ve saved probably at a minimum 20 to $30,000 a year on tax credits and other tax strategies as well.
One of the big challenges with this is that it’s well, there’s I think there’s a couple of challenges, it’s complex. You have to have specialized knowledge for it. And ultimately you are relying on government resources or public resources that are out in the public space to inform you on “Do you qualify, do you not qualify?”
And so myself as a business owner, you know, I probably have spent way too much time on this. Then you know what? I should because I just have the mentality of like, okay, there’s some gold in the mountain here I needed. I need to figure this out. So I’ve read the tax code, but it’s not a good use of my time.
And a friend shared my or shared your info with me and and so kind of instantly you know gravitated to what you guys do because you’re totally focused on tax credits. You have a system for it. And I think as well, I think if you’re a business owner, you absolutely will value your guidance, especially for the fact you guys do it all on contingency basis as well, which is awesome.
David McMillan:
Yeah, most people don’t. You know, what I tell companies is that you’ve probably heard about tax credits maybe in an indirect way. If you’re in a state where there’s a big manufacturer moving in or you’ve had a big movie that’s been filmed in your state, you’ve probably heard about these things indirectly. But the reality is, unless you’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, the government is not telling you how to get this.
There might be information, but they’re not walking you through the process of what to do and how to document and how to answer all these nuances. And then the reality, unfortunately, is that most CPAs, you know, just they’re not experts in it and they have a ton of other things on their plate that they’re working through. And so this just becomes, you know, item number 37 down their checklist that if it’s staring them in the face, they may get to it.
But oftentimes it just kind of goes unnoticed. And like you, unless you have a friend or a peer, tell you about one of these things, the chances are you’re probably not taking advantage of everything you should.
Patrick Carver:
So let’s talk a little bit about what the difference is between a tax credit and a tax deduction, because I think from my personal experience talking with law firms, they seem to get the idea of deductions. But I don’t think most really understand maybe even conceptually the idea of a credit versus deduction.
David McMillan:
Yeah, absolutely. So how I explain this to people is that a deduction lowers the amount of money that you’re taxed on, which is still good, right? Credit actually reduces the money that you’re paying to the government. So it is what I tell people, it’s a dollar for dollar reduction in your tax liability. And so whatever money that you’re about to write to the government, when you get a credit, that’s money that you actually keep in your bank account and in your pocket as true profit for the business.
So it’s not just that credit is not just a deduction, it’s lowering how much money you get taxed on and then you still owe some taxes at the end. A credit actually reduces the taxes that you have to pay to the government.
Patrick Carver:
Yeah. And I would even say in like caveman terms, you know, you typically get a tax bill at the end of the year right. Your CPA will tell you, oh you owe 40,000 or 20,000. This just means you get to cut that. Right. And it takes, you know, depending on how you utilize this, you can get a lot out of that. And for me, it’s such a no-brainer because it’s ultimately pure profit when you strategize, take the time to do it and really go through with it. Can you share some examples of how tax credits have had a positive impact on some of the businesses that you work with? I know you work with a wide variety, but you do work with law firms. How much money are we talking about and what does that mean in terms of just, you know, benefits to the business?
David McMillan:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question, Patrick. You know, there’s a lot of examples of, you know, the things that come to our mind. You know, we work on a lot of different industries and they all affect people a little differently. So I remember a couple of years ago there was a manufacturer in Atlanta that we were working with, and they were a small kind of woodworking manufacturer and they got a tax credit for buying equipment.
It was something specific for manufacturers. And I still have this kind of burned in my memory that the business owner said to me is like this money that we’re getting from spending all this money on equipment is letting us compete with overseas manufacturers to try to keep work here in the U.S. And I was like, well, that’s pretty awesome.
I had another client. They were a restaurant chain in Athens, and we found them a lot of money and they’re like, hey, this is allowing us to give back to our employees and give them bonuses and extra money that they would have wouldn’t have been able to provide.
You know, and I think for the average business owner, like we don’t have size limits. And so sometimes for us and we’re a small business, too, we have less than 25 employees finding five, ten, 15, $20,000 is as important as finding hundreds of thousands of dollars. I get tax credits myself and there’s a lot of small businesses we work with, so this money allows us to keep investing in the business.
