Growth & Grace

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. The following program is underwritten by Crawford management group, Harris capital Mortgage Group, Tiffany Lloyd consulting and Chris glow, and does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jasmine Moore, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education even

Music 0:21
better than I was the last time, baby, we back,

we back and we back and we back and we back and we back and we back, we back. Good, good, good morning, Las Vegas.

Leaha Crawford 0:52
Hey, Joanne, how you doing, how you doing, how you doing, pretty good, pretty good, pretty good, just pretty good. On, pretty good, pretty good. Yeah, it's getting hot now, you know, I wasn't ready for it, you know,

I think it's, I think it's a tease. I don't know if it's going to be hot for long. I think it's just a tease. Yeah, well, it's Saturday morning. It feels good. I am working out. Now, did I tell you I joined the row house? What's that? So the row house is, they have a place in Henderson, and you row like you ever see the people row like rowing a boat, but you have to do it together as a group, and it's called the row house. I actually, I enjoy it because it's like a half an hour for half an hour. I'm like, row, row, row, your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, enjoy it. I was introduced. Thank you, Shada, because I love you. I love you. I love you. She was telling me about it, and I Yeah, well, they have a free class next month, when they had a free class, you have to sign up so that you can see exactly how they teach you how to roll. They teach you the technique. Because, of course, with everything, there is a technique. So had to learn the technique. And what I I like about it is you exert a lot of energy pushing your own weight. Yeah, you don't. You're using your own weight, using your own weight, and you're pulling like you're rowing a boat. So it was different for me, first time trying it, and I am super, super excited. I will let you I'll keep you guys updated. Because I think now I'm up to 9000 kilometers, or something, or whatever they measure, but I'm up to 9000 and I'm trying to get to 50. Oh,

Julian Rosado 2:35
so you're imitating speed boats. That's not, not really

Leaha Crawford 2:37
speed robots. Robots, robots like, you know how you see the like, the road teams at different

Julian Rosado 2:42
universities, like, what they do in, uh, busy Olympics, like, right? Someone

