However, if you’re a homeowner, you can look at your home in another way: As a tax shelter. You may deduct the mortgage interest paid on your annual tax return and deduct the property taxes on your Schedule A. If you don’t currently own a home, this tax benefit is significant enough to make you look seriously at home ownership.

“Points”
The concept is simple, but it starts to get a little more complicated when you add in “points.” Points are one type of fee paid at closing to your lender. If you pay points when you buy your new home, these may be deducted in full in the year of purchase. However, if you refinance your loan, the points must then be deducted over the life of the new loan. In the event you are deducting points annually and then decide to refinance again, you will be able to deduct the balance of the points when you pay off the old mortgage. Of course, all these deductions are based on being able to itemize your deductions on Schedule A.

There are some limitations.

 Points must not be more than amounts generally charged in your area.
 Funds provided at closing must be at least equal to the points.
 Loan must be used to buy or build taxpayer’s main home.
 Points are stated as a percentage of the principal amount of loan.
 Points are clearly stated on the settlement statement as charged for the mortgage.

Predictably, there are limits on mortgage interest deduction. Only the interest on the first $1 million of home acquisition debt is deductible. (Acquisition debt is defined as debt to purchase, build or substantially improve the residence.) Home equity debt limits are the lesser of the fair market value of the home reduced by the acquisition debt or $100,000 ($50,000 if married filing separately).

Probably the greatest advantage of home ownership occurs when you decide to sell your home. If you have owned and lived in your personal residence for two out of five years, you can sell the home and not be taxed on a profit up to $250,000 for singles and $500,000 for couples. The way home values have increased in recent years, this can be a tremendous investment opportunity. This rule seems very straight forward and simple, but beware! There are a number of exceptions.

Job related move—if you have to move out of your area (a 50-mile radius), and are unable to meet the two year time period, you can prorate the time based on a formula utilizing a ratio consisting of the number of days that you owned and lived in the home to the total number of days in the relevant 24-month period (approximately 730), multiplied by the exclusion amount.

Health problems requiring a sale—if health problems force you to move from your principal residence, you can prorate the time and exclusion based on the formula above.

Ideally, a couple that kept good records of time of ownership could buy and live in a home for two years, sell for a profit and then repeat this process. Still, there are a number of pitfalls that cause tax problems, such as the special rules surrounding home offices and move out/rent/return situations that effect the two in five requirement (this involves adjusting for depreciation recapture). Given the many regulations and nuances of the tax laws, many people opt to hire a licensed tax practitioner, such as an enrolled agent.

So there you go…The roof over your head can be a substantial tax shelter, regardless of how much equity you do or don’t have. If you would like to learn more about your home as a tax deduction, or if you are a real estate investor looking to incorporate tax planning into your acquisition and disposition planning, give me a call at (970) 930-1040.

To your tax savings,

Jassen Bowman, EA

1. Know your sales cycle. It amazes that many business owners either don’t know their sales cycle, or don’t think they can employ one. In the drug trade, there is a well defined sales cycle. There may be different levels of users, but most of them can generally be lumped into one of three categories: low quantity recreational users, medium users, and very heavy users. Drug dealers understand this concept, and inherently know when their customers are going to be in need of more product. If Joe Blow goes through two grams of cocaine in a week, guess what? His dealer is probably calling him every 5 to 7 days.

What is YOUR sales cycle? Think about how long a quantity of your product or service lasts. Yes, I said service. If you are in the HVAC business, then you can take advantage of seasonal cycles to create a base of non-emergency service business. AC maintenance in the spring, furnace system checks in the fall. It’s that easy. All consumables have an obvious sales cycle, and printer companies have known this for years. HP, Dell, Epson, etc., practically give away printers. Why? Because they make their money on ink and toner!

I work in a field that, on the surface, doesn’t seem to have a sales cycle capable of generating repeat business. If somebody has a problem with the IRS, and we fix it, let’s be honest: They don’t WANT to be our customer again. That doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t have an ongoing business relationship. We have branched out into different financial services that our clients can use, such as estate planning, payroll service, ongoing quarterly and annual tax return preparation — all of which are things on pretty well defined sales cycles.

If your product or service is something that is a one off, like ours is, then you have to expand your thinking and look for cross-sell opportunities. That is a whole other subject beyond the scope of this post that I’ll cover in the future, but think about it from a critical standpoint. If your business is something apparently mundane, like a rock shop or a second-hand clothing store, what can you do to spice it up? Well, how about a Rock of the Month Club for all your local customers? Or perhaps do monthly promotions on specific types of garments? This month is handbags, next month is pants, month after that is blouses, then jackets. In short, turn your mundane store into a continuity program.

2. Your product IS your business. A pot grower that grows weed with tiny nuggets, or doesn’t flush chemical fertilizers before harvest, is going to have a crappy product that customers won’t want to smoke. Xtasy tablets cut with way to much heroin are going to be a poor seller. Cars whose transmissions fail at 20,000 miles repeatedly due to a planetary gear defect won’t last the first model year. An airline with the worst on-time landing record in the industry is going to suffer horribly in ticket sales. An awesome band that suddenly gets a really horrible new lead singer isn’t going to sell out any concerts. In my line of work, a tax resolution firm that constantly rips off customers that haven’t even signed a service contract or given authorization to run that credit card is going to be the subject of numerous consumer complaints and a civil lawsuit by the Texas Attorney General (this just recently happened).

3. Customer service will make you rich. Drug dealers often gain new customers by giving away free product. It’s a loss leader, because they know that one good customer will make them a ton of money in the long haul.

4. It’s OK to fire your customers. Some customers cost you more money than you make from them. Some customers, despite your profits from them, aren’t worth the headache. Do you think a drug lord keeps supplying a dealer that is perpetually weeks and weeks late with payment on prior shipments and skims off the top? No. That guy probably ends up as alligator food.

5. You grow your business by focusing on what matters most (aka, the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule). There is a reason that the drug trade in large cities is primarily conducted by large, organized groups, such as gangs or organized crime syndicates. These organizations employ two incredibly important factors that most businesses would envy:

1). Tremendous employee loyalty, derived from extensive screening processes on hiring, and extreme consequences for leaving.
2). Numerous points of sale out where the customers are, making it convenient for the customer to purchase.
3). Employees are often given significant reign to act on behalf of the organization or the customer.

What can you do to garner employee loyalty? How can you endear your employees to you and your business to such an extent that they will bend over backwards to get their job done, make customers satisfied, and act in the best interest of the business? Perhaps more importantly, have you EMPOWERED your employees to take action that will keep problems to a minimum, and allow YOU to focus on growing the business?

Making it easy for your customers to purchase your product or service is critical to success in business. If your product is not carried by the stores that your target market gravitates to for purchasing that product, it’s not going to do well. If you sell via direct selling, is it easy or hard to buy your product? What can you do to make it easier? An example from a network marketing company I was involved in the launch of back in 2005: The product was outstanding, the customer service from headquarters was outstanding. What was the problem? You had to sign up as a distributor in order to buy the product online. What they should have done was allow people to buy the product, and then put that customer into direct contact with the nearest distributor in their ZIP code. The company is still going, but this one major flaw in their product launch kept them stifled for a year. It was so bad that many of us with large downlines (I had over 2,000 people in my downline) LEFT the company and took most of our downline with us.

If you’re reading this, there’s a decent chance that you are an online vendor or affiliate marketer. With that mind, think about this: Does your web site flow and layout make it difficult to do business with you? Is your checkout system more than one page? Is your order button easy to find? From a pure traffic standpoint, do you have enough inbound entry points out in the world (e.g., inbound links)?

