Join Angie Austin as she provides listeners with crucial last-minute tax filing advice with expert Mark Stever from Jackson Hewitt. This episode is packed with invaluable tips to navigate the tax season efficiently, especially for those who may have left their filing to the eleventh hour. Whether dealing with common tax pitfalls, understanding the nuances of filing extensions, or managing tax returns after a natural disaster, Mark’s expertise ensures you are well-prepared. Additionally, Angie shares the optimistic message of maximizing focus and productivity, with insights from acclaimed motivational speaker Jim Stovall, to inspire you both financially and personally.
00:26:37 Finding Tax Resources with Jackson Hewitt
SPEAKER 04 :
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey there, it’s Angie Austin and Jim Stovall with the Good News, and today we’re talking about his Winner’s Wisdom column, Going Back to the Well. And Jim, I have to tell you, my mom’s going back to your well because she’s reading another one of your new books that I just received, and it’s a compilation of your columns.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, fantastic. Yeah, I’m not even keeping up with that like I should because I wrote six books last year, and they’re all kind of coming out a little at a time, so… i am i’m glad to know that but uh this column came initially from my friend and colleague bb king one of the great blues musicians of all time and and when my ultimate gift book was turned into a movie they let me work on the music i mean i somebody in you had uh 20th Century Fox said, let the blind guy do the music. So, you know, I got Bob Dylan and B.B. King and Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Aaron Copland put together just a really cool soundtrack. Well, but what I didn’t understand is that when they first put together a movie, they do a rough track. And it’s just something so that people can watch. And you cannot watch a movie without music. It’s just horrible.
SPEAKER 08 :
That’s so true. Yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, so they just pulled music and put it in there. Well, they put this B.B. King song, A Thrill Has Gone, in there, and it was great. Well, then I found out where they were going to put something else in, and I called and said, look, man, I cannot see that scene without that. We’ve got to have that. And they said, Jim, that’s very, very expensive. Finally, the producer called me and said, said, when’s your birthday? And I told him, he said, I’m giving you B.B. King for your birthday. And if you watch The Ultimate Gift now off of Netflix or wherever you get films, right there’s a great scene with B.B. King doing it. Well, I got to meet him and then I went to New York for his 80th birthday. And, you know, and it was amazing because just to see all the people that were fans of this guy. And then he had a guy, Hubert, who had been his… the band director for many, many years, handled the horns and the orchestra and everything. And, you know, I stayed in touch with Hubert after that, and I said, you know, how’s the old band doing? Because B.B. King died at age 89 getting ready to do another show. He did 200 shows that year. And I said, how’s the old guy holding up? And he said, you know, he struggles a little here and there. And he said, I always keep my eye over my shoulder on him, make sure he’s okay. But he said that every three or four nights or once a week, it’ll happen. We’ll be playing somewhere and the old man will just come out and the guitar is screaming and he’s just old himself. And everything’s amazing. And I’ll look over my shoulder and one of the young guys will be there. Eric Clapton will be there or, you know, or Carlos Santana sitting there on the front row watching him. And the old man just puts on a show then. And, you know, it was fun. But when I asked B.B. King who really… you know, inspired you. And he said, oh, all the young guys and everybody else inspires me. But he said, there are times you just got to go back to the well. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, everybody that does what I do, we were all inspired by a guy named They’re recorded in the early 1930s, Robert Johnson. And he said, so we all go back to that at some point and do that. And I thought, what an amazing thing, because we have a tendency in our information age to build on things, to build on things, to build on things. And maybe you’re reading biblical commentary. Maybe you’re listening to someone’s idea of the news. But every once in a while, man, if you don’t want to get tripped up, You’ve got to go back to the original and see what somebody said. And, Ange, you know, you’ve been in news. Today, so many things you’ll say, someone will be reporting that someone else is reporting what a guy said. And then, you know, they check with each other and, oh, yeah, we have three sources on this, but they’re all quoting the same thing, and you don’t really know what you got. So every once in a while… It’s good, whether you’re getting inspired or informed, to go all the way back to the well and get some pure information.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, when you talk about going back to the well, for instance, the work of John Steinbeck that you mentioned in your article, what is it that some of these people have that is so inspirational? Because you said you’re keenly aware that only a handful of writers have ever risen to the level of Steinbeck, and same with B.B. King, right, in his genre. Yeah. And you see how they inspired others. So tell me what they have that’s so special or in particular John Steinbeck or somebody of that, you know, stature or status.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, the sixth book I wrote last year was a sort of a sequel to a Steinbeck book he wrote 60 something years ago. And Because of that, I read everything he had written and a lot of his compiled letters. I had read what Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald had said about him. Of course, he won the Pulitzer Prize, and in the ultimate, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. You know, when you look at the people that he inspired, and then I go back and read his stuff, it’s what I would imagine it would look like if you were an aspiring sculptor to look at Michelangelo’s David. I mean, Steinbeck’s prose is just immaculate. He is just so, so, so good. uh you know and you know when hemingway admires him and fitzgerald and and uh carl sandberg and some of the most amazing writers of the 20th century you know you gotta you gotta look at this guy what is it about that but he also you know he was read by very common people a lot of people had to read his grapes of wrath when they were in high school or east of eden or of mice and men and uh They still hold up. They’re amazingly well-written, and they’re just good stories. And so that’s what intrigued me so much, and I learned so much about the craft of writing from guys like him. And you just, you know, every once in a while, you can read all the modern guys and everything else, and then you just, you know, I’m going back to Ernest Hemingway or Scott Fitzgerald, or in this case, John Steinbeck.