That’s the way I look at it, is that, you know, I am always going to have that mindset of trying to run a better business and invest in my people and the process to try to make it better for our clients and this money lets you do that faster. You know, it’s like when you’ve got extra profit, it’s going to benefit and trickle down, whether it’s giving back to organizations you support or to your team members, or being able to invest in new things that you may not have been able to do. So in the past or to be able to invest in more of that. Right. You know, I see it affecting companies in a number of different ways.
Patrick Carver:
So awesome. Yeah, it’s it’s just it’s especially when you’re early on in the lifecycle of your business or you’re getting to, you know, a certain plateau where you think you know now you’re you’re going to make some good money this year or you know, your first time to like, you know, even paying people and now you actually might get some profit and then you get hit with this, you know, big tax bill.
It’s just very deflating. And so I think this for me, it was very beneficial to you know, have the have these resources because, yeah, we get to invest in, you know, and I think it just gives me more peace of mind that like we have money in the bank and can do some of these things, you know, with our folks.
So let’s get into kind of the meat of it, which for me is, you know, how we can make this applicable to law firms. And, you know, I listed a handful of items that I’ve utilized. Such as the employee retention credit you’ve told me about a technology credit.
I’ve used the opportunity zone, I’ve used R&D credits. But then there’s also stuff like military hires, child care credits, things like that. There are two different layers of tax credits: You have federal and then you have state. And sometimes a federal will have value at the state or federal level and then will also can be utilized at the state level.
But a state level credit is something very specific like we’re in Georgia, so a Georgia credit’s not going to work in California. What comes to mind when we’re talking about what credits law firms might be eligible for?
David McMillan:
Yeah, absolutely. You know how I start these conversations with business owners is that business activities create tax credit opportunities. So the way I want to encourage people to think about tax credits is starting with what we are doing as a company, whether it’s hiring, training, creating new jobs, making investments, those are the things that trigger these tax credits.
And I think the way you broke that down, Patrick, is great, there are some federal credits that are applicable to any business, any state. Doesn’t matter. Things like the work opportunity tax credit, This is a federal program that’s that the government says, hey, we’re trying to get people back in the workforce earning a salary and income.
And so we’re going to incentivize businesses to not just hire them, but to employ them. And so this credit applies to hiring people who might be unemployed veterans. So hiring veterans and getting them back into the workforce, hiring people that may have been on some type of government assistance program, even something like unemployment benefits and, you know, especially as the economy changes, you never know what people’s situations are.
And so that’s one opportunity that companies can look at and available for every new hire that people bring on board, whether it’s, you know, replacing somebody or creating a new job. And what I tell people is you can get up to 20 $400 per employee. You might be able to get more, but those are few and far between.
But a couple thousand dollars for hiring an employee and somebody is another tax credit. You know, we’ve talked about the research and development tax credit that for companies who are creating or developing new technology products, sometimes process improvement, if it’s very scientific in nature, could be something that’s eligible for the tax credit. So if you’re developing, you know, certain technology, a lot of times software developers or manufacturers are people that are entitled to this tax credit because what they’re doing is very technical and scientific.
And many states have a piggyback tax credit. That’s the way that we like to use, if there’s a federal benefit. But then there’s also a state benefit. Alabama, Georgia, and a number of states around the country have this kind of piggyback tax credit for doing research and development in their particular state, which is another good one.
Patrick Carver:
Yeah. And if one of them I may just interject for 2 seconds on the research and development side, I think, you know, a lot of attorneys are probably going to hear that or think about it and say, well, we don’t, we’re not in the software development business, right? So not not going to apply to us. But, you know, we’re a little more obviously technically inclined than, say, most law firms.
But we’re not a software company yet. We do produce software related development. And the, you know, the R&D credit, I believe, was originally built for pharmaceutical and medical research and things like that. But they’ve extended it, you know, to a pretty large use for technology. And the way I kind of see things shifting for law firms is that, you know, there are tech savvy lawyers and if they’re not, if you’re doing anything such as using chat GPS to, you know, build a little app or something that can do, you know, even not an enormous amount of functionality, but but maybe it reads through docs and can highlight inconsistencies. We do this quite often where, you know, we’re building a script, which is basically like the power function of an app. You know, it’s not like something you would necessarily download from an app store, but some sort of script that allows us to do a repeatable process and no longer have an employee do it.