You grow your business by focusing on the things that really matter. In short, this comes down to marketing and watching the money, and making that money work for you. You don’t grow your business by also being the guy that takes out the trash and mops the floor. You don’t grow your business by being the one person that does everything: You are inherently limited to the size you can grow.

Let’s take a deeper look at that from the perspective of a one-man drug operation. Let’s say we have a guy with a decent chemistry background, but with no real connections outside of the fact that he spends a lot of his free time at night clubs and raves. He sees the drug deals going on at the raves, and decides to enter the game himself. For under $2,000, our new friend can set himself up a nice little meth or Xtasy lab in his kitchen, and have enough raw material to make enough drugs over the course of a long weekend to net a street value of about $10,000.

Now, Mr. Indepedent Drug Dealer has to go to raves and somehow start selling his product. Perhaps he goes to places he’s been before, and opens a casual conversation with people he’s seen buying or using. Knowing that his product is his business, he hands out a small number of 100 mg doses throughout the evening, with the reminder, “There’s more where that came from.”

Over the course of a few months, our new entrepreneur is likely to build a small customer base that will actually net him a decent income, say $30k to $50k per year. But, in all reality, that’s about his income ceiling doing everything himself. Running manufacturing while also trying to stay low key to prevent running afoul of either law enforcement or larger operations limits him tremendously.

Compare this to a local drug lord. I’m talking big time, head honcho. This guy has foot soldiers throughout the city, hitting up every club, every night. Dealers on street corners, in places where customers KNOW they can come get product. Not only that, but he has multiple product lines: Cocaine, heroin, meth, pot, you name it. Not only that, but he doesn’t rely on single sources of manufacturing. Mr. Kingpin has a network of growers he buys weed from, runs several meth houses, imports cocaine from LA *and* Miami. This guy isn’t running a mom and pop drug shop — this guy is Fortune 500. See the difference?

Mr. Kingpin is in a position to deal with rival gangs. He’s in a position to demand higher product quality from his suppliers. He’s well insulated from law enforcement, because he’s not actually out dealing. His lieutenants and foot soldiers are empowered to make things right for a customer, up to a certain amount of product. These employees are also empowered to improve collections by whatever means neccessary, much to the misfortune of the customer that owes too much money.

Yes, it’s a pretty extreme example, but think about how you can ethically and legally apply the same principles to your own business. You don’t need to be a ruthless murderer selling crack to fourth graders to understand the basic principles of business that are carried to an extreme by our drug cartels and organized crime families. Business is business, regardless of your product or service.

Do you need help with your business systems, operational efficiency, marketing, or tax issues? If so, then give me a call. My direct number is (970) 930-1040 and I’d be more than happy to discuss any operational or strategic challenges you are facing in your business.

To your success,

Jassen Bowman, EA

Since a significant part of my lifestyle design objective is to continue to do the jobs that I do now, but do them from anywhere, I required a rather robust set of solutions in order to pull off the virtual office. My desire was to be able to perform sales, marketing, and all client functions without much interaction with the “home office. In other words, I did not want to burden a member of our office staff with having to open my mail, sort it, scan it, and email it to me. Also, it was important that my clients experience an invisible transition not only to the virtual office, but also that they don’t even notice when I bounce from place to place geographically.

The solution I have set up is by no means ideal. In fact, I sense there is a business opportunity for a company to offer the majority of these services from one place, rather than having to utilize multiple different services to achieve the end result. Also, it should be noted that the nature of my business REQUIRES that I have access to fax and mail — yours may not have such a requirement.

CRM System

Most businesses require some sort of CRM system to organize their client information, perform sales functions, etc. Since no solution existed for my particular industry that would suit the needs of both the sales department and the tax resolution departments of our company, I programmed my own, with generous assistance from James Orr. This system, TaxCRM, not only replaced ACT! and Timeslips within the company, but also offers massive functionality and reporting custom to our industry. Designing my own system also allows me to add features at will, and integrate it with whatever other services I choose to use.

The Google Factor

Google offers a large suite of services to small businesses that I make judicious use of. Our entire company is on Gmail, allowing rapid communication via Google Talk, and a powerful web-based email service in Gmail. Google Calendar allows us to share calendars amongst staff, and will soon be integrated with TaxCRM.

In addition to these services for the entire company, I also utilize Google Voice as my sole incoming phone number. I set GVoice to ring both my cell and desk phones simultaneously, and is the only number I give out. I don’t even know what my new AT&T mobile number is, to be honest. I do all my SMS text messaging via GVoice, and all my voicemails appear there, and also in my Gmail inbox. As you will see, my GMail inbox is my central inbound communication “portal”.

Fax

The vast majority of my clients still utilize fax communications. Many don’t even have email. In addition, the IRS communicates heavily via fax, and zero through email. Because of this, I needed my own email-to-fax service. I settled on using RingCentral, and pay $10/month for incoming and outgoing fax service. The service has been reliable and easy to use so far, no complaints from me. All my incoming faxes come in as a PDF to my GMail inbox, and I can send outgoing faxes (with attachments!) by sending a simple email.

Postal Mail

The IRS sends all it’s notices via mail, and so it is imperative that I receive these. It took significant research to find this company, but Virtual Post Mail has a slick system. I have a mailing address in the Los Angeles area at which I receive all my IRS mail (and whomever I give this specific address to). They scan the envelope, and I view the image online. If it’s something I want opened, such as from the IRS for a client, I tell them to open the mail and scan the inside pages, and can then retrieve that a few hours later as a PDF. This service runs me $20 to $30 per month, depending on usage. Postal mail to email services are few and far between, with Earth Class Mail being the most popular, but also the most expensive. I have had no problems so far with Virtual Post Mail, after two months of usage.

Sending postal mail is also something I have to do occasionally. For this, I found a company called Postful that does this. Companies that offer outbound mailing services are numerous, and Postful does not have the lowest rates, by any means. However, they offer several features that make them awesome:

• An API so I can send mail directly from TaxCRM
• The ability to send one-off color postcards from uploaded images
• An email-to-postal-mail feature that allows me to send a letter on company letterhead directly from Gmail

This combination of features is what made me settle on Postful. The cost for sending a postcard is 55 cents, letters start at $1. This is a pay-as-you-go service, so I just put money on account to have credits when I need them. It’s a service I won’t use much, but it is an incredible convenience for sending letters from the road. I will continue to use Click2Mail for sending direct mail campaigns, due to cost, but Postful is great for what I need for client services in particular.

Mobile Communication

Getting some sort of smart phone is something I knew I would need. My search basically came down to getting a Droid (I was with T-Mobile already) or an iPhone. Their were pros and cons to both units, and I ended up getting the iPhone for a variety of reasons. The iPhone 4 came out literally a month after I bought my iPhone 3, so I felt like a stooge for not waiting, but whatever — it works for what I need. Several apps make life easier for mobile productivity. For example, the WordPress app allows me to to post to this blog from anywhere. Twitter, Facebook, and Hootsuite apps make social media marketing possible from the road. The Google App allows me to use all my Google services, and iPhone Mail syncs live with Gmail. The Kindle app lets me keep my library anywhere, anytime, and an awesome app called JotNot allows me to use the iPhone camera as a document scanner, which is important for my work. Other apps are allowing me to brush up on my Japanese, use online banking, and even interact with TaxCRM remotely. All in all, I can’t complain too much about the iPhone.

Skype

Skype was something I hadn’t played with at all until a couple weekends ago. My original plan for being able to make outbound calls was to literally take my desktop VOIP phone with me wherever I went. However, I have to admit to liking Skype, and have plans for making further use of it. There is even a Skype app for iPhone, which has interesting consequences.