SPEAKER 07 :
So you’ve been in TV for more than 30 years, and you talk about your TV, your writing, your movies. You’re dipping into so many wells here. What do you want us to take away, your readers, to take away from going back to the well?
SPEAKER 10 :
one of the things I learned from TV and you remember this back in the day before everything was digital, it was analog. And every time you made an edit, you lost a generation and you’re making a copy of a copy of a copy broadcast tape. Uh, you know, you, you could get down four or five generations, but then if you’re going to mess with this anymore, you better go back to the master and lay down on a new track. And it’s kind of, it’s kind of that thing. But, uh, You know, I think it’s good to keep in touch with the cutting edge stuff. But from time to time, you need to go back and see what inspired everybody. And that’s, you know, what I really want people to understand, you know, in my field of personal development. You go back and you read Napoleon Hill because virtually everyone since his time has. You know, almost 100 years ago, almost everybody quotes him. I mean, he influenced everybody. So it’s good to go back and see what made the difference. And I think that’s an important thing to realize.
SPEAKER 07 :
I love that example because I forgot that every time you would do an edit with the old stuff that you’d lose a little bit of quality. All right. Since we did miss one week, Time Machine. That’s your next column, the most recent one. So tell us what you’re teaching us in the column Time Machine.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, I think here in Western civilization and here in America, we have a tendency to to be really scattered all the time. We’re distracted, we’re scattered, and some of the Asian philosophies and some of those people, they’re more focused than we are because some of them don’t have as many distractions as we have, or whatever the case may be. But success comes when you have a compelling driving force, and you get total focus on it. And so many people today, they’re distracted with whatever’s on their phone at any given moment, but then when they get down to do something, they’re feeling… They’re worried about, well, I didn’t handle that very good yesterday or last year. I’m guilty about this. I should have done that instead of this. Or they’re worried about something in the future that may or may not ever happen. Hey, I haven’t got my taxes done yet. I’ve got to do that. I’ve got to pick up Junior for the wrestling, and I’ve got to go here. And they’re never really totally focused in the moment. And if you’re going to succeed at the highest possible level, You’ve got to bring all your energy to that thing you’re doing right now. And I always go back to my late great friend and mentor, Coach John Wooden. He said, before you do anything, great or small, no matter what, phone call, meeting, undertake any task, before you start, ask yourself one simple question. What would I do right now if I were amazing? And, boy, that idea… really brings to bear the idea that I need to be in the moment. I need to be totally focused on this conversation I’m having right now with Angie Austin. Doesn’t matter what happened last hour. Doesn’t matter what I’m going to do after this interview. What matters right now is bringing the best I got to this project right now. And if you can do that with everything you do, you’re going to be an amazing success.
