The Due Diligence Project™ Podcast
The Due Diligence Project™ is a unique, global community of 500+ elite, independent CPA Firms and Family Offices that vet, rank, and rate hundreds of sophisticated tax strategies and resources to identify the highest ROI solutions net of cost and risk.
The Due Diligence Project™ Podcast
From Tax Preparer to Elite Tax Strategist - Jeremy Lederer
In this episode of The Due Diligence Project podcast, founder Alex Sonkin interviews elite CPA Jeremy Lederer about his journey from recognizing the inefficiencies in tax dollars to becoming a leading tax strategist. Jeremy shares how he transformed his practice to focus on legally eliminating taxes for seven and eight-figure entrepreneurs, and discusses his new book "The Zero Tax Strategy."
Key Topics Covered:
Career Journey: Jeremy's path from witnessing his entrepreneur father's tax struggles to becoming an elite tax strategist, including his pivotal moment when a managing partner rejected his $100,000 tax-saving idea for a client
Practice Philosophy: The fundamental difference between tax preparers and tax strategists, and why reinvesting dollars in local communities multiplies value by 10x versus the 60% efficiency rate of federal tax dollars
Due Diligence Project Impact: How joining the DDP community of nearly 1,000 CPA firms transformed Jeremy's capabilities through peer review, collective expertise, and access to vetted strategies
The Zero Tax Strategy Book: Jeremy's mission to share transformational tax planning strategies with entrepreneurs, evolving from a technical textbook to an accessible guide with stories and diagrams
Implementation Focus: Why proper execution and documentation are critical for converting potential tax savings into realized savings while maintaining audit defense readiness
Featured Quotes:
"Every dollar that goes into Washington DC, only 60 cents makes it out. They literally destroy dollars. Whereas a dollar reinvested in one's local community can multiply by 10." - Jeremy Lederer
"There's a huge difference between a tax preparer and a tax strategist... that was the light bulb moment for me." - Jeremy Lederer
"If you don't know how many pages are in the tax code, then you don't know how many strategies are in the tax code." - Alex Sonkin
"Zero tax is possible, it's legal and implementation is the key." - Jeremy Lederer
Resources Mentioned:
- The Zero Tax Strategy Book by Jeremy Lederer
- Exit CPA (Jeremy's firm)
- The Due Diligence Project Summit
- Website: www.duediligenceproject.com
This episode highlights how elite tax professionals can save entrepreneurs millions in taxes through proper strategy and implementation, while emphasizing the importance of working with experienced CPAs who have deep knowledge of the tax code and access to peer-reviewed strategies.
All right, welcome to the Due Diligence Project podcast. We've got Jeremy Letter, one of the most elite CPAs in the country, joining us and I'm super excited to host this meeting with you today, Jeremy? How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great, Alex. Thank you so much for having me today and for writing the foreword for my book. It's been really great getting to know you and being a part of the due diligence project these last couple of years.
Speaker 1:So I know you just completed the Zero Tax Strategy book. It's exciting, it's awesome. I highly recommend everyone listening to this to pick up a copy. But really, today we're going to dive in and really get a better understanding of Jeremy. Today we're going to dive in and really get a better understanding of Jeremy, why he became an elite CPA, what his experience has been before the due diligence project, after joining the due diligence project, and really do a deep dive into the mind of one of the top tax professionals or tax geeks as we endearingly like to call ourselves in the country, and what that work involves.
Speaker 1:Because I think there's a lot of business owners out there that are dealing with huge tax issues income taxes, state tax, capital gains tax, all sorts of other moving parts and we're really, really proud to support some leading tax advisors family office advisors who really specialize in tax mitigation, and Jeremy is one of the leaders in the country in that space. So really excited to have you here. Let's start with some questions. Tell us about you know, why did you become a CPA in the first place? What was, what was? What were you thinking there?
Speaker 2:Well, to make a long story short, my dad's an entrepreneur and I always saw him struggling with taxes and over time I came to realize that the dollars that go into Washington DC only 60 cents makes it out. They literally destroy dollars, whereas a dollar reinvested in one's local community can multiply by 10. So the situation is entrepreneurs are the best allocators of capital in the world and I feel like it's my calling to help them keep more of those dollars in their local communities.
Speaker 1:It's a great way to make a difference in the world, and certainly the Doge Report, I believe, maybe supports some of that thinking as well. But before we get into all of that, let's keep going. Let's keep going into your mind, and so you're here to make a difference in the world. Tell us about your experience making that difference. Before you joined the Due Diligence Project, which is the largest independent peer community of tax professionals in the world, you were doing some great things beforehand. Tell us about that experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always knew that I was going to go into tax advisory.