So there’s the current run down. I funnel ALL incoming communications — email, text messages, voicemail messages, faxes, and even snail mail — into my GMail inbox. By subscribing to and using all these services, my life is greatly simplified in many ways, and I can work more efficiently in general, even when I’m in the office. But of even greater benefit is the fact that I’m in no way, shape, or form tethered to the office. I’m not the only one, either. We actually have several full time staff members that work full time from home. None of them need fax or snail mail like I do, but the other pieces of this system allow them to work remotely.

If working remotely is part of your lifestyle design, then look into some of these tools for yourself.

Sincerely,

Jassen Bowman, EA

P.S. Don’t forget, if you need tax help, I’m just a phone call away. You can reach me directly (at my Google Voice number, of course), by calling (970) 930-1040. Initial consultations are always free.

1. Are they recommended by a trusted colleague?

One way to start the search for an accountant is to ask people that you already trust for suggestions. Your banker, insurance agent, attorney, and financial planner most likely know and work with accountants on a regular basis. Also inquire to the companies that you do business with, such as you barber, florist, butcher, and plumber. Chances are, these sorts of business owners use an accountant for some business functions, since these tend to be the types of business owners that are excellent at what they do, but not so great with dealing with the complexities of taxes and accounting.

2. Ask around your Chamber of Commerce.

If you are familiar with your local Chamber, they can be an excellent resource. You can ask at Chamber events for referrals to accountants, and you are likely to meet many such service providers at Chamber functions, trade events, and leads groups. Also, many Chambers have an internal complaint system and can let you know whether or not complaints have been issued locally against an accountant or firm.

3. Do they have any complaints with the Better Business Bureau?

When many individuals decide to take action and make a complaint against a firm, they often think first of the BBB. Check with your local division, or look them up online, and make sure that the company you are considering hiring has a good record with the BBB. If they have a Gold Star award from the BBB, then you’re on the right track to working with a company that is reputable and stands by their word. The BBB’s new letter grading system can also help you in selecting a good firm.

4. Have they ever been investigated by your state Attorney General’s office or state board of accountancy?

This is another place to do your own due diligence. Complaints with the state AG or Board of Accountancy is an automatic red flag and should be highly considered before selecting a firm.

5. What services do they provide, and what services do you NEED?

Think about exactly what you’re looking for in a service provider. Do you need full service accounting, outsourcing all functions to another person or firm? Or do you just need year-end tax preparation? Knowing the answer to what services you need will help you pick the best person to do what you need, and will affect your budget for getting it done. For example, if you just need tax preparation, then you might be better off with an experienced tax preparer instead of a CPA firm that mostly does auditing and general accounting. If you only need payroll services, then you might want to hire a payroll company rather than a bookkeeper that does payroll on the side. If you need the books updated weekly or monthly, most communities have competent, independent full charge bookkeepers that you can hire.

If you’re looking for somebody to come set up your books and show you how to use your accounting software, you may want to consider a general CPA or a competent bookkeeper. If you do all your own books using Peachtree, Quickbooks, MS Money, or another popular commercial software package, it can be very helpful to have somebody to call should something go wrong. The large commercial accounting software publishers all provide some sort of certified expert rating system for individuals that are experts on using their software. You may want to look for and consult with such a certified expert on your particular accounting software. For example, Intuit offers its Quickbooks Certified ProAdvisor program to consultants. Finding one of these certified individuals can really help you a lot if you’re doing the books yourself.

If your only interest is in tax compliance, look for a CPA that specializes in taxation, or an Enrolled Agent (EA). An EA is an individual licensed directly by the U.S. Treasury to handle tax matters, and this individual can represent you before the IRS just like a CPA or an attorney. By nature of the credential, EAs are dedicated tax professionals and are generally more competent in areas of tax issues than a general CPA, unlicensed tax preparer, or bookkeeper.

Selecting the type of professional you need is a serious consideration in this process, and depends largely on what you plan on doing yourself, and what you expect to need help with.

6. Are they licensed in some way?

Credentials are not always the most important thing to consider, but they do reflect at least a minimum level of professional competency, in theory. If they are a CPA, they’ve passed a rigorous four part examination and have at least a bachelor’s degree in accounting and two years of professional experience, at a minimum. If they are an Enrolled Agent, they have passed a very rigorous three part exam covering individuals, businesses, and practices and ethics that is administered directly by the Internal Revenue Service.

The individual preparing your tax returns, doing your books, or processing your payroll doesn’t necessarily need credentials in order to do the tax and do it right, so experience is a critical piece of the puzzle you’ll want to inquire about.

Do keep in mind that if you’re audited by the IRS, only CPAs, EAs, or attorneys can represent you, unless you wish to represent yourself, which is not recommended.

7. How much experience do they have?

How many years have they been doing what they do? What type of companies do they generally work with, such as which industries and what size companies? Inquire as to how many of each of your type of entity they work with each year. If they’re experienced working with your type of legal entity, within your industry, or your size of company, they might be a good fit.

8. How do they charge, and how much?

Don’t be afraid to ask about the money. Some firms will charge by the hour, or on a piece rate for the type of work being done. Bookkeepers will usually charge an hourly rate, while tax preparers often charge a flat rate per form and schedule. If your tax return is pretty complex, expect to pay more, which could be a base rate plus an hourly rate for doing accounting work to generate the numbers needed for various line items on the return. If you’ll be seeking software assistance, find out what they will charge for this, usually at an hourly rate. It can’t hurt to know whether you’ll be over your head in terms of what you can reasonably afford for the services you are seeking.

A word of caution: Price should not be the ultimate determining factor when decided who to use and what services to do yourself. If you’re genuinely over your head when it comes to certain tasks, don’t be afraid to spend the money. There’s an old saying that goes like this, “Do what you do best, hire out the rest.” Accounting can be one of the most frustrating aspects of owning a business, and trying to do it all yourself can take time away from what you should be doing, which is running your business to the best of your ability to generate a profit.

9. Are you comfortable with the individual?

Even if you hire a large firm to do your accounting, there is still going to be an individual person that will be doing the work and with whom you will work with almost exclusively. You need to sit down with this person and make sure that you are comfortable working with them. If anything makes you uncomfortable in any way, you need to find somebody else. Think about it: This person is going to have access to an incredible amount of private financial information, so it has to be somebody you feel comfortable trusting.

10. Don’t be afraid to make a change.

Even after selecting somebody to work with, don’t be afraid to find somebody else if things aren’t working out. Your accounting is too important to the success of your business to leave it in the hands of an incompetent person or somebody you don’t completely trust. Problems with your current accountant could range from having just plain bad interpersonal chemistry to gross incompetence on their part, or perhaps you have the wrong specialist to meet your needs. Regardless, don’t hesitate to take your business elsewhere, since your accounting, bookkeeping, and taxes are simply that important to the life of your business.

Using the ten steps outlined in this article will give you a great start towards finding the accountant that is right for you. Identify the type of professional that can best provide the services you need, ask around for referrals, then check them out and interview them personally. This process will ensure that you get the best accountant for your business needs.

Until next time,

Jassen Bowman

I was incredibly lucky to obtain a copy of the book via another RPT back in the day when I needed it. It’s been sitting on my shelf for several years now, but I’m trying to clean out material possessions. A search of the Internet revealed that nobody had yet taken apart their copy, scanned it, and made it available online, at least that I could find.

The very meaty middle of the Rad Health Handbook consists of the periodic table, chart of the nuclides, and table of isotopes as it existed in January 1970. These three pieces are both copyrighted (the government was given special permission by the copyright holders to reprint at the time) and are INCREDIBLY out of date. Otherwise, everything else in the book appears to be public domain, as it was published by the US Government at taxpayer expense. Therefore, I have removed those three particular sections and created the best quality scan that I could — this is the result of 6 attempts.