SPEAKER 07 :
What would I do right now if I were really amazing? I think it’s over a decade now that you and I have been radio friends. And finally, I think I’m going to meet you in person in May. But of that over a decade, you’ve told me that at least five times. You’ve used that example. What would I do right now or what would I do next if I were truly amazing? And I’ve thought about that many times over the years because it can really make a difference in your next move, your next interaction, your next… you know, interaction at work, your next project you’re working on, your next move while you’re on vacation with a group of friends, you know, meeting new people, experiencing new things. You could not only have a positive influence on your own life, but you can really have a positive influence on others around you. And I think we can think about examples of people that positively influence us and negatively influence us or have very little or no influence on us that are just kind of a wet noodle, you know, just kind of like, you know, interacting with like a grapefruit, nothing special, not great, you know, not bad, just kind of meh. So if you
SPEAKER 10 :
put that in your mind what would i do next if i were truly amazing it can really make a huge difference in the quality of your life and those around you yeah i you know we’ve all been at a party or at a business function where you’re meeting and greeting different people and we’ve all met that wet noodle guy that you were mentioning that uh you know frankly he’s not paying any attention to me at all he’s looking around the room to see you know who Where’s the important guy I can meet? But I’ve had the opportunity to interact with several presidents, and, you know, they have… And great politicians, great business people, they have the ability to meet hundreds and hundreds of people in a line. And for that six seconds… they make everybody feel like you’re the most important person in the world. And I saw them do that. And when I do book signings now or after an arena event when I meet and greet people, I stay totally in the moment. Because for this man or woman or this young person right here, This is the one moment I’m going to have. I’ll probably never see them again. They’ll probably never see me again. And, you know, if I’m distracted or I’m not paying attention or I’m yelling at somebody else or whatever, I mean, you totally ruin their motive. That six seconds is their moment. You know, I remember one of the things that when I studied Harry Truman and I wrote a novel, including him as kind of a character in the novel, and I went back and reread some of his stuff. And when you’re the president, you have a guy that schedules every moment of every day. And he’d gotten behind because the ambassador from somewhere went long, and the scheduler said, we’re going to scrap the Eagle Scouts from Iowa and tell them we can’t do that, and then we’ll move on to the meeting with the Supreme Court aide. And the president said, no, absolutely wrong. We’re meeting with the Eagle Scouts from Iowa, and we’re going to get the photo, and I’m going to shake their hands, because these young people will tell their grandchildren that about this 10 minutes they spent with the president. And if we don’t have 10 minutes for that, we don’t deserve the right to do anything else here. Tell the Supreme Court guy to hold on and we’ll be there. But, you know, he understood the power of the moment and staying in the moment. And that’s what really matters.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, I get so much out of talking to you. Jim Stovall dot com. We’re out of time. Thank you, my friend. Be well.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 09 :
Brimfield is listening to the mighty 670. KLT, Denver.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, if you’re just joining us, this is Angie Austin with the Good News. Well, Tax Day, April 15th, is almost here. And we have expert help, Mark Stever, Chief Tax Officer with Jackson Hewitt Tax Services, is joining us. Welcome, Mark. Good day. Very exciting time. Good to be here. It is, actually. I’m all ready to roll. So let’s talk about some of the top tips for some of the last-minute filers.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that’s a large bucket of people because there’s tens of millions of people who wait to this time every year, which is not really a financial best practice, but it is certainly a thing. So I’ll simply say with the waning hours in front of us, make every use of what remaining time you have, depending on when you’re listening to this, and do not miss the deadline. There’s penalties and other risks. That being said, don’t rush so much to not hit the deadline that you don’t get organized. You guesstimate or estimate because accuracy matters. And more importantly, you hurry and you leave something off in the way of a benefit or make a mistake that causes another downstream error later. So be organized. Find your documents. Find you a trusted, experienced professional. If you waited this late, you probably should get some help. And simply commit to a deadline of getting it done in the next time that you have. Don’t put it off any longer. Don’t extend unless you must. And simply start to look towards 25 because 2024 is, you know, over and it’s time to wrap that up and put a bow on it.
SPEAKER 08 :
You know, when you talk about, you know, getting expert help, you know, whether you’re late or not. You know, I went to college. I’ve done very well in my career. And I always get expert help because I find things change so often. Different things happen each year. I might have thought something could be written off, and I realized it can’t. Or maybe it used to be able to be written off, and now it can’t. So expert help, I think, regardless of how much you think you know. I did actually get help one year from my brother who graduated in the top 1% of his class at West Point Military Academy. It’s the only year where Then I actually got a letter from the IRS saying that I didn’t claim something that I should have claimed in terms of a retirement account or some investment account or something. And I’m like, oh, great. The one time I didn’t get expert help.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s more common than you think, and especially as the IRS and states in particular have gotten more sophisticated with their data matching. You know, specificity and accuracy matter now more than ever. You know, you can’t guesstimate that small job that you had or that side hustle income that you got paid through that third-party app. or that gaming income that you didn’t claim because that was, you know, just a small win in Vegas. You know, the accuracy matters because the IRS has that data. And you may not go to jail or even get audited, but you’re likely to get a question. Then you’re going to have to deal with that. So be accurate. You know, locate all your documents. If you didn’t get it, that doesn’t mean you just get to leave it off. You have to put that on there because odds are the IRS has it. And as you say, taxes change, laws change, life changes actually more than tax law changes. And the mistake you make might not lead yourself to jail or an audit, but you can cost yourself money. And that’s probably the bigger crime, in my opinion, leaving off a credit or leaving off a benefit that could be worth five hundred dollars or a thousand dollars. And you’re never going to see that money. And a pro can help ensure that. Plus, they can help reduce stress. So I know at Jackson Hewitt, we’re pro pro, but we also have self prep. We recognize that. But it’s not for everybody. And sooner or later, you may have an issue that’s so big you’re going to need some help. And we’re here for that.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I’ve found in my dealings with the experts that it definitely pays for what you pay for the service. It more than pays in the tax benefits, et cetera, for sure. And I didn’t know. So if I go to Vegas, which I just got back from Vegas, and let’s say I spend three grand on a vacation with my family, blah, blah, blah, and I win $1,000 or whatever, I win something.