And I think legal, there’s a lot of opportunities for that with document preparation and document review intake. I mean, there’s a bunch of different applications that folks can get into. And so even if you don’t think you’re tech savvy, it’s something to look into because I think as time goes on, people will rely on tech knowledge more and more.
And if it can provide value and save you a bunch of manual labor time. It’s really like a win-win because then you’re getting credit with it. So you solve a business need and also get money back.
David McMillan:
Yeah absolutely. A lot of companies are kind of bundling these technology enhancements, widgets. You mentioned scripts to add on to the service they provide. And I would say many of our clients, I but half of our clients, we do this credit for are not what you would think of as companies who get R&D. People like service businesses. We’re a service business.
And it’s become easier or more accessible. And not to say that software development is cheap, you know, it’s not, but it’s more accessible to say, Hey, I’ve got this idea, can I do X, Y, and Z and read through my database and push out or produce some content or some result, and you can go online and find somebody and do that fairly quickly.
And so a lot of service businesses are taking advantage of that accessibility that’s available to implement something or a marketing tool or document management or a script to pull data and organize data in a certain way. And so that should absolutely be something that’s eligible for tech savvy firms, law firms or other professional service companies.
Patrick Carver:
Right. And you also mentioned the technology credit as well as something that could be valuable because as we just stated, you know, law firms are moving more towards technology. They’re using intake systems. They’re doing automations, you know, to send out communications and do the onboarding process for new clients. And is that a Georgia credit or?
David McMillan:
It’s just a Georgia program. But in Georgia, you can get up to 1250 dollars for each employee for all of the time and energy and cost for employees learning technology systems, whether it’s you know, it’s not an iPad, but it’s something it’s a tablet, learning tablets in the courtroom. You’ve got things like trial pad apps that people are using in the courtroom to management systems, legal management systems like Clio.
There’s a number of these tools to run your business. And I would say, you know, this, too, is not just that we run on technology, but it’s the number of systems that almost like cut and dice specific functions of your business are all being automated. And there is a tool client portal, you know, technology, tools, onboarding, marketing.
Almost every part of a law firm is getting digitized in some aspect. And so if you’re a law firm in Georgia and you’re learning how to use these technology systems, you get a credit for doing so.
Patrick Carver:
Yeah, and most law firms qualify because they’re training assistants, they’re training other lawyers. They’re training themselves to learn how to utilize Google sheets or just, you know, different technology products that the average attorney might hear and say: “Well, I’m not, I’m not doing any crazy technology, new technology or chatbots”.
But, you know, just literally like Google sheets and stuff like that. I mean, it is technology. So it’s you know, I think it offers something pretty broad use case.
David McMillan:
Yeah. And technology changes whether there’s formal training or not. Most of us are having to stay up to date with all the new features and functions that come out with having a cloud based software tool.
Patrick Carver:
Right. How about the employee retention tax credit? Can you just share a little bit about what exactly that is? I think there’s some misunderstanding about what it is. And also, you know, kind of who qualifies and, you know, things like that with it, because I think there’s people out there who are absolutely qualified. And in the legal space, I think there’s potentially a lot of people who could qualify.
David McMillan:
This is a hot topic in my space, not only because you hear about it and, you know, there’s a lot more commercials and ads, but also because the IRS is specifically warning people about this tax credit or the companies who just marketed this particular program. And I kind of fall in the middle is I’m not somebody who is just a naysayer. You get a credit. But basically the government has three basic ways a company can qualify. First, the easiest, the most clear cut way is that if you’ve had a significant drop in revenue in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019 or the year before, you can get a tax credit for the wages that you pay employees.
That’s the clear cut way if you’re interested, I’m sure. Talk to Patrick and we’ll figure out a way to connect there. Some specifics around, you know, how much your revenue has to drop and how we analyze that to meet the government requirements. But we can do that offline. But if you’ve had a drop in revenue, that’s a good indication of like, okay, I should look into this tax credit. My revenue went down. Let me take a look at this second way. And this is the part that is, you know, is the hot topic. And because we’ve been doing this a long time, our company has lived through what I’ll call, you know, economic or physical disaster recovery type of credit. So we’ve got a perspective around how the government looks at these things, not just right now, but in five years down the road.