For an updated version of the Chart of the Nuclides, which every RCT should own anyway, the current version is always published by whomever is running the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (operated by the Navy’s Naval Reactors Program). The current contractor is Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corporation. To order a copy, NuclidesChart.com, or call 865-220-2327. Get the book, it’s more convenient than the wall chart for day to day use. I have the last Lockheed version, the 16th edition, from 2002, and it’s about 90 pages, so pretty compact.

Even with the nuclide chart and other stuff omitted, the PDF is 15 MB and almost 300 pages. Also bear in mind that while this is a great reference piece, you should obviously rely on your Navy, DOE, or utility guidance first and foremost when it comes to procedures for radiation protection.

Click here to download the Radiological Health Handbook.

Tonight, for dinner, I chose to dip into something different. OK, it’s something I dip into a lot, but never by myself. I’ve been craving Melting Pot for a long time, so I threw social norms to the wind and just went by myself.

They stuck in a fairly “intimate” corner of the second floor, at a table for two. It was a bit awkward, but I was hungry. Nearby, there was a couple that was obviously on what I can only hope was a first (and last) date. I’ll refer to this guy frequently as Douche #1. Halfway through my dinner, a second couple showed up and was seated at the table behind them, but facing towards me. I’ll refer to this guy as Douche #2.

Based on my observations of these two douches tonight, and adding past douchey dating observations, I hereby present my Ten Step Guide to Douchey Dating For Men. Doing everything listed here is all but guaranteed to ensure your success with very special women.

1. Never let the woman speak. Ever. Women have no original thoughts to add to a conversation, and they are genuinely interested in every stupid thing you make up in an effort to get in their pants.

2. Speaking of making stuff up, be sure to add as much embelishment to every truth, half-truth, or no-truth story you tell. Be sure to add in as many outrageous tales of events in foreign countries as you can, and be sure to express how much of an expert you are on every subject imaginable.

3. If the woman rudely interrupts you, say, while you take a long pull on your 12th drink of the evening, be sure to slam your glass down and interrupt her back by CALLING HER OUT on her interrupting you.

4. Women don’t know what they like, and need you to think for them. Do not allow her to look at a menu, and be sure to ask your server extremely intelligent sounding questions to make it sound as if you actually know something about the style of cuisine in question.

5. If your date is not paying attention to you, but rather something else (such as reading the book she carried in her purse and pulled out while you went to the loo), then be sure to bring her attention back to yourself by physically strong arming the offending object from her grasp.

6. If your date starts to gripe about anything, remind her of her place, and tell her that she is the one that is lucky enough to be out with you, since you could apparently be hunting ibex in the far south coastal area of Italy this weekend instead of being with her

7. Be sure to mention your ex as often as possible. Women are incredibly turned on by hearing about your exploits with prior girlfriends.

8. A first date is an excellent opportunity to discuss your personal prejudices against various ethnicities, and to explain your viewpoint about why these other ethnicities are holding back white students in our public schools.

9. Tell dirty jokes. Several of them. Every girl will want to go home with you if you tell her the one about the donkey, the midget, and the Catholic priest. Absolutely, positively nothing can go wrong from telling that joke — it is a surefire winner, every time!

10. If you really want to impress the girl, pull the “I forgot my wallet” bit and make her pick up the check. This will firmly establish your dominance as a real man and ensure a second date.

So there you have it. Follow these 10 simple steps and you’ll be amazed at all the woman just throwing themselves at you!

And yes, everything here is based on actual observations in the past couple years.

[Factual note: Ibex are native to mountainous regions, such as Northern Italy, not coastal lowlands.]

The necessity and urgency in attending college is one of the greatest frauds perpetuated upon our youth over the course of the past 30 or 40 years. Your parents, teachers, “guidance” counselors, and every other adult authority figure in your life has, more likely than not, been feeding you the same line of B.S. your entire life: “In order to achieve anything or become anybody, you HAVE to go to college straight out of high school.”

This was originally just going to be a Facebook status message, but it’s too important of a subject to cram into 420 characters. Teachers, professors, academics of any sort, are all going to hate me for the message I’m writing to you, but I don’t care, because YOU need to hear this.

If you are one of the millions of 17 or 18 year olds that recently graduated high school, you can probably recite countless reasons why you SHOULD go to college. Yes, individuals with a Bachelor’s degree earn, on average, double the income over the course of their 40 year working life than people with just a high school diploma. Blah blah blah. Money ain’t everything. In fact, it’s the least important thing. But, if your goal is to become a millionaire, getting a degree so you can work for somebody else is the absolute WRONG thing to do — over 2/3 of American self-made millionaires did it by being self-employed, NOT working for somebody else.

There is one, and only one, group of high school graduates that should jump straight into college, and that group has to meet two critieria. One, you need to be absolutely, 100% positive that what you are going to study in college is truly what you want to do with the rest of your life, and you have no other interests, ambitions, or motivations. Second, that career has to REQUIRE a college degree in order to work in the field due ONLY to state or Federal licensing requirements or because of extremely specialized knowledge. The career fields that meet this second criteria are far fewer than you think. If you want to be a physician, attorney, engineer, or nuclear research physicist, then yes, you have to go to college. If you want to simply work in the general field of healthcare, want to work in the broad arena of the legal field, want to get your hands dirty on new aerospace vehicles, or want to work in a nuclear power plant, then NO, you don’t need a college degree. Period. End of story. Anybody telling you something different is either an idiot or a liar. Will it help you get a job interview? Yes. Needed? No.

So with that said, let’s talk about the 99% of you that honestly don’t have a freaking clue what you want to do with your lives. You might think you know what you want to be doing 5 or 10 years from now, but I’d put money on it that in the next few years that will change, or you’ll come to the realization that you have no idea what you want. That, dear readers, is the real world.

But see, there’s an interesting thing about the real world: There’s more than one. You, as an individual, have the ability to create your own reality. You can change your circumstances, your surroundings, your situation. And it’s really not that hard. There’s nothing that says you have to become the same things your parents were, or live the same lifestyle, or get dragged down into the same 9-5 drudgery.

You’re 18, heading off into the world. What do you want that world to look like? What do you want to experience in that world? What is it you want out of life? Especially considering the fact that you just spent twelve straight years already in school…Is that really what you want to keep doing, without even a break?

In most European countries, it is expected that young adults will take a break from studies for at least a year before going to university. They call it a “gap year”, and the idea is that they get out and see the world, broaden their experience base, and discover new interests and talents. This experience, in all reality, makes them into better adults in the long run, and helps them to see alternative viewpoints. It also helps guide them towards making a more informed career decision. Somebody that left London wanting to be civil litigation attorney and make big bucks may discover that his or her intelligence is best served coming back in 8 years to some small village in Thailand that is desperately in need of a local doctor. Or that person without much interest in formal education but with great mechanical aptitude may come back wanting to go to college to become an engineer to develop better water purification technologies for deployment to lands without much fresh water. The point is that many things can happen.

Let me tell you the story of two girls I know from figure skating. Chances are at least one of them is going to read this, and I hope they both do. They’re both great kids, smart, well liked, etc. Really, the kind of people that could most likely succeed in anything they chose to do.

First, let’s meet Amber (hi Ambers!!!). Amber is getting ready to head off to university in Arizona in about two weeks or so. She’s going to be studying Elementary Education, with a minor in Japanese. Why Japanese? Because she studied it all through high school and is fascinated by the people and the culture. Amber actually really would like to go spend some time in Japan, and keeps saying she’ll do it AFTER college? I don’t know the percentage of people that actually do something like that after college when they say they want to, but I’m willing to bet it’s incredibly low, given the pressure to find a job and make money after graduation to pay off all those student loans.