Speaker 2:I shouldn't say always knew, but as I was working my way up the ranks with an entrepreneurial spirit, I worked for a different tax firm every year for five years until the defining moment came along the firm I was working for at the time.
Speaker 2:It was early April and of course I'm grinding through tax returns. I'm a tax manager at the time and I come across a particular tax return where it became really clear to me there was a better way to report this transaction and it would save the client over $100,000. All we had to do was pause work on the tax returns, go back to the client and get some more information. So I took this to the managing partner at the firm I was with at the time and he basically told me to get back to work. We're not getting paid for that, we're getting paid to prepare the tax returns. And that was the light bulb moment for me, when I realized that there's a huge difference between a tax preparer and a tax strategist. And from then on I was committed to that ideal and found a small book of business to acquire and grew that into what it is today, which is a very boutique elite CPA firm. We work with a lot of seven and eight figure entrepreneurs to legally eliminate their taxes.
Speaker 1:Well, where did you grow up and where did you?
Speaker 2:go to college. I went to college at the University of Denver. I studied golf initially. Once my eligibility ran out, I decided I wanted to.
Speaker 1:They have a great lacrosse team over there at the University of Denver yeah, they do, and I think, a hockey team over there. They got two leading sports teams that make a big missile over there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the hockey team. That was fun to watch. I definitely got into that. The energy in that building was phenomenal. But I digress. So you went to Denver. How did you choose Denver? And you'll still have a place there. I love going up there. Southwest Colorado probably one of the most beautiful places in America. They call it the Switzerland of America, although I've not been to Switzerland so I can't compare. But doggone it, it's beautiful. The Telluride area it's a dream come true.
Speaker 1:It's cool, you know, ski resorts in Colorado, utah, world-class and obviously very exciting. But let's get back to the tax planning. So, yeah, how did you, you know, when you joined the Due Diligence Project, how did your world change, what capabilities did you gain and how do you feel today about your ability to really make a difference for the business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. It's been life changing After I started my practice in 2014,. I was devouring all the content that I could find, whether it was authored by Mark Kohler or Tom Wheelwright or some of the others. That really got my wheels turning. But then there was something missing. All these people, or the experts at the time, were not thinking big enough for me and I was constantly searching for somebody to show me how to legally eliminate taxes or situations where $1 can be $10, with the concepts of non-cash deductions and leverage and creating the right set of facts to make this defensible. And when I found the due diligence project, it really clicked.
Speaker 2:The way that we're able to get together multiple times per year and vet emerging tax strategies is truly unique, and I don't take it for granted. I mean, ideas are everywhere. They're floating around us, literally in cyberspace. They're not even cheap anymore. They're free, and the tendency to get overwhelmed, even for a trained tax professional like myself, is very high. I can only imagine what the clients are going through, what a regular entrepreneur is going through. How do you filter through all this?
Speaker 1:It's nearly impossible and it takes an army of missionaries, alex, and I believe that is how I would describe the due diligence project definitely slows things down a little bit, but because the tax code is just so vast, it's like all of the oceans on the, you know, on the world, combined, trying to do a deep dive and find everything in these deep, dark oceans. It's impossible for one person but but like like eating an elephant, one bite at a time. As a community of hundreds and hundreds of tax geeks, we had almost 1,000 CPA firms at our last summit. That registered for our last summit. And of course, every time we do a tax strategy there is third-party CPAs, third-party attorneys, third parties coming in looking at the same tax structure that the recommended member of the due diligence project which the tax keeps recommended after completing their due diligence. So every strategy continues to get refined from other professionals, tax professionals looking at it, getting their questions answered or not, and ultimately going is this tax strategy something that's legal? Is it clean? How complicated is it? Is the specialist who's delivering it? Is he someone who we're going to respect and be able to work with? Are they easy to work with? Is he going to make us look bad in front of the client? All of these questions CPAs have, and what we've done in the due diligence project is really make those questions very, very easy to answer and help the CPA complete three quarters, seven eighths, of that due diligence themselves, and then the last quarter, you know, or one eighth you got to do yourself, but you got the notes, you got the resources, you get the you know, the cheat sheets and everything around you where there's no excuse for not doing the work.