And that’s if what the what the IRS says is if you’ve had a full or partial suspension in operations due to a government mandate or a supplier, a key supplier for your business had a suspension in operations because of a government mandate and that prevented you from doing your job, that that could trigger eligibility for this tax credit.
But the key word is a government mandate. So we have to be able to find, like in governor’s orders where it says that, hey, you could not do this or the government is limited in capacity or restricting your ability to maybe try cases because the courtrooms were closed. This is an example. You know, we help companies do all that documentation and paperwork to prove the government mandate suspension.
But a lot of a lot of areas and it’s not just on a federal level. It could be on a state level or on a local level. You know, we’re here in Atlanta, but there are parts of metro Atlanta that have different restrictions than other parts of metro Atlanta. Even parts of the state have different restrictions. You know?
City of Augusta had different restrictions than the county around it. And so, you know, what I would say is like, hey, it’s a use case situation. And then the other thing is, if you were crazy enough to start a law firm during COVID after like February 15th, you’re eligible for this. The third category, which is like a startup credit.
And we’ve had several clients who actually started their business after February the 15th, 2020, and were eligible for a tax credit. Sure. So there’s a few different ways. And the benefit is very substantial, which is why you hear these commercials. You know, it’s a big opportunity. You know, it can be up to $5,000 per employee per year in 2020.
But then in 2021, it’s up to $7,000 per employee per quarter, which is the kicker is not just it’s more but those are the three ways. And like I said, there are two very clear cut ways that you can be eligible. And then the other way with the government mandates is something that is worth looking into and maybe, you know, we tend to be more conservative when it comes to recommendations versus mandates.
But we do all that paperwork and we’ll do all that digging to say, okay, what mandates were in place from the government that caused you and how did that affect your business? And let’s look at how that affects and look at the numbers of how that had an impact. And that’s something that is another opportunity for law firms.
Patrick Carver:
Yeah. And they can also get it as well if they took PPE assistance as well, correct?
David McMillan:
That’s right. It does not preclude you know, you can’t double dip and say, I’m going to use all my PPE money that I paid employees and also get a credit on those wages. But just because you got PPE does not mean you can’t also get any other tax credit.
Patrick Carver:
Now, it’s really best I think to obviously have a broader discussion with someone like yourself to really go through that. But I think one of the points that I want to stress is just that don’t rely on your family accountant to go and do this type of analysis for you and research.
I find it interesting. And so I’m out looking at different things. But, you know, I think having a conversation with somebody like you, I really like your approach of, hey, let’s hear what’s going on in your business, right? And what do you do? So then I can connect the dots for you because even after reading a document that’s produced and, you know, in our case by state of Georgia, reading through all the tax credits, I read through it and I still have no idea if I qualify for like half of them.
And so I like you shared one with me that I didn’t even know I was, you know, eligible for. And so I just, you know, I guess there is just it pays to work with somebody like you who has a very specific skill set and knowledge base. And you know, it really is the you know, the expert in the room with it.
David McMillan:
Yeah. And you just never know what’s out there. You know, we’ve talked about the opportunity zones before. Many states have targeted areas for economic development, both on a state and a federal level that if you locate your business in that area, you have employees that live or work there, you can get a tax credit. And that’s not restricted to industry.
And so it’s it’s really something that I think it’s helpful to have an expert do some kind of analysis for your business, even if the answer is, well, you know, there’s not anything right now that you can take advantage of to at least check the boxes off that, hey, we’re looking into this because if you if you are eligible, it’s a significant return for your business.
You know, I don’t know what the right you know, maybe there’s a better analogy. You can put this in a law firm example, but I do a lot of work with restaurants around the country and especially restaurants that sell chicken. And I tell these owner operators like, how many chicken sandwiches? I ask them this, how many chicken sandwiches would you have to sell to make $10,000 worth of profit?
