November 2019 SMALL BUSINESS TIPS Quarterly: Oct 17 Five Year-End Business Deductions As we approach the end of the year, your business may be slowing down as you prepare for the upcoming holidays. If that is the case, now is a good time to analyze your business’ performance in 2019 and consider pushing some additional expenses into the last month of the year to minimize your 2019 tax burden. We have identified five strategies you can use to minimize your 2019 tax bill. Please note that the year-end strategies we are discussing involve pulling expenses from 2020 into the end of 2019 to reduce your current year tax bill. This will increase your tax liability in the future. This strategy will make sense for you if 2019 was a particularly high-income year and you are expecting lower income in 2020 or if you are expecting other significant business deductions in 2020 to make up for the deduction pushed into 2019. ​ Prepay Business Expenses If you operate your business on a cash basis then you have the option of prepaying certain expenses up to 12 months in advance and capturing the tax deduction immediately. These qualifying expenses include lease payments on business vehicles, rent on office space or machinery and insurance premiums. For example: If your rent for your office is $1500 per month you can send your landlord a check for $18,000 in December to cover all of your 2020 rent. If you send the check on December 31st but your landlord does not receive it till January 3 then you can deduct the expense in 2019 when the check was sent, but your landlord does not need to report the income until 2020 when it was received. ​ ​Stop Billing Customers Your customers are unlikely to pay you until they are billed. If you have a successful December you can wait to bill some of your customers until January in order to push some of your December revenues into 2020. ​ Buy Office Equipment The tax law currently allows you to fully write off the purchase of eligible business equipment in the year that you purchase it, instead of being required to depreciate it over a number of years. If you are in need of a new computer, office furniture or specialized equipment for your business, you can take advantage of this 100% depreciation to reduce your 2019 taxes. ​ Use Your Credit Cards If you make a purchase with your credit card before the end of the year you can expense that purchase in 2019 even if the credit card bill is not paid until 2020. This allows you to move up expenses that you otherwise may not have purchased until January. If your business is a single-member LLC or a sole proprietorship then you can deduct the expense whether the credit card is in your personal name or the name of the business. If you operate your business as a corporation and the credit card is in your personal name you will need to reimburse yourself before the end of the year. If the credit card is in the name of the corporation you do not need to reimburse yourself. Save For Retirement As a small-business owner, you have the potential to put up to $56,000 away for retirement each year depending on the type of retirement account you have set up and the income of your business. If you do not have a retirement plan set up for your business you can still set up a SEP IRA or a 401k before December 31st and make pretax contributions to reduce your 2019 tax bill. ​ Summary Each of the strategies we have outlined will help you reduce your 2019 tax bill at the cost of paying more taxes in future years. Depending on your specific situation it may make more sense to defer taxes today and pay them in a future year. For guidance on if you should be moving taxes into later years or paying them now, reach out to us to set up a tax-planning call. Schedule Your Tax-Planning Call Previous Article