Speaker 1:And once you complete the work, the real benefit goes to your clients. But the key is you got to want to do it and the more successful you get, the more successful CPAs get utilizing our structure, the richer they get. Sometimes they just go out and sell their practice to a private equity firm. The fact that you still want to be here and deliver value to the business owners and make that difference is, I think, really cool. Let's talk about that. I mean, there's other things besides just straight up value delivery. You know why are you doing this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, like it really is a calling to to. It's my way of supporting entrepreneurs, which I believe are some of the most generous, hardworking people in the world, and we really this country was, was built by those folks and they're busy, they're extremely busy, everyone's super busy doing what they're best at, and it really creates a lot of heartache for me when I pick up a tax return from a new client and see just how many hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars that were just wasted or sent to Washington where they were destroyed. So I wrote the Zero Tax Strategy book to bring the good news, hopefully to a few people a few more people than would otherwise hear it about these transformational experiences that my clients have had over the years. It was a difficult process. I never thought of myself as an author, but it just felt like something I had to do and it was a fun process.
Speaker 2:I can tell you the first draft I wrote Alex. It was a textbook. As you can imagine, I'm a technical guy CPA, tax advisor, tax advisor this thing nobody would have read it. I was working with a coach. Thankfully that you referred me to. She's like Jeremy no one's going to read this. It's a textbook. You got to have stories, you got to have pictures, you got to have diagrams. I'm pleased with the way it came out. Ultimately, I wrote that book to bring the good news that zero tax is possible and it's legal, and implementation is the key. So if anyone's listening to this like now is the time to begin your tax strategy. It's one thing to have a strategy which is at the plan of action, but to really like the key is like to convert those potential tax savings into realized tax savings. Like we got to implement, we got to execute on this before your end. So hopefully, whoever's listening to this, if you're on the fence, reach out to Alex, reach out to me and let's get this thing done.
Speaker 1:You know, it takes a very curious advisor like you whose passion is beyond just making money. And what we love about CPAs in general is CPAs don't go into the business for the money. That is not what CPAs are going to the business for. They're going to the business because they're technical people, they have a math, they're very math focused, they're maybe engineering brain, they like how things come together, they like how these tax project math projects come together, come apart. But at the end of the day, you know, being plugged into our network, you, you know, is really making a difference. And when you talk about seeing tax returns that don't look good to you, where people are wasting hundreds of thousands of million dollars of taxes, you know, we know those CPAs are not just, they're not trying to do a bad job, it's just they have not been exposed. It's just like they're trying to watch a movie but they're going to blockbuster video, flipping over you know, covers and trying to find tax strategies in blockbuster video, and go to the guy behind the counter going have you ever seen this movie? Is it good? Whereas we get the benefit of the peer review, where we get 20 years of experience, where we've been doing 20 years of research on hundreds and hundreds of strategies, showing them to hundreds and really thousands of different CPA firms and law firms and specialty firms and leading firms who provide CE credits, who provide leadership to the tax planning community, getting their feedback and going. What's the worst thing that's going to happen in audit or tax court with this tax strategy? And are you willing to sign that tax return? Why or why not? And getting those questions answered and then trying to get those questions answered really and then sharing that knowledge with hundreds of other CPAs really shortens your learning curve and gives you the ability to process a lot of information very quickly and create the confidence that's necessary to check off all the boxes and go. You know what this tax strategy swipe left, swipe left, we don't like. Oh, this one, swipe right, this is a good one.
Speaker 1:I would do this for myself and at the end of the day, we're just trying to make decisions, but the decisions need to be made by people with at least 10,000, 50,000 hours of experience in audit and tax court. You can't have your estate planning attorney or your Morgan Stanley financial advisor giving you advice on tax or even if they work at Goldman Sachs, do not take advice from finance bros on tax unless they have 10, 50,000 hours of experience in audit and tax court. And the only people who have that experience guess who? They are Tax-focused CPAs and the most elite tax attorneys in the country. Except the attorneys in the country, they might be experts in one or two things in the tax code, whereas the CPA is forced to be more of a generalist and forced to cover a lot more ground in the tax code. And the due diligence project is there to just help them facilitate and make sure they have access to the very, very best resources that have been vetted, ranked and rate over the last 20 plus years in every possible category.