Not money, right? But bottom line, profit. Yeah. And you know, maybe that’s. Hey, how many cases do you have to try or how many hours do you have to bill to make? Not $10,000, but $10,000 of profit. So it’s worth asking some questions. Having somebody look at this just because the benefit, you know, is is worth it.
Patrick Carver:
Totally pure profit. And, you know, I think the opportunity zones are particularly interesting for me because it’s one that all you it’s a very it’s I think it’s a simple idea to wrap your head around that. You know there are locations in your state and you know, I’m in Atlanta and you have sections of Atlanta that have been marked as opportunity zones.
If you with the purpose of driving economic activity in those areas. Right. And so, yeah, if you are thinking about potentially moving offices or setting up your office for the first time, I think most people are just going to, oh, I like this area. I’m going I’m going to put it in there, you know, or but they don’t, you know, with just a little bit of analysis, you could, you know, plug yourself into 30 $500 a year per employee for, you know, just simply, you know, moving a block over or something like that.
So just really, really powerful when it comes to that. And any others that come to mind as well for law firms that they maybe you should check out.
David McMillan:
I think those are the best ones to look at first. And that, I think, is as an expert looks at their business, typically you may uncover things that either are available now or something to put as a checkpoint down the road.
Patrick Carver:
Yeah, that makes sense. So in terms of looking for those credits, you know, just kind of I guess like also just educating yourself on what’s out there, what are there any resources you recommend? Obviously, I’m going to tell everybody to have a consultation with you because not only, you know, you’re not going to charge them a bunch of money just to have the conversation, but guys work on contingency. It’s really a zero risk maneuver on their part.
David McMillan:
Yeah, I’d say three places like the IRS, although it’s wordy, it’s a good place to see. Okay. What does the government actually say about this? Right. And then on a on a state level, I would say the two places that companies can go look, whatever your state economic development association or some states call it like workforce agency and then your state’s Department of revenue, if you’re in a state that has, you know, income tax in Florida, you don’t pay income tax.
David McMillan:
But look at your economic development agency, your workforce agency websites, and they’ll usually have some information about what credits are out there. It may not tell you if you’re eligible, but those are I would say the three places to start is, you know, your economic development group, your workforce agency group, and then the IRS website are the three places to kind of start to figure out, okay, what’s out there and what does the government actually say about these things.
Patrick Carver:
Yeah, and I think you can also I would just add as well, you know, YouTube podcasts, just Googling tax credits in state sort of thing. And, you know, obviously you have to take, you know, assess the quality of the YouTuber before. Yeah. You know, jumping in and everything. I mean obviously it pays to have someone who has significant expertise actually doing this.
But, you know, for me, it’s just, you know, interesting to hear what people are doing and they’re different applications because, you know, we’ve worked specifically with folks who, you know, provide accounting services for marketing agencies. Well, they’ve got their set of ideas and, you know, and tools. But then you hear, you know, oh, wow, this is what this is like real estate, what real estate folks are doing or something.
You know, it kind of starts to spark ideas and you kind of cover this. But another area, another place that I’ve found helpful, too, is like the local investment group. So I guess it’s kind of an extension of an economic development organization within the state government. But, you know, if you’re in a city, I mean, really especially even a smaller city, you can probably get pretty good access by just calling up and asking what programs are available and, you know, ways that you guys support businesses and may not be a tax credit necessarily but my find resources there’s often training grants. There’s often different, you know, things that can go. But you know, it’s like it’s one of those things that you just don’t know what’s out there until you start asking the questions.
David McMillan:
Yeah, asking your local chamber of commerce is a great, great place. Don’t ask ChatGPT yet. It’s not ready, I’ve asked it. But asking your local chamber of commerce is a great place because they likely have companies that have taken advantage of these credits that they know about and can provide some resources for your local area.
Patrick Carver:
Gotcha. And I’ll share a little bit about how I’m planning for this this year. And maybe you can tell me what makes a good next step for law firms and you know how to implement some of this stuff. And I think, you know, some of it’s pretty, pretty straightforward. But, you know, I’ll go on the record.
I made a large mistake last year of not spending enough time filling out some of the tax credits and just, you know, strategies that could be done. And by the time I got to the table, it was too late. I was too busy head down with other stuff. And so I missed out on opportunities and to combat that, what I’ve done is just created a really basic Google document called 2023 Tax Strategies and Information.