SPEAKER 06 :
I didn’t even know. I’ve never won anything, so I don’t have to worry. But I didn’t even know you had to claim that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, absolutely. And I’ll even make it worse for you, Angie. It’s not $1,000. Even if you have a dollar of income from that office NCAA pool, if you have income, it’s taxable. It’s not excluded under the law because of some de minimis or hobby or family or friendly bet. Same thing with side hustle income or crypto gains. There’s no small de minimis amount of exclusion. You have to put that on your tax return. Now, the audit may catch you or they may not, but the point is taxable income is taxable unless it’s exempt, and the IRS is getting better at finding that, even with some of the political rhetoric. You don’t want to be that person for a lot of reasons. Do it right. And a pro, to your point earlier, should pay for themselves. What I mean by that is if stress is your worry, they should reduce that. If you want a big refund, they can help with that by giving you some tax tips and tax pointers. If you want tax planning, they can help with that as well. But more importantly, they should provide value. And if they don’t, then you should seek out a new tax pro, whether it’s Jackson Hewitt or somewhere else, because a pro is supposed to help provide value and get your taxes done accurately and the biggest refund that you’re due, but other things too. And you should look for that.
SPEAKER 08 :
I agree completely. And you talked about filing late and you said, rather than make a lot of mistakes, it’s better than filing late. So I guess I have a Yeah, there’s not many benefits to filing an extension. I’ll tell you, I’m not in the pro-extension camp and I’m not in the pro-extension camp.
SPEAKER 03 :
No refund or small refund camp. I have found more benefits with just doing it right, doing it early, or at least doing it before the deadline. Because when you extend, many people think that’s an extension of time to pay. It’s simply not. An extension, which is an automatic six-month extension if you file the form 4868. Buy paper in the mail or electronically. Buy a pro or do it yourself. You have to send it to the IRS before deadline. It’s simply an extension of time to send in the rest of your paperwork. You still owe all of your tax money or at least the bulk of it by the tax deadline, or you face the risk of a failure to pay or underpayment penalty and all that goes with that, including interest and cleanup costs. So you want to do your taxes early. You certainly want to do them before the deadline. But if for whatever reason you can’t get to it, know this. An extension to do your taxes is only to send in the rest of the paperwork, not to pay your money that you owe. That’s due on April 15th or you have risk of penalty.
SPEAKER 08 :
So in your opinion, not too many benefits with an extension.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, benefits to me, benefits to the tax company. We get to work up your data to do your extension. We get to file your extension. We get to calculate how much you owe, then you pay it. And then you come back and I get to do your taxes a second time and actually file them. So there’s plenty of benefits to the tax business, not many benefits to the taxpayer themselves. Other than they get to do their taxes twice if they like that. I’d rather take, you know, a long run down a hot road. But the fact of the matter is there’s not a real good reason. Lots of excuses. You know, I don’t have that W-2. I don’t have that broker statement. But a phone call or email or a website access in this day and age, you can pretty much get all your documents, even in this final hours. That’s all supposed to be in your hands. And companies made it pretty easy to get. But as far as upside on filing, other than doing your taxes twice because you like that wisdom canal job, wisdom tooth extraction, there’s not much else benefit in that. Oh, you’re cracking me up.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, well, let’s talk a little bit about natural disasters. Will your tax return differ? Do you get more time? Do you get more benefits? Let’s talk about someone who’s been affected by a natural disaster. I don’t know what this is considered under, but I’m assuming it’s a natural disaster. Many of my friends, I work for NBC4 in Los Angeles, and I know a lot of people who lost homes in the fires there. It was just… catastrophic. So let’s say a natural disaster, how does that tax return differ?