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October 2018 MONOTELO QUARTERLY Quarterly: Oct 17 HOW TO DEDUCT YOUR VACATION TRAVEL AS A BUSINESS EXPENSE Taking a vacation can be expensive, so naturally the idea of deducting your vacation expenses on your tax return is an appealing idea. However, before you get carried away planning a lavish vacation with the hopes of writing off the entire cost, make sure to familiarize yourself with the requirements to qualify your expenses as business travel. To qualify for a tax deduction the trip needs to serve a legitimate business purpose. Handing out business cards on the beach does not count. There are 5 criteria your trip must meet to be a qualified business expense: Profit motive. The trip must serve a legitimate profit motive. This means that you can reasonably expect the trip to create profit either now or at some point in the future. Stay overnight . You can only deduct meal and lodging expenses when you are away from home overnight. “Rational Businessperson” test. Your trip will only qualify as a business expense if the business motive is strong enough that a rational businessperson would make the trip if business was the only motive. Primary purpose test. You can only deduct your travel expenses when your trip is primarily for business. This is determined by calculating the number of business days vs personal days of the trip. This may sound like a deal breaker, but it is easier to meet this requirement than you think. Maintain good records. If you do not properly document the business purpose of your trip, your travel expenses, or your actual business activities on the trip you will risk losing your entire deduction. ​ Your trip expenses can be broken down into two general categories with different requirements to be deductible: Transportation Expenses Transportation costs include airfare, train tickets, or the cost of a rental car to get to your destination. These expenses are all-or-nothing, if the majority of your trip days are business days you can deduct all of your transportation costs. If the majority of your trip days are personal you cannot deduct any of these costs. Life Expenses Life expenses include your daily meals and lodging. Unlike transportation expenses you do not need to meet the majority of business days threshold to take life expenses. Instead you simply take the life expenses for each business day of the trip. What Counts as a Business Day? It may be easier than you think to qualify most of your trip as business days. Each day of the trip only needs to meet one of these criteria to qualify as a business day: ​ Work more than four hours. You have a workday when you spend more than half of normal work hours pursuing business. Since a normal workday is eight hours you only need to work for more than four. Presence-required day. If you are required to be at a destination on a specific day for a legitimate business purpose. For example, if you have a meeting with a client in another city on Tuesday, then Tuesday qualifies as a business day even if that is your only business activity for that day. Travel day. Days you spend traveling to or from your business destination count as business days as long as you are traveling in a reasonably direct route. Weekends and holidays. If a weekend or holiday falls in between two business days you can count those days as business days as long as it would not be practical to return home in between the two business days. If you live in California and have meetings in New York on Friday and Monday, it would not be practical to return to California for the weekend. Therefore, all four days count as business days. Saved-money-on-travel days. If you arrive at a destination a day early or leave a day late in order to save on your travel expenses you can count the extra day as a business expense as it served a legitimate business purpose of reducing your travel costs. ​ Summary The rules governing business travel allow for some freedom to deduct vacation time as business expenses, but do not provide a blank check to write off an entire vacation simply because you spent a few minutes discussing business. You need to find the right balance between work and relaxation, properly document your work activities, and maintain records of all your expenses. Previous Article

Get started File from home File your taxes from home. Upload your documents, and get started. Need additional tax help? Schedule an appointment to get started. Schedule an appointment Get started Ready to start your 2023 tax return? Run your business, we'll handle your finances. Small business owner? Yes, we can help you with your tax, bookkeeping and payroll needs. But there is so much more to having the right financial partner. Get Started Learn More What We Offer Looking for Financial Planning Help? Our values-based retirement planning will give you the quiet confidence that everything is on track for you to achieve your life goals. Get Started Learn More Have questions, or need help? Give us a call or send us an email; me are happy to help. Call Us Email Us Wondering where your refund is? Not sure what tax documents you need, or want to upload a file? Refund Tracker Documents checklist File Upload

Details Five Planning Steps To Improve Your Retirement Years Join us as we share five simple steps you can take to reduce your tax bill and improve your retirement years: ​ Address these critical items in your IRAs, 401(k)s and other retirement accounts Three ways to maximize your 2020 deductions and reduce your tax bill One easy step to reduce taxable income in 2020 How to take advantage of today's historically low tax rates How to proactively address the potential reduction in social security benefits in 2033 ​ When ​ January 25, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM ​ Where ​ Prairie Lodge Cedar Room 12880 Del Webb Blvd Huntley, IL 60142 Details

Welcome to Monotelo Advisors Tax expertise that delivers. CHOOSE YOUR DESTINATION SMALL BUSINESS PUBLIC SERVANTS TAX EXPERTISE Our Mission: To make a difference with meaningful and actionable financial solutions that positively impact our client's lives.