Leaha Crawford 2:46
like that, yeah, someone like that. But yeah, no, it's actually, it's good. It's good. Guess what? Though this week, we were sitting down and came across the internet. Beneficial ownership information returned. I know I was big last year, about telling everybody how they had to get it done. Had to get it done, all these fines and penalties. Then in December, it went away. Then later on, in December, it came back, then it went away again. Guess what? Y'all it is back. And I will get more details so that we know when the due dates are. I'll give an update every week. Beneficial ownership, again, is by Financial Crimes Enforcement Network from FinCEN. You can go and complete it. If you are a business owner, meaning you have an LLC, anything you file with the Secretary of State, you need to complete that form. I know, for most of my clients, we did it early on because I didn't want to get caught up trying to beat that January 1 deadline. And then it went away in December. I was like, Oh my God, but we were almost done, so it's back on the table. If you haven't heard, I know, I'm getting a whole bunch of emails now talking about, you know, it's back. We have to do it. And as more details come, I will share them, or you can just Google it. It's Google so that you can see what you need in order to complete the form. What are the benefits of benefits? I don't know if it's any benefit to you. You're just giving you're just completing a database, basically, who are the owners of these companies. So you set up an LLC, right? Set up an LLC, and they're asking you, basically, who are the owners, who are the beneficial owners of this LLC? And they want their basically, name, address, telephone number and ID, yeah, so they would just want to know who owns all these entities, okay, that are, you know, operating in the United States. So it's back on the table. Get more details. Just want to let you know that that is there, and we'll try to bring an expert in to talk about it, so that they can really dig deep. And they're pushing, because at one time it was just attorneys and it was accountants, and then it was tax people, people just preparing documents, just getting that word out there to let their clients and let everyone know that this is now a requirement for businesses. You know, we filed some entities with the Secretary of State, and they were. Even saying, you know, you had 90 days in order to get this entity filed as the rules change, because rules always change, as we remember with PPP and eidl, rules constantly change. Yeah, you know, but it's for our benefit, but yes, for our benefit. Also, I can tell you, it is tax season. My favorite time of year. I am super duper productive during this time of year, very careful how I spend my time, because we're trying to get those returns done. And what I this one question I always get, what is my filing status? And I just wanted to just share this information with you know, our just the general public. There are several different filing statuses. You know, some of them are more complicated than others, and just if you understand the rules, you know what your filing status is, so that when you go to get your taxes done, you're aware of what your filing status should be, because your filing status drives your standard deduction and also also your tax rate, depending on your income, very important. So if you're single, single means never been married, divorced, you have it's just you. You are single, okay, no kids, no nothing like you. Julian, you are single. You're single, then you have another status, head of household. Head of Household just means you're single, but you take care of somebody, because it could be an elderly parent. You take care a parent. You take care of or children, step or a dependent is a better word. A dependent, there's somebody that depends on you, so you can fall ahead of household. Then there is my favorite, Mary Fallin jointly, and Mary Fallin separately. Why do I love these? Because I don't know how many times I get asked, well, we got married in June. Do we have to file together? Absolutely, because the status is determined on December 31 so whatever your files, whatever your situation is on December 31 determines your filing status. So married filing jointly. And if you're married, you know married filing separately. If you're separated, though, and I know people that are separated, get a Separation Agreement. That's what we tell our clients. Get a Separation Agreement. And if you can show where you lived apart and you've taken care of a dependent, then you possibly can claim had a household. It's this whole metric that we have to go through just to see what your this matrix to see what your filing status is. You know, if you are recently widowed, your spouse passed away. We were dealing with this a lot during COVID. Spouse passed away, but you still had a child. There's a qualifying widower status that you may be eligible for. What I love about our office is we take the time to ask you the questions, and we go through the whole matrix. I mean, we just go through, okay? So if you say yes to this, then we can do this. If you say no, then we do that. But the filing status is very important on a tax return. Also, another thing we tell our clients,

Julian Rosado 7:54
so hang on. They have singled single, married,

Leaha Crawford 7:58
married filing jointly, married filing jointly, married phone, separately, they have nothing for just dating, no no no,

Julian Rosado 8:09
because that's, that's where I'll be up.

Leaha Crawford 8:10
Single, still single, still single. You got to have papers on it. Got it you gotta, you gotta go complete some paperwork. Oh, okay, unless you have a child, then you can be head of household, but you okay, you got to complete some paperwork. No paperwork. You're single. Okay, all right, so dating, keep on dating. It's just you, you know, I'm looking I'm looking forward, because we're going to bring another attorney on and we're going to talk about us being a community property, I'm sorry, a community property state and not a common law state, and what does that mean? So we're going to bring some information for people that don't know. Okay, so you can have some information about it. But then again, looking at the tax return, another question I get, you know, people move around a lot, and I'm like, get a stable address, because you can have a stable address at a PO box. I know many when we were younger, everybody used my great grandmother's address because they knew she wasn't moving. They were kind of unstable, because you just want to show where you I mean, because this is where your mail is going to come. This is where your mail is going to come. Got it, you know? The other thing is, you should have gotten all of your documents if you know you had multiple jobs last year, you know you need W twos. You need some documentation to show the money that they've paid you, whether it's a w2 or 1099, NEC, whatever it is, you just want to be you just want to have those documents, because you want to bring your prepare those documents, and then guys be kind to your prepares, because there are a lot more requirements for us, a lot more, you know, we need to see your ID, verify that we did see your ID, that you are the person that has this, you know, that had this job. So we got to look at some stuff to very, you know, just to verify that people sometimes they just not nice. They're not kind. Hmm, they're not give me an example. Well, I don't want to give well once, no, well, I'm blessed in my office, everybody understands when we ask for information, they give us the information. But when I'm on certain groups and I am listening to the interactions that they've had with clients, clients not wanting to provide certain documents or information, and I'm like, Well, do you still file that return? You know? Yeah, because if they're not providing the information you