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, much like tax professionals, not all tax professionals are the same. Much like disasters, not all disasters are the same. The disaster that has tax benefit are generally your federally declared disaster. And you know it if you’ve been in one, your California point. I live in Florida, hurricanes, other places that have had flooding or what have you. But a federally declared disaster, which is declared by the administration or FEMA, has a whole host of benefits. The top shelf ones that you see are more time to file, an extension of time to send in your tax returns. And while that is a true benefit, you got extra time, I have found it’s a false benefit. You know, many people have gotten their lives in order and that’s most important and they’ve gotten their families back in order and they’ve taken care of the important priorities. But then they’ve got this extra time on their hands and they think, well, I’ll just file my taxes way later. When in the reality of it is, if you’re in a federally declared disaster area, there’s a whole bunch of other tax benefits that are yours, especially if you’ve suffered economic loss. They start with being able to claim an economic loss on your tax return and reducing your tax. A second benefit… you can carry that loss backwards and get prior taxes. A third benefit, those returns are prioritized and you have to do it right and put the disaster and some information on your return, but the IRS will quick jump that return and get you money quick. So waiting till later might be okay if you don’t have the rest of your life in order, but if you’re fixed and ready to go and you’re just looking for fast cash, Talk with a pro, calculate your loss and getting your documents. There’s a lot of latitude there, too, in calculating your loss. But you carry that back and you can have cash in a very short amount of time, which is more life altering and life fixing than that false delay that you’ve got several more months to go do it. So talk with a pro if you’ve got a disaster, especially in a federal disaster area, and especially if you’ve had an economic loss. There’s a lot to do.
SPEAKER 08 :
Now, Mark, I know you’ve been doing this, you know, more than 35 years. And I love to kind of pick people’s brains. How did you get into this and stay into it so long? Like what led you into this area of expertise?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it’s a long, painful story. And the funny part of this, Angie, is I’ve only had two jobs in my whole life, two companies in 40 years. I got into it, as many of your listeners may know, especially the gray-haired old ones, back in 1985 with the Tax Reform Act under Ronald Reagan, the first piece of major tax legislation arguably in 80 years when they started to change all the tax rules. I came out with just an accounting degree and somebody said, we need help in taxes. And I said, I hate taxes. But then I figured how big this was over my career. It’s the largest single financial transaction to most Americans. You have to do it every year for 40, 50, 60 years for some people. You know, it has a large financial consequence, and many people just think it’s this horrible thing I have to do for an hour a year when the reality is taxes are now a year-round event. It’s never been a bigger financial impact. You know, taxes are used to socially construct a country from buying cars to buying houses to equity redistribution. It’s a very important act, not just something you have to do like brushing your teeth or exercising. It’s a critically important thing to do, but if you don’t do it right, you’ll pay too much. And I don’t mean to that tax pro. I mean to the government. And here’s a final point to your listeners. The IRS is not in the business of making sure you get all your money. They’re not going to send you a larger check because you left a benefit or a credit or an election or deduction. They’re going to come to get you if you didn’t pay all your money. But if you leave off a benefit, you know, you just lose that money. And many people think I can do it on a smartphone at the red light on my commute in. Not a good way. Not a good best practice. Not for the next half century that you’re going to be filing tax returns.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, Mark, thank you so much. Love that Southern accent. I’m in the South right now, and I want to make sure that people know where to go to get more info.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, there’s a lot of sites out there, irs.gov, good stuff. There’s emergency management information on FEMA if you’re in a disaster, and people know about that. But for your tax day-to-day information, www.jacksonhewitt.com. We’ve got a great website, lots of frequently asked questions, documents, calculators, videos, hot topics if something comes up, and a little office locator box for our 5,000 offices. You put your zip code in. Up pops the map. You can click on one of the little dots near you and make an appointment, go in at your leisure, or just get that address and drive on in or walk on in today. We’ve got staff. We’ve got help. You know, we like taxes, and if your pro doesn’t, maybe you don’t have the right pro, but JacksonHewitt.com, great place to get your taxes done. Or if you’re a wild astronaut cowboy and you’re doing it yourself, you know, there’s a place to get some information or have us help you amend it once you figure out you made a boo-boo. So JacksonHewitt.com. Awesome. Excellent info. Thanks, Mark.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, Angie, have a great day. And Roll Tide from Alabama. Thanks from Tennessee. Oh, not the Tennessee people. Oh, my gosh. No, we love Tennessee.
SPEAKER 06 :
I’m just visiting. You cracked me up. Have a great day, Mark.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thanks for tuning in to The Good News with Angie Austin. Definitely some great tax tips by Mark Stieber. And you can learn more at JacksonHewitt.com. That’s JacksonHewitt.com.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