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Monotelo Speaks To The Professional Firefighters of Wisconsin Monotelo Advisors spoke at (PFFW) Professional Firefighters of Wisconsin's bi-annual meeting held in February at the Hilton City Center Hotel in Milwaukee, WI. Monotelo was invited to speak because of their unique knowledge of the firefighting profession and how they apply that knowledge to help firefighters retain a higher percentage of their income. "We find that career firefighters are overpaying anywhere from a few hundred dollars per year to over one thousand dollars per year on their tax bill" - shared Jim Allen, Director of Monotelo Advisors. In their presentation to the PFFW, Monotelo offered a no-obligation "Look-back'' for IAFF local members. The "Look-back'' starts with a brief discussion to review job related expenses. Monotelo then compares the expenses identified in the discussion with the expenses that were used on the prior tax returns. When there is a meaningful difference between the two, Monotelo will "We find that career firefighters are overpaying anywhere from a few hundred dollars per year to over one thousand dollars per year on their tax bill" correct the past three years and recover money that was left on the table. About the PFFW - The Professional Firefighters of Wisconsin represents 60 locals with over 4,000 career firefighters across the state of Wisconsin. "Every two years we bring in key leaders from around the state, elected officials, and companies like Monotelo that we believe can help our members. I am very particular as to who I let speak to our guys, and Monotelo did a great job," said Mahlon Mitchell, president of the PFFW. ​ "My local affiliation is IAFF Firefighters Local 311," explained Mitchell. "We invited Monotelo to come meet with our members. We had a full day filled with our members coming in to have Monotelo review their past returns and prepare their current year's return. I've heard nothing but good things; so we're really appreciative of what they did for us." ​ In addition to Local 311, Monotelo has had the opportunity to impact the entire state of Wisconsin using technology. Coming into local meetings via the web, Monotelo offered guidance, answered questions and gave local members the opportunity to recover some of their hard-earned money. ​ For questions about how Monotelo can help your local, contact Jim Allen at jallen@monotelo.com . ARE YOU GETTING BEAT? Don't pay the federal government more tax than the law requires. Call Monotelo today for a NO-COST, NO-OBLIGATION, tax review designed to minimize your tax bill and maximize your take home pay. ​ MONOTELO.COM | 800.961.0298

Quarterly: Oct 17 Patientia, The Not-So-Secret Sauce ”Repetitio est mater studiorum” is a Latin proverb that says “Repetition is the mother of learning.” We are going to repeat a theme from the past because one of the biggest mistakes made by investors has the simplest of fixes. If one were to study the traits that John Templeton, Warren Buffet, Benjamin Graham or Ray Dalio shared (or continue to share) in common, they would find that each of them employed (or continue to employ) a disciplined process for identifying market opportunities. Each of them put their capital to work in areas where they believed they had an edge or in areas where they had a reasonable level of conviction that the market was mispricing assets. And each of them were patient with their capital, knowing that the monetization of market mispricing can take time (see Three Marks of Great Investors ). Warren Buffet’s comment that “the stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient” sums up his perspective on the value of being disciplined when seeking to harvest superior returns. The challenge with patient investing is that it’s easier said than done. That’s because it’s a perfectly normal response for people to avoid pain. If you have a headache, you take an aspirin, or drink some water. You respond with an action to reduce the pain. The simplest way for investors to avoid short-term pain is to exit the investment strategies that are underperforming, but that is the type of behavior that ultimately leads to underperformance. In looking at Callan’s Periodic Table of Investment Returns, we can observe the bottom to top movements of both low-risk and high-risk asset classes from 1998 to 2017. Click Here for a full-scale view of Callan’s Periodic Table of Investment Returns from 1998 to 2017 In 1998 and 1999 the Russell 2000 Value Index (the light blue box in the bottom left corner) was at the bottom of the pack for two years in a row and then moved to the top of the pack in 2000 and 2001. But how many investors had the discipline to stay in small-cap-value-land when it underperformed the S&P 500 by a cumulative 63% in 1998 and 1999? Or which investors had the discipline to remain in "low-risk" bonds (green boxes at the bottom, left of center) from 2003 to 2007 (when they were the worst performing asset class in four of those five years) to hold onto the only asset class that had a positive return in 2008? Which investors pulled out of "high-risk" emerging market equities (orange boxes) after any one of the six bottom-of-the-pack years, causing them to miss out any one of the nine years that EM was the top performing asset class? (see How Intelligent Investors Use Fear To Their Advantage ) We are not saying that the Barclay’s Aggregate, or the Russell 2000 Value or Emerging Markets are the path to outperformance. We are simply saying that the only investors who benefited from exposure to these asset classes were the ones who had the conviction to remain after periods of significant underperformance. Investment strategies that deliver superior long-term returns require investors to be incredibly patient, disciplined, and indifferent to short-term performance. That’s because the seasons of underperformance drive away demand by pushing away the impatient investors, making things more attractive on a relative basis, and act as the build-up to the seasons of outperformance. While this is easy to comprehend, it is much more challenging to execute. Without strict discipline, and a deep understanding of how and why alpha-producing strategies generate their returns, even seasoned investors will want to pull out of a strategy after two or three years of under-performance. It is these seasons of under-performance however, that effectively create the risk premium that patient investors capture when they keep their eyes fixed long-term. As long as investors continue to chase short-term performance, there will be opportunities for disciplined, process-driven investors to harvest superior long-term returns. If you are still wondering about the title, "Patienta" is Latin for "Patience!"