kind of don't want to, I feel it's way too invasive, yeah, I mean, well, and but it's

simple things, like, we're asking for your ID because we're just verifying your identity, yeah, because there are certain things that are on a return that we have to do our due diligence to show that we've asked these questions whether or not this person has been our client or not. You know, because I've had clients for years and every year, ask, ask the same because I don't know, things can change. You know, I ask the same questions and they're, you know, well, you know? Leah, well, no, I don't know. I need to ask you so that when I say I ask you these questions, you'll say, Yep, she asked me these questions. So just going through to make sure that we give people good tax returns that that corresponds with, um, what activity they had for that tax year, you know. And in my office, you know, we specialize in back taxes. So what is back tax? So back taxes mean you haven't done taxes in years, and you finally want to catch up.

Julian Rosado 11:25
And what makes somebody say, You know what, it's time for me, because

Leaha Crawford 11:29
some people, it's very heavy. It weighs on them that they haven't done their returns. It weighs on them. Some people are getting notices from the IRS, just a whole bunch of different situations. And what I love about our office, you know, no, per the law this year, you got to go back six years. So you would have to do 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020, and 2019 to be in compliance with the IRS

Julian Rosado 11:54
in 10 years. No, if you, if you haven't done

Leaha Crawford 11:57
your taxes in 10 years, we don't worry about four of them. We just do six. We just do six to get you in compliance, and then just to see. But the hard part about that is, if you get a refund for 1920 and 21 you might have forfeited it. You forfeited the money because you have three years to actually claim that, yeah, to claim that refund. And we talk to our clients and talk them through it and let you know. Just help them explain this. You want to, you want to kind of handle your business and get your stuff done, you know, get your stuff done. But people, it becomes very heavy, because if you have a large tax bill, they will, um, they can take away your passport, you know. So I've seen that happen, and we've had to do some work in order to get passports back, different things like that, or you got, you know, just different rules for different things. But when we are talking to you, we make sure that we're giving you good information, good information, so that you, number one, prepare your return and with the different whatever, whatever you did last year, there is a form at the IRS for it, but we make sure that we report your income, you know, and in some cases, expenses for the year. And we also do corporate returns, too. And what I find is, you know, people set up LLCs all the time, and when they set these LLCs up, they really don't understand what the filing requirement is for different types of LLCs, right? So if I set up my LLC, I am a single owner automatically. I become a Schedule C, which goes on my personal return. But if I make an election to do something different, and that's just me being single, not multiple people, just me being single, then I can either become an 1120 following an 1120 or an 1120 Yes. But if I have multiple people like, say, Me and you do it, we're not married, right? Then we automatically go to a partnership, return a 1065, but then we also can make the election to be a S corp or a C Corp. And when I'm talking to people, just like talking them through. What did you do? What was your intention? And then let's talk through it. And then we always ask for all the documents. Please show me the document that you filed. You know your EIN number I need. Don't tell me. Let me see the paperwork so that I can see what forms we need to complete? Yeah, you know? And we hold people's hands through the whole process, because I've had business owners come in that haven't filed since they've been in business, right? And I'm like, okay, so then we got some other stuff to do, and let's make sure, did you have employees? Did you, you know? What did you do? Because there's a responsibility when you say that you're that you want to be a business owner, want certain things that you have to file, you know, sometimes quarter, sometimes monthly, quarterly, but most definitely annually.

Julian Rosado 14:52
How do you deal with interns? I

Leaha Crawford 14:55
really don't have any interns. I haven't had I haven't had interns.