And I’m just chronicling, you know, kind of everything that I, I learn about the things that I’ve maybe done in previous years that I wanted to do with a goal of, you know, trying to have most of this done and kind of operational by maybe the six, six month of the year. And, you know, do you have a timeline or just other, you know, kind of insight as to the best way to utilize this?
Because I’m guessing the worst time in the world is what we just passed where you’re building up to tax day because that yeah, can be is extremely challenging.
David McMillan:
All right it’s a great question and I love talking about this one because I actually literally this morning recorded a video on this topic of when’s the best time to work on your tax credits? And it’s either right after you pay your tax bill or right after you did the tax credit project. So right now is a great time.
And what I would say it’s much better now while things are fresh on your mind than waiting till the end of the year where you’ve got, you know, maybe you’ve got two cases you’re trying to squeeze in clients you’re trying to squeeze in, you’ve got a number of other year end items. W-2, 1099 is like this is probably not one of the things that needs to be at the top of your list at your end.
- So you need to be intentional and plan now. And what I would tell people, kind of the three things to work on would be one, like spend time figuring out what tax credits you should be pursuing. So however you do that, you Googling it, getting the expert talking to appear, figure out what credits you’re out that are out there that you need to pursue.
- Second is outlining what you need to track? As you know from experience, there’s typically some details or business activity, things you need to track or implement as they’re happening or in relatively short time after they’re happening. So you’ve got a system and process in place and then third thing is like, who’s going to do that? Who’s going to help you?
- Is there somebody on your team? Is there a third party that can help you? That’s like step number one? And then I think as you get that going, then you can look at like, how do we optimize this? Are there systems and habits you can implement inside your company to track these things or make it part of a regular conversation amongst your leadership team about, “Oh, what are we doing this quarter? Okay, are there tax credits for doing this?” You know, I think there’s a phase one of just what’s out there. What do I need to track who’s going to help me do that? And then the kind of intermediate advanced level like how do we optimize that? Are there systems or tools or tech to help us do this more efficiently?
Those are what I would recommend for people to start.
Patrick Carver:
Yeah. And I think I’ll also just mention to hammer home the, you know, people, you may kind of snooze that when they see tax I’m talking about taxes again or something but you know just imagine the point you made I think was very important that, you know, how many chicken sandwiches would you have to sell to make this amount of profit And it’s going to vary wildly, wildly, you know, But, you know, like I mentioned, we’ve benefit from 20 to 30000 a year in, you know, in tax credits.
And,I’d have to make a lot of money, probably five weeks of that to really get profit from it. Just imagine the amount of work and effort it would go into to add an extra 5000 thousand dollars in your business from revenue.
All the stuff that has to happen from that. I would say spend under 10 hours, 20 hours in a year and and take advantage of that, especially when you have good, good providers, you know, who you can work with and lean on to do a lot of the heavy lifting.
David McMillan:
Yeah, I have a client who runs a small business with 1015 employees and he says the most profitable hour of his entire year is the hour he spends documenting the training that’s happening in his organization for tax credits.
Patrick Carver:
By 400%. That’s awesome. Yeah, we will finish on. That’s a really great, great quote. But yeah, encourage everybody to get into this world. Find out some of the, you know, rules and regulations. And just to clarify, you work with folks all over the country. So it’s not surprising. You know, even though we’re both in Georgia, it’s not just a Peach State affair.
You will help them navigate the credit world no matter where they are in the United States. Okay. That’s right. Awesome. Well, really appreciating your time is extremely useful for myself and for any I mean, really any business owner. So, you know, if you want to get in touch with your firm, what’s the best way to do that?
David McMillan:
It’s www.mcataxcredits.com . You can get free consultations. If you’re just interested in having a conversation, you can go there, book some time with me. I’m happy to help, but I hope this is informative for, you know, your listeners and consumers of this because it’s a great tool that most people don’t know about or take advantage of fully.
Patrick Carver:
Awesome. Well, really appreciate your time and we’ll have to do it again soon. When new updates come out and find some new opportunities for law firms.