Second Act Planning Retirement Readiness Course Join us for one of the following weeks where we review the steps to prepare and thrive in your "Second Act," where your retirement can be so much more than a life of leisure. ​ Week 1: Highlight Your Passions, Skills, and Gifts. Famous baseball player Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will end up somewhere else.” This course focuses on identifying your desired outcomes for the next phase of life and the preparation needed to get there. Topics include change/transition, articulation of personal values, and an understanding of your current and potential financial reality. Week 2: Engage Your Mind and Body According to Socrates, “the secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.” This course focuses on how to optimize Social Security and Medicare to increase the security of your retirement years. We will also explore how to establish new physical, intellectual, emotional, and social habits for this next phase of life. Week 3: Reflect on Your External and Internal Codes Intellectual elite, Albert Einstein, once said the hardest thing in the world is to understand the income tax code. The course focuses on how to navigate the US tax code to your advantage with tax-efficient planning and tax-efficient retirement distributions. We will also address estate planning issues and end with an assessment of the internal codes (e.g., rules) that might be limiting all you are intended to be. Week 4: Originate Your Next Act Today American tennis groundbreaker, Arthur Ashe, said: “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.” This course focuses on investing what you have to generate a viable return for the future. Subjects discussed include investment risk/return, fixed-income security features, and articulation of the concepts that will inform your decisions in the future. ​ To participate in one of the four classes, email Michael Baumeister at michael@monotelo.com and indicate which class you would like to be a part of, or submit the form below.

WHITE PAPERS The purpose of our White Papers is to give our prospective clients the opportunity to hear the solutions we have recommended to address complex problems and to help people understand the issues to consider when making complex financial decisions. While the situations are real, the names have been changed to protect the innocent! WLW Win One, Lose One, Win One... This was a fun case for our team. There was complexity due to the types of income this family was generating and the stakes were high because they were in the 39.6% tax bracket in the prior tax year. They were also paying the alternative minimum tax. Read More JSZ Realtor Sam This case had similarities to cases that had come across our desk in the past. However, what was unusual about this case was the ratio of investment property income to commission-based income being generated from home sales. Due to this we were initially not sure if we would be able to reduce his tax burden, but in the end we were able to save him $7,000 per year. Read More CWS Coulda-Woulda-Shoulda This case highlights a situation where a client's failure to consult with us prior to making a large financial decision ended up costing them $30,000 in taxes. Read More SOO Starting Over, And Over Our SOO case deals with a young Realtor client who had to repeatedly start her business over from the beginning as her life took her across the country. Amidst this repeated reset we were able to reduce her tax bill by $8,000 and increase her cash-flow. Read More