Julian Rosado 14:58
No. As far as a business, business owner, what do you mean? So let's say no, I'm a business owner, and I hire like three or four interns. Well, you

Leaha Crawford 15:09
handle them as employees, okay? Or you give them stipends or something. You fight however you decide to pay them. Then we have to decide, are they, um, employees? Most time I try to revert them back to employees, okay? Because they're coming in and they fall under what an employee would do, so you would give them a w2 so it's just different things and then, but sometimes they're they're freelancing, because some children freelance, yeah, but some, some interns might be freelancing. And if they're freelancing, then it's a 1099, NEC. So it just depends on what the circle, what are the attributes of this situation? What's going on? Yeah. And if you're forthcoming and you explain it to me, then I can help you to figure out what is the best thing for you to do. But you know, our office is located downtown Las Vegas. We've been downtown for about 15 years now. Wow. 15 years now, doing the same thing. Yeah. You know, our contact information is 702-382-5737 again, 702-382-5737,

what I love about our office is the follow up, and then the follow up to the follow up, and then the thanking you and the birthday cards and if we find out something happens in your family, we're sending you, you know, just acknowledgements, because we, we treat our, you know, we treat our clients. Everybody's special. Everybody's a VIP,

Julian Rosado 16:30
yeah, and most amazing stuff, yeah, I felt like home once i i walked in, yeah?

Leaha Crawford 16:36
Well, what? It's a house, right? Yeah, little house downtown, yeah, house downtown, and because we have some hard conversations in that office, we do. We have some hard we have some hard conversations because a lot of, a lot of people come in there and it's heavy, you know, when I see certain, like, certain clients, like, you know, Lee, I hate running into you. Why I'm trying to help you to alleviate the pain, yeah, you know, just walk in it. Just walk no, let's, let's, let's, let's process this. Let's get this behind us. Let's get these documents filed. Yeah, let's get this behind us, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that beneficial ownership, you know, this week when I was sitting there and just scrolling on my phone, and an alert came across and said, beneficial ownership information is back. I was like, Oh, okay. Then there was another webinar that I was listening to. Then it was something else that came across my computer. I was like, Oh, my God, okay, I guess it's back. It's back. So we'll give more details out as we learn them, so that you can hear it, you know. And if you haven't completed the form, it's no longer in it's no longer voluntary. You need to complete a form if you contact us. 7023825737702382578,

Julian Rosado 18:00
3825737, do you find yourself like, other than doing your textbook with your employees, like really offsetting that and coaching your employees? But no coaching a

Leaha Crawford 18:19
client? So we do so coaching a client. The interesting thing you know is, when our clients come in, we meet you where you are, yeah, and we ask the question, what do you want?

Julian Rosado 18:31
Yeah, because I can imagine them like breaking down. Oh, they do. I have

