Ed started out as a real estate whiz, buying his first home at 25 then spending the next twenty plus years transforming houses and reselling them for a healthy profit. Being a real estate professional gave him plenty of contact with tax laws, and soon Ed decided to learn the craft himself. He landed a job as a manager at one of the H&R Block locations, specializing in real estate, rental, and small business taxation before starting his own tax service, Hands On Taxes.
Ed takes tax preparation beyond the basics: “I want to do more than just put the right number in the correct column. I look for active ways to save my clients money on their income taxes.” As an Enrolled Agent (the highest level of tax preparation achievable), Ed has the knowledge and experience to do just that.
As he became more involved with taxes, Ed discovered many of his clients weren’t well-versed in retirement preparation. “It didn’t matter which end of the spectrum clients were -- high income, low-income, middle income – they knew very little about retirement and don’t plan for it.” Many clients had 401k’s that were under-funded, others overlooked the tax consequences of Social Security, and many were paying large portions of their retirement distributions toward taxes.
To counteract this rising epidemic of poor retirement planning, Ed developed a full-fledged retirement plan that takes advantage of the benefits available and strives to reduce tax liability to its lowest level possible. “Imagine your retirement savings as a bucket,” explains Ed, “you work hard to put away money for retirement in that bucket, but there’s a hole at the bottom. Every time you take a distribution, some of your hard-earned retirement money leaks out to pay the taxes due. My goal is to make that hole so small it’s barely there – or eliminate it entirely.”
Recognizing the lack of financial knowledge in the community, and finding it very rewarding to help others live their best life, Ed is now focusing on proving free financial education in the community.