I’m getting ready to go to Japan myself for a few months, and she’s joked about wanting to come. I don’t think she’s joking — I think she really wants to go. Why isn’t she? I really don’t know. Parental pressure? The fact that her boyfriend is going to school in Arizona, also? She has an awesome boyfriend, and they’ve been together for over a year and a half — their relationship isn’t going to evaporate if she delays entry by even one semester to go to Japan. So why doesn’t she take a break and just GO? I know it’s not financial. I really wish I could understand it, because my fear is that if she doesn’t go now, she never will — it’s just sort of what happens when life gets going on around you.

Next, let’s talk about Stephanie. I don’t know Steph as well as I do Amber, but I know this much. Earlier in the summer, she was debating what to do after high school. She had been accepted to an in-state university that she was interested in going to, but when I talked to her about it, she wasn’t too excited about it. And, unlike a lot of figure skaters that burn out on skating and don’t really want to keep doing it after high school, she actually still has a passion for the sport. She’s senior tested, was a pretty good competitive skater, but everybody will acknowledge that her real self comes out not when she’s competing, but when she’s performing, and she knew that, too. She toyed with the idea of going off and doing ice shows, and she recently submitted her video audition to a company that does an ice show tour across Europe. Suddenly, college became her backup plan instead of her primary plan, and I think that’s AWESOME. Sure as hell beats sitting in a lecture hall, ugh.

So, is there something you’d rather do than go to college? I’m willing to bet that there is. DO IT! For crying out loud, DO IT! It doesn’t even matter what it is, just go do it.

Were you a successful team sport athlete in high school, but didn’t get recruited by a school? SO WHAT!! Did you know that NFL and NBA free agent rookie tryouts are going on right now? Did you know that Pony League and A level minor league baseball teams will pretty much let a player show up and try out just about any time of the year except during their playoffs? Did you know that minor league hockey teams will hire players off the street? Pick a team and show up dressed down for a tryout. GO!

Is your passion up in the clouds??? Did you know that it’s just as easy to get a student loan to cover the $95,000 to attend ATP or another big commercial flight school as it is to get the $10,000 student loan to cover your freshman year at college? Go FLY!

Are you passionate about art, writing, or some other creative talent? Don’t go to art school, don’t get a fine arts degree, don’t get an English degree. Just paint, or write, or whatever you. The degree doesn’t make you a writer — writing makes you a writer! I’ve written several books and recorded over 200 CDs, and I have no professional training in either arena, and I’ve made a living off selling what I wrote and recorded. You don’t need an MFA to get your paintings into a gallery — YOU get them into the gallery, by showing up and coming to terms with the gallery owner on a deal to get your work displayed and sold. Writer? You can self-publish a book and get it listed (and copies sold!) on Amazon for about $10.

Are you clueless about what you want to do, but just want to get AWAY, travel, see the world? Then do it! You would not believe the places you can go, and get a working holiday visa to allow you to do a little work to make money along the way, as long as you are between the ages of 18 and 30. This, this right here, is what I *want* to be doing right now, but I can’t….because I’m 32. And while I think that totally blows, it is what it is. But you…you’re 18! Take your savings and blow it on a one way ticket to some country you want to explore that will let an 18 year old get a working holiday visa.

Hey Amber…Japan is one of those countries, and there is a Japanese Consulate office in Denver. The visa application fee for you is FREE.

Do you want to be of service to your fellow human beings? Volunteer with your church humanitarian program or missionary program, join AmeriCorps, Peace Corps. Volunteer in southeast Asia — their are non-profit organizations up the wazoo that need your help, and some will even pay your airfare.

Are you environmentally oriented? Go to South America, Hawaii, really anywhere, and help protect wetlands, save species. Heck, you don’t have to leave your own area. Here in Colorado, there are numerous organizations you can spend months or years working with to help protect mountain tundra, maintain trails so people don’t destroy other areas, do climate research, study really cool animals, and more.

Kind of a hippie sort of person? Hook up with the Rainbow Gathering, find a commune somewhere, or go to Australia and live on an organic farm for free in exchange for labor and learn how to live off the land with some really cool people in a great cultural environment.

On the other end of the spectrum, are you super patriotic? Well, march your ass down to the recruiting office and there’s somebody that would be very, very excited to talk to you about career opportunities. The U.S. Navy owned me for 6 years, and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. You go interesting places, meet interesting people, experience things you never otherwise would. At the age of 18 or 19, you get placed fully in charge of multi-million (or even multi-billion) dollar pieces of advanced technology that most people never even get to see. You get the satisfaction of knowing you did something that other people won’t do, which is defend our Constitution and our way of life, and in some cases defend others from tyranny and oppression that they could not defend themselves against. If you want to be in healthcare, you can do that. You can help save lives in a variety of ways.

Of course, there’s the other aspect of the military, too. Are you looking for the most rigorous physical and mental challenge you can find in the world? Are you psychotic and just want to kill people? Are you a pyro and just wanna blow stuff up? Do you derive satisfaction from hitting a target half a mile away? Well trust me, there’s a job just for you in somewhere in the military. If you’re tough enough, try out for BUD/S (Navy SEAL training). Become a Marine or Army sniper. Wanna go Mach 3? The Air Force or Navy might have something you’re interested in.

Is business your passion? Then just go start your business, whatever it is. You do NOT need a business degree to be a business owner. You can learn everything you need to know about the legal and tax crap of running a business from any number of good, comprehensive books out there. Heck, “Running a Small Business For Dummies” is really all you need. Don’t wait for permission from society to become a business success: Just go do it yourself.

Basically, I think you get the point. You’re young — get out and do something interesting. Do something you want to do. Don’t just sit in a room full of other drones getting fed the lines of crap that academia wants to feed you. Our society as a whole is structured to create automatons that become slaves to their jobs, because they need the job to buy the crap that society says you need to buy, and college is usually what gets you that job.

Don’t become just another robot. Make your own path in life, and you’ll find what truly makes you happy. If that involves college at some point, then fine. But if not, that’s perfectly fine, too. You can be a productive member of society without ever stepping foot in a classroom.

I don’t expect my little rant here to change the minds of very many of you heading off to college. But if I can somehow encourage even one person that was on the fence about their life and help them to become a better, happier person by doing what they want to do, then I’ve accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

Sincerely,

Jassen Bowman

P.S. In case you were wondering, yes, I have a Bachelor’s degree (in nuclear engineering technology). It took me 8 years to finish, and by the time I finished it, I had already left the profession that my degree would have “allowed” me to work in. I have also gone literally half-way through two different Master’s programs (radiochemistry and space science), without finishing either one, and am about to return to school to obtain a graduate certificate in sports management. By profession, I am currently an IRS licensed Enrolled Agent, and negotiate tax debt resolutions with the IRS on behalf of small business clients, and I make a pretty good living doing it. See how none of these things have anything to do with each other? It’s quite intentional, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I have long separated my world of “dreams” from that of “goals”. For me, “goals” have always been specifically related to business, as they need to be measurable in order to be achievable. On the flip side, I’ve long looked at “dreams” as something very hard to measure. I, like a lot of people I’ll bet, view dreams as almost unattainable.

Let’s take a quick look at very related, yet very different, versions of a goal and a dream. Somebody may set the goal of writing a novel, and another person may have a dream of making their living as a professional novelist. These are two vastly different things we’re talking about here. Anybody can write a novel. Yes, even you. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world do it every November, as part of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project. Write 1,667 words per day for the entire month of November, and bam…you have a 50,000 word piece, the minimum length considered adequate to be called a novel. Quality? Who cares! Just write! That’s the theme of NaNoWriMo. And it’s really not that hard. I’ve participated three times – finished my first year, almost finished the second year, and got way sidetracked last year.