Leaha Crawford 18:35
tissue on my desk. Yeah, I have tissue on my desk. For that reason I do. I have tissue on my desk, because when we start, so basically, you have to be a therapist. I'm not a therapist because I'm not licensed, but kind of, it's kind of therapy. Yeah, it's, I look at it as your annual check in. So your annual check in. And what we found is, because of them, software company we use, we can look at your stuff year over year, just to see if you made more money if you made less money, you know, just the different things that you're able to do if you're one of our accounting clients. You know, we do those comparisons on a regular basis, just so we can see. You know, you might not remember what you did in 2020 or 2021, but when we start having those monthly conversations and sending you your your financial statements, and you're looking at them month over month, you can make different decisions. Oh, my God, I spent this much money on that. Oh, my God, I didn't realize that. Oh, you know, just different things like that. Yeah. And with us mine, helping you monitor what did you know that you paid X, Y and Z, I give you a good story early on, I was, Oh, my God. Early in my career, I started automating companies. So back in the day, we used spreadsheets, right? And only big companies had software. But in the 90s, you know, the different small business accounting packages came out. So I. I was basically taking small business owners and putting their stuff in the computer. And I remember when I first moved here, I was doing the same thing, you know, just automating some some businesses and going through their numbers. We realized they were paying for a copier that they no longer had insurance on a car that was no longer there, but it was just us going through the numbers, just going through the numbers, and then asking the questions. Well, what is this? What is that? Because what I like about our team is we don't, even though we know a lot, we don't assume we ask the question, yeah, and we ask it in a way where it's not invasive, but more informational. Well, what is this? What is that? Well, did you know that you pay for this? Well, did you know that you paid for that? And our clients build a to do list after we meet, like, don't do list, a to do list of what of things that they want to improve on, things that they can do better. And I like it because it empowers them, right? Because now you have information, it's not just you going dropping off your tax stuff, and then that's it. No, we're talk through the return. I explain your return to you. Well, you know, during the year, you paid this much money in interest, you got this much money in dividends. You had a rental property. You bought in this much rent, but you paid these bills. And it was also helpful. Like, when our clients go to sell their properties, they know what repairs or improvements they made to their property, because it's all on the tax return if they did something that wasn't there. You know, we're having a conversation where the volley the conversation going back and forth, so that they can understand what they did, and that information became what becomes useful later on, you know? So it's, I actually enjoy doing taxes. It's like putting a puzzle together for me. And I love puzzles, so just taking the information and putting it together and, okay, well, did you know this? What did you think about that? And what I've seen is some come in renting apartments after two years. They're homeowners. Some come, you know, come in as employees. You know, they become business owners, something that they always wanted to do, or they're business owners, and realize, I want to go work for somebody. I don't want to handle all this. I just want to go get a paycheck and go home. You know, we have those conversations because it's what do you want, and let us help you to map out a path to get you what you want. And it's only once a year, you know, but if they have questions throughout the year, we answer them. Oh, really, we do, we, do we, do we do. And been blessed that most of our clients is so heavy after they leave that's really important. Yeah, they're, they're just like, Okay, so, and you should see every once in a while, well, no, every year someone comes in, they're like, Leah, guess what I did? What'd you do? And they lay out. I did this, I did that, I did this. And I'll look over what they said they wanted, and they're, you know, just like that, accountability partner, yeah, without always, you know, on the phone with them and her, you know, just harassing them and stuff like that. You know, because I had one girlfriend, she tells me, I'm broke from saving Well, that's what you said you wanted. That's what you said you wanted, you said you wanted, you know, you said you wanted x amount of dollars. Yeah, we mapped out a path for you to get there. Yeah, we mapped out a path for you to get there. So what I love is we are supportive of our clients, you know, but that's caught me like when I started doing this radio show, just being supportive of entrepreneurs and getting the word out that their businesses are in and around town, because the Valley has grown so much and so much, yeah, grown so much, and people don't know, I mean, and sometimes you just want to know a little bit more about the business you're supporting. Yeah, you know, we go to these big chains, but you know, there are a lot of small business owners around town, yeah, and just them being able to tell their story, you know, people like to laugh. They're living their lives and talking about the different challenges of being an entrepreneur. You know, that's my heart as entrepreneurs, yeah. You know,

Julian Rosado 24:15
opportunity in Las Vegas is definitely out there. Yeah, no,

Leaha Crawford 24:19
it's definitely, and the Valley has grown tremendously, but I am Leah Crawford, Julian Rosato, and we are the host of growth and grace. That name for that show makes me think about that, because when you're growing, it's painful, but how do you do it gracefully, yeah, how do you do it gracefully? Because growth is not always pretty. No, it's not always this pretty little No, sometimes it's ugly, but how do you do it with grace and thankfulness, you know? But that ends our show for today, and I. Um, that's a wrap. I share with you a little bit about my company. Remember that beneficial ownership form? It is back on. You need to complete it and your tax stuff. Read those tax returns, make sure they are what you did in that year. And if it's not, ask questions. You know, got a good prepare, ask questions, so that you understand what's on that return. Remember, growth is growing, and grace makes it worthwhile. Keep pushing forward, keep showing up, and most importantly, keep giving yourself grace to grow. Please, keep giving yourself grace to grow until next time. I'm Leah Crawford, Julian, Arizona, and be well. Be great, and we will talk to you next week. Bye, bye.