Speaker 1:So Jeremy has access to the best resources that may live in Miami, new York, california, all around the country, all around the world. They're like his Lego building blocks in terms of building solutions, but he's building solutions with the very, very best specialists in the country who've all been vetted by hundreds of independent CPA firms, which gives him confidence, which gives his clients confidence and, ultimately, when you're using the best people and the smartest people in the world to do your planning, the result is usually a lot better than using your local CPA and local financial advisor and local estate planning attorney that have access to local ideas, who have no idea how many pages are in the tax code, have no idea how many pages are in the tax code, have no idea how many strategies are in the tax code, and therefore their tax planning, their estate planning and ultimately, their financial planning comes out as being really, when we look at it as being very average. And they may be working with a business owner who's the leader in his entire market. So you get a leader in the marketplace who's the number one guy in his face, but he's got average tax planning, estate planning, asset management and how does that work? Is that okay?
Speaker 1:I don't think it's okay, and so Jeremy's curiosity and his ability to find us and our ability to plug with him is really how we work. You know, and the top tax planners in the country, they know there's an issue, they know that there's a handful of billionaires that pay no tax, and then you and then 85, 90% of billionaires are paying so much tax, and then forget about the centimillionaires, multimillionaires and all these other millionaires. They're getting very average tax planning advice from the majority of the tax planning community that has no idea how many pages are in a tax code, and my question is if you don't know how many pages are in a tax code, then you don't know how many strategies are in a tax code. How are you giving advice to market leaders in their respective specialties who are absolutely killing it in their business, but now, when it comes to their tax work, they're getting average work? How do you feel about?
Speaker 1:that, Jeremy you know it makes me sad. There's also an opportunity for you, though, I mean. So it's like a bittersweet situation, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's. It's just a lot of it's demographics, I mean. I think the average age of a CPA in this country is approaching 70 years old and unfortunately there's not a lot, lot of incentive left for people in that stage of career to keep growing and keep advancing in their knowledge and ability to help people. But I can tell you that the peer review that you've put together in the back office of the Due Diligence Project is truly impressive and one of the greatest joys that I get in my year is when I'm able to get that switch to come on in the client's mind and all of a sudden they see tax day as payday. All of a sudden they're rushing in in March to get their tax returns filed because they got money coming back.
Speaker 1:Listen, we're here no-transcript a long time and I've never seen these ideas. I love the ideas. I totally get why hundreds of CPAs would sign that tax return, and I totally, and so we are able to. It's almost like teaching algebra to a bunch of math geeks for the first time and seeing their get excited. You know the non-math geeks. You teach them algebra, you teach them accounting, you teach them calculus. They want nothing to do with it. They're like I hate this stuff. But the math geeks, when they learn algebra ideas for the first time, their brain just creates, you know, releases these hormones. It's just like, oh my God. It's like, wow, that's a math problem, that's how you solve that problem. It's exciting. And that's who we are. We're tax geeks. We get excited about this stuff.
Speaker 1:I love getting CPAs excited about what we do because they go out there and they make a difference and they bring those ideas to these elite business owners.
Speaker 1:And then these elite business owners, like you said, they take that tax savings and they multiply it by 10. And we love being a part of that. We know we're the invisible firm back here. We're here to make you the superstar, jeremy, but the thing is these business owners can't do it without you, they can't do without the CPAs, and most people really don't understand what it takes to be an elite CPA, what the work behind you know, behind the curtain, really is, and I'm really happy that we had a chance to connect today and share you with the world, share you with you know, inside this podcast, so that the business owners out there get a little bit of a experience.
Speaker 1:So so what I, you know? Leave us with some thoughts. You know, give us a couple thoughts about things that get you excited, things that you might want to just leave as a nugget for our business owners who are watching this, or other CPAs watching this, who are also business owners. They're just in the CPA profession servicing other business owners and maybe a couple words about the due diligence project overall. Leave us with something to remember you by.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, alex. It's been a pleasure being here today. I wrote the zero tax strategy to reach more people and bring the good news that zero tax is possible. It's legal and implementation is the key. I can't emphasize that enough. If you want to have the tax savings, you have to put in the work with your CPA and with the rest of your virtual family office team to implement it properly. That way, in that unlikely event, the IRS comes asking questions, we are easily able to let them go bother someone else just by having all of the documentation ready. And that's really what we pride ourselves here at Exit CPA on doing is a full and complete implementation, so that not only do you have zero tax, but you have peace of mind and the ability to defend oneself in a worst case scenario.
Speaker 1:Jeremy, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for sharing your story with our community. We thank you for being on the Due Diligence Project podcast and we wish you a great day, have a great rest of your week and continued success. My friend, thanks so much. Thanks, alex. All right, jeremy, this was awesome. Yeah, thanks, alex, that was great.