The dream of being a professional novelist, on the other hand, requires a LOT more work, diligence, effort, and planning. 99.9% of NaNoWriMo novels produced straight up suck, and everybody knows it. A novel for mass publication can’t suck…Quality matters. On top of that, there is the whole matter of getting it published, marketing it, getting good reviews, etc. Then, once you’ve done this, you have to do it again. And then again, then again. That’s what is involved with becoming a professional novelist. I couldn’t find accurate statistics online for purposes of this article, but I’m willing to bet that the odds of making a living as a novelist are worse than making a living as a professional athlete.

Does that mean that dreams can’t be reached? Absolutely not. But how can this be? Because people achieve their dreams every single day! We are awash with stories on a daily basis of individuals that strived for only one thing their entire lives, and achieved it. To be completely honest, such stories are commonplace. Some people do it early in life and make it look easy, some do it after decades of struggle.

There’s a girl I figure skate with that illustrates this quite well. She recently told me that being a model is her dream in life. I think she’s 15 or 16 years old, and she’s already had some modeling work, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she already has an agency or manager. I also wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see her in some national marketing campaign for an apparel line or a clothing store sometime in the next few years. Although her life’s work so far, as it may be, has more to do with figure skating than anything else (she’s pretty good at that, too), her dream, her drive, and her path has to do with modeling.

Contrast that with a contestant on “America’s Next Top Model”. That show is an occasional guilty pleasure. I love the little challenges they make the girls go through, even though most of them are kind of dumb. Most of the girls on the show are dreamers. Most of them are on very different paths in life other than modeling. Keep in mind that the ones you see on the show are the ones that made it through — there are thousands of other dreamers that didn’t make the cut.

I do recall ONE girl a few years ago on the show that was a career-minded professional, mid-20′s I think, that had no interest in modeling, and her friends dragged her to the tryout for the show, and she ended up either winning or runner-up, I can’t remember exactly. THAT is a different scenario altogether, like a bonus in life, and I remember some of the other girls being pissed off because she won and it wasn’t her dream.

A note on ascending a ladder versus creating your own. The contestants on that and similar reality shows are climbing a ladder created by a specific group of people. Every dreamer that tries out for that show and fails goes home still dreaming. Skater girl, on the other hand, is a dreamer with an important addition: Action. She has her professional shots, she has her portfolio, she makes the contacts she needs to make, and whatever else goes on in that world (I really have no idea what’s involved). But, the difference is, she’s doing something about achieving her dream, not just dreaming about her dream.

When I was a kid, I had a few different things that I thought were my dreams. The most predominant was that I wanted to be an astronaut, and I didn’t grow out of that as I went through high school. I joined the Navy, eventually entered an officer program, passed the written aviation screening exam, and was all ready to make the transition from Navy nuke to Navy aviator, and that’s pretty much as far as it went. Back to the enlisted ranks I went, and it wasn’t until a few years later, as I was getting out of the Navy, that I came back around to it and started taking private flight lessons and bought an airplane. That airplane did a lot more sitting than flying during the couple years I owned it. I have made starts and stops in the aviation world ever since, even to this day as I occasionally pick up the book to study for a glider rating.

So, did I really want to be an astronaut? Did I really want to be a marine biologist? Did I want to be a career military officer? It is an extremely long story about how I came to the realization of what my real dream is, but there are two points on it I want to get out:

1. Defining your true dream in life is a process, not an event.
2. Even once you think you have it defined, your dreams in life can change, just like everything else.

It turns out for myself that my dream has absolutely nothing to do with being anything or achieving anything. It turns out that my dream in life has more to do with being part of something tangible, and in doing a bunch of cool things I just sort of feel like doing. More than anything, my dream is a lifestyle, one that is filled with near constant change in my surroundings and experiences. I don’t really want to be an astronaut — I just want to work in space for a few months. Even if I never achieve that, I’d probably be just as happy paying the $250k for a ride on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital tourist shots.

Sometimes I get depressed and feel like I haven’t achieved anything in my life. But when I really examine it, I’ve done a LOT of cool stuff in my life that most people only dream about (there’s that word again!). I’ve jumped out of perfectly good airplanes (10 times), lost 40 pounds (and still going!), been a race car driver (SCCA Solo II in a 1988 Pontiac Fiero GT), done all the ice sports (curling, hockey, speed skating, figure skating) just to be able to say I did, climbed 14ers, served my country, been a competitive shooter, hit a 1500 yard shot, dated a model, been a competitive swing dancer, driven a HMMWV (a real one), been through a hurricane, been on the open ocean, worked on nuclear power plants, been to graduate school, trained at the Olympic Training Center, rubbed elbows with Olympians, and a boat load more. I change hobbies often, and even with my current 2 year dedication to figure skating, my interests have gone from singles freestyle to ice dance to synchronized (team) skating, and I will not stop until I have competed internationally as an ice dancer (there is an annual adult-only event in Germany that serves as a de facto “adult worlds” of sorts).

From this, it should be obvious that my dream in life is to accumulate experiences, including bad ones (like being in a drive-by shooting, crashing a motorcycle, and a few I can’t mention here). I like being able to walk away and say, “Whoo! That was AWESOME!” Actually, I guess that’s my dream in life: Accumulating a lifetime of awesome moments.

What about you? What is your dream? Can you define it in one sentence? Have you mapped out an action plan for achieving your dream?

Whether your dream is to retire as young as possible and travel the USA in an RV, or analyze soil samples on the surface of Mars, there *is* a path for achieving your dream. But nobody is going to get you there except you, and nobody is going to give you a roadmap. Particularly in this culture in which we live, in which mediocrity is accepted as the norm, the achievers that can step up and run (or even plod) towards their dreams are fairly likely to achieve them, given enough motivation and action.

So, find your dream, then get off your ass and do it!

Until next time,

Jassen Bowman

Do you owe the state any sort of back taxes, other than unemployment taxes?

Then the state has an offer for you! Florida is joining an ever growing list of states that have recently offered tax amnesty programs. More and more state legislatures are trying to increase delinquent tax collections to fill the state coffers in these hard economic times by offering “deals” to everybody on their tax debts.

Here’s how Florida’s program will work. The state will waive ALL penalties on your tax liability that was assessed prior to July 1 of this year. In addition, the state will waive 1/4 of the interest charges. If you have not made the state aware of a tax liability that you know is there, they will waive 1/2 the pro-rated interest charges.

In order to participate, you have to be free of criminal prosecution and/or investigation for violation of state tax laws, and you can’t already be on a payment plan. The program ends on September 30th, so if you think you qualify, apply ASAP.

For more information, visit the Florida Tax Amnesty Program web site.

This is NOT an uncommon situation these days. Regular, working class folks that owe a few thousand this year that they can’t pay, and the same thing the next year, etc. Do this for 3 or 4 years, and suddenly you owe the IRS $10k, $15k, $20k…with penalties and interest growing it daily. So, what to do?

First and foremost, I have a rule. It kind of stems from my rule regarding work from home opportunities (“Never pay a fee to get a job”), and it goes like this: Don’t get screwed by a tax resolution firm promising you the world when you can easily fix the problem yourself.

Yes, the IRS carries a big stick. But they’re not going to hit you upside the head with it if you take care of the situation.

First of all, if you believe you’ve made mistakes on your tax returns that caused the liability, then you should have the tax returns amended. You have three years from the date a return was filed in order to correct it, so if you’re in that time window and you think you would owe less if they were fixed, start there.

Second, if your tax liability is under $25,000 and it’s personal income tax, then there is a special program available called a Streamline Installment Agreement that you should look at. Under this program, the IRS will let you enter up to a 5 year payment plan (or less, if you can shoulder the monthly payment), in order to pay this off. Warning: Penalties and interest still accrue while you’re on a payment plan!

If the tax debt is getting old, say older than 6 years, then another option might be to get you into a non-collectible status and just ride it out until the statute of limitations expires (which is 10 years). For this, you have to be able to demonstrate that, in a nutshell, you are flat broke and scrape by paycheck-to-paycheck. If you suddenly win the lottery, the IRS will see that and come knocking on your door again, of course.

The final option to consider, if you *are* broke and really just want the monkey off your back, is an Offer in Compromise. Despite the commercials you may see on TV, the Offer program is not a straight up “pennies on the dollar” deal, but you must rather demonstrate financial necessity. If you’re single with no kids, have a car payment, and don’t own anything of value (art, a house, coins, gold, guns, stocks, bonds, retirement accounts, classic cars, an island, etc.), and you make less than about $3000 to $4000 per month (it depends on what part of the country you live in), then you might be a candidate for making an Offer in Compromise of some nominal amount (it has to be at least $1). This route requires extensive personal financial disclosure and takes about 6 months from start to finish, most of which is simply waiting on the IRS to process the application. If you have kids or a spouse, the amount you can make and still qualify goes up. If you don’t have a car payment, the amount you can make and still qualify goes down.

Elsewhere on this blog, I cover the OIC program and Streamline Installment Agreements in further detail. Also look for the Guaranteed Installment Agreement post if you owe less than $10,000 — those are easy as pie and can be done over the phone using an automated voice response system.

If you qualify for a Guaranteed or Streamline Installment Agreement, you can easily do it yourself over the phone. Getting into Status 53 (Currently Not Collectible) is almost as easy, and takes less than an hour on the phone with the IRS. An Offer in Compromise is obviously a bit more complicated, and while plenty of people do these themselves, many choose to hire representation to help them out on this (but you still need to be weary of getting screwed on fees and doing business with a reputable firm).

If you have any questions about your individual situation, I welcome your phone call. All initial consultations are absolutely free of charge. My direct number is (970) 930-1040, or toll-free at 866-627-7654.

Make it a great day!

~Jassen Bowman

As such, I think it’s important for people to understand some basic science and engineering principles behind nuclear power, as knowledge is the most powerful thing in the world. It’s been a long time since I’ve written much about nuclear power, but the time has definitely come to revisit the topic.

Let’s start with the most basic question: Big picture, how does a nuclear power plant generate electricity?

The tongue-in-cheek answer that is thrown around by people in the industry is this: “Hot rock make steam make turbine go roundy-roundy.”

Let’s break that down into a little bit more detail.

You’re probably aware that friction between two things creates heat, like when your brakes get hot because two surfaces are rubbing together. For the brakes on your car, there is an energy conversion process going on. The energy of the motion of your car (kinetic energy) is being turned into heat energy via friction. So, your car stops, but your brakes get hot (and wear away part of your brake pads every time you stop).

Something similar happens inside a nuclear reactor. Every atom in a reactor core that fissions breaks up into chunks, and each of these chunks is sent flying for a very short distance by the little fission blast. These chunks are slowed down by interaction with other matter in the reactor, and that interaction converts the motion energy of the chunk into heat. Since there are a LOT of these tiny interactions going on, it creates a lot of heat overall. Therefore, we have our hot rock.

What happens when you throw water onto a hot rock, like in a sauna? Most of it flashes to steam. If you contain that steam within an enclosed container, it will build pressure. Something similar happens in a nuclear power plant: Our hot rock is cooled by passing another substance over it (usually water, but other things work, too, but that’s beyond the scope of this post). When that water heats up inside it’s container, it builds pressure. Actually, a LOT of pressure.

If you’ve ever seen a windmill operate, then this next part will make obvious sense. Just as a windmill’s blades turn when wind runs through it, the blades of a turbine are constructed so that when high pressure steam is passed over them, it forces the turbine to turn. Since we’re talking about really high steam pressure, we’re also talking about spinning our turbine really fast.

The other end of that turbine shaft is what’s connected to the electric generator. The speed of the generator has to be regulated in order to maintain the proper output voltage and frequency for transmission to your home, which is done via steam regulators and controlling the rate of the nuclear reaction to produce no more steam than is really necessary.

It should be noted that many of the components of a nuclear power plant are almost identical to any other power plant. Almost all power plants rely on a steam cycle system (often referred to as the “secondary system”), and the steam system components could literally be moved from one plant to another, hooked up, and be up in running. What makes each plant unique is what makes the steam. You can boil water with many heat sources: burning coal, burning natural gas, burning oil, burning methane from biofuels, etc. A nuclear reactor is just another means of creating heat to boil water, but with no greenhouse emissions (yes, there are obviously other issues — we’ll get into those in future posts).

I hope this was useful to somebody out there on the Interwebs. I’ll add to this series over time, delving into different aspects of the primary plant, including everybody’s favorite issue, that of radioactive waste. For the really geeky, I’ll get into reactor physics, stuff like neutron capture cross sections, the neutron lifecycle, fission fragment ratios, reactor poisons, and one of my favorite subjects – reactor startup delays due to decay product buildup (I always thought it kind of funny that operating our reactors created something that prevented us from starting our reactors once we shut them down…yeah, I’m a nerd).

Until my next post, be great, be happy!

~Jassen Bowman

1. Spin position variations can no longer be repeated for level credit. Do a hair cutter in your layback, and you can’t repeat it in your combination spin.

2. Goodbye original dance in ice dancing.

3. ….and more, this is really a test post.

Most of the comments are from people that either got ripped off by a tax resolution firm, or tell about how they just did themselves, and others responded to THOSE comments asking about HOW to do it themselves.

Being in the tax resolution industry, having it be my livelihood, you would think I wouldn’t WANT people to know how to do it themselves, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Let’s say you owe the IRS $15,000. You can generally resolve this yourself in one phone call. Granted, it’s an hour or two hour long phone call, but it’s still just one phone call. Instead of paying me $1500 to do that for you, you really are better off applying that $1500 towards the tax debt itself.

Those of us that honestly try to do right by our clients and work ethically and charge reasonable fees for our services always have, and always will, have this black cloud hanging over us because of the scumbags in our industry that rip people off. From charging unconscionably high fees, to collecting fees and then never DOING anything (which is what the class action suit against JK Harris was all about), to just doing mediocre work in the interest of ramming as many clients through the door as possible to maximize profits, the industry as a whole does have a bad rap, and understandably so.

One of the commenters on the MSNBC blog article just wanted to know who to contact at the IRS to resolve their tax issues. I posted this comment on their blog and hope the person sees it, since nobody else volunteered the information. I’ll repost it here for my readers:

For personal tax matters, call ACS at 800-429-7650. For business taxes, call 800-829-3903. The hold times are lengthy – expect to wait 30 minutes to an hour.

If you owe LESS than $10,000 in personal income taxes, ask for a Guaranteed Installment Agreement. They’re required to give it to you — just tell them what you can afford and get it set up.

If you owe between $10k and $25k in taxes, ask for a “Streamline Installment Agreement”. The person on the phone may need to have a call center floor supervisor approve it, but they’re painless.

While you’re on the phone, ask for penalties to be removed, and explain WHY you weren’t able to pay the tax on time. You might be surprised and just have them remove some penalties without having to send in a written request.

If you’re interested in seeing whether you qualify for an Offer in Compromise, download Form 656-B from the IRS web site — there is a worksheet on pages 9-11 that walks you through how to calculate your Offer amount. If you owe LESS than that amount, then you are NOT an Offer candidate – no matter what some sales guy tells you.

Bottom line is that you’re always going to be better off talking to a licensed professional, rather than a sales person that most likely doesn’t know much about actual tax code. Look at it this way: If you get a DUI and want to fight it in court, do you want a consultation with a sales guy at the law firm, or with an actual lawyer?

There are plenty of industries where the salesperson actually is a licensed professional, such as when you’re buying life insurance or working with a real estate agent to buy a house. The tax resolution industry, however, does NOT operate that way. There is a 99.9% chance that the sales guy on the other end of the phone is NOT a licensed taxpayer representative, and to be 100% honest, I have yet to meet a sales person in our industry (which we refer to as “openers” and “closers”, just so you know) that really knew much about taxes, beyond what they are told to say in their script, let alone be a licensed representative. I’m in no way trying to disparage the profession of sales, as I’ve been in it myself for years, but when it comes to owing money to the government, your salesperson needs to be a subject matter expert in order to really determine what services you actually need.

If you want to discuss your case (for free, what a concept, eh?) with a licensed person, feel free to send me an email, or call me directly at 866-627-7654.

Until next time,

Jassen Bowman, EA
(866) 627-7654

First, if you have filed an IRS Offer in Compromise and it is pending approval, or it has been accepted, you MUST file your tax returns on time and paid in full for a period of 5 years. If you fail to do this, your Offer in Compromise will be denied or, if already approved, REVOKED, and your full tax liability reinstated.

Second, if you filed your tax return and are waiting for that refund check, you’re going to be waiting for a very long time. One of the conditions of filing an Offer in Compromise is that the IRS will intercept (i.e., take) your tax refunds on any tax returns you file. They will do this through December 31st of the year in which your Offer in Compromise is ACCEPTED. Since it takes usually 6+ months for an Offer in Compromise to work it’s way through the complete bureaucracy of the IRS and negotiate it’s final acceptance, you really don’t want your Offer in Compromise to span multiple years.

If you are thinking about filing an Offer in Compromise anytime soon, do it NOW. Then, try to get it DONE before the end of this year. That way, you will get to keep any tax refund you might be due to get when you file your tax return next year.

If you need assistance with your Offer in Compromise, or have any questions about the Offer program, give me a call, toll free, at (866) 627-7654.

Until next time,

Jassen Bowman, EA

I will be doing ONE figure skating competition this year: Vail.

As of yesterday, I am down to 218 pounds. I haven’t weighed 218 since I passed it on the way UP to 260, about 7 years ago.

I am also working on this Couch to 5k program, in order to get back into running form. What running form? Most believe would find this hard to believe, but “back in the day” when I was in the military, I was a runner. Half marathons, to be exact. I really want to return to that form, and really want to do well on this Warrior Dash thing in August.

Tonight is a light interval thingy – run 1 minute, walk 2, repeat 10 times for 30 minutes.

Tomorrow is a Turbulence Training workout. Ugh, I hate those. Dang you, Craig Ballantyne!

What? You didn’t know that the guy at Wal-Mart doing your taxes wasn’t licensed?

Nope, he’s probably not.

The retail tax return preparation industry has operated for decades with no oversight from the federal government. Retail tax preparation companies are left to their own devices to train their employees. Many of these folks are seasonal employees with very little actual tax training. I worked one tax season for a major retail tax chain, and I was appalled at the lack of training and low level of tax knowledge of most of the people I worked with. For the most part, most of the folks doing taxes in strip malls and other places across America only know how to run the computer software, not actually do a tax return. It’s a very scary proposition.

While I am generally opposed to most forms of government intervention in the lives of private citizens and most businesses, this is a change that I actually think is too long in coming. As a case in point, the Government Accountability Office recently mystery shopped 19 franchisees of major chain tax prep firms. Here is the verbatim report from the GAO study:

The GAO study targeted 19 outlets of chain commercial tax return preparation firms.27
The GAO staff asked tax return preparers at those 19 outlets to prepare federal tax
returns under one of two scenarios for which staff from the GAO, Senate Committee on
Finance and the Joint Committee on Taxation had previously completed tax returns and
agreed upon the contents of the return and the correct amount of tax.
According to the GAO, only two of the 19 tax return preparers had the correct tax
liability and refund amounts on the return they prepared and all 19 tax return preparers
made a mistake on the prepared returns. Although most of the 19 tax return preparers
included all income for which a payor had an information reporting requirement, three
tax return preparers reported incorrect amounts of ordinary dividends or capital gain
income. Eight of 19 tax return preparers reported the shopper’s prior year’s state tax
refund incorrectly. Several tax return preparers did not ask about income from sources
other than wages and, although all tax return preparers were told that there was income
from casual self-employment arrangements, 10 of the 19 tax return preparers did not
report this income as required. Several of the tax return preparers who did report this
income on the returns they completed did not provide the shopper with correct
information. One tax return preparer told the shopper that she did not have to report the
income unless it was more than $3,200. Others advised that the shopper had discretion
on whether to report this income because the IRS would not know about the income
unless it was reported.

The tax return preparers also made mistakes when it came to claiming the proper
amount of credits and deductions. For example, 10 shoppers were entitled to a credit
for child care expenses for their shopper, but none of the tax return preparers who
prepared a return for these shoppers claimed the credit. Although nine shoppers would
have benefitted by itemizing their deductions, two of the nine tax return preparers who
prepared their returns only claimed the standard deduction. Of the seven tax return
preparers who did itemize their shopper’s deductions, five prepared returns claiming an
incorrect amount of deductions. Six of these nine tax return preparers also erred in
determining the amount of education credit to claim for the shopper. The 10 tax return
preparers who were presented with an earned income tax credit scenario also made
significant errors. Only one of these 10 tax return preparers asked all of the required
questions and half of the 10 tax return preparers incorrectly reported that GAO’s
shopper was entitled to the earned income tax credit for two children when the shopper
was only entitled to claim the credit for one of her children.

So, again, the question: Who is preparing YOUR tax return? I hope and pray that it’s not some moron crammed into a cubicle at Wal-Mart, especially if your tax situation is anything more complicated than a couple W-2′s from a job or two and maybe your child tax credit or something. If you have investments, Earned Income Credit, Alternative Minimum Tax issues, a small business — anything even remotely sophisticated — please have your return done by a licensed professional. By this I mean either a Certified Public Accountant (CPA – licensed by the states) or an Enrolled Agent (EA – licensed by the IRS directly). You will most likely pay a few dollars more, but trust me, it’s worth it.

If you would like a review of an already filed tax return, or need to have your tax returns filed, please contact me directly at 866-627-7654, and I’ll help you out on this.

Until next time,

Jassen Bowman, EA

James Orr: Well, I really see it being two primary ways and one way is a couple of subways. So the two primary ways is either geographical expansion where you are offering your service maybe in your local market at first and then you decide – it occurs to you at some point, “Well, what if I offered my service in the next city over?” So you could be, “I’ve got an accounting service that we offer to clients in Fort Collins and I also offer to people in Loveland or people in Denver, people in Colorado Springs,” or you could go out of state and keep expanding that way. That’s what I called geographical expansion. You are almost pretending that you have a virtual business in all these different areas. You could either create new websites for that or you can create new content where you focus on catering to people in those communities with your service.

Jassen: Okay.

James Orr: The next way, the other major way are niches. We talk a lot about niches tonight and focusing on specific ones but I break that down in three sub-categories. The one that people tend to be able to do easiest is they tend generalized when they begin. So they offer accounting services to everybody. Anyone in the world is their client or potential client.

The easiest way to start increasing the number of niches you serve is start narrowing down your niche from there. You can’t get too specific. Well, you probably could but it’ll be really hard for you to get too specific with your niche because you really could go after very specific sub-niches. Instead of just real estate investors you could go after multi-unit property real estate investors or single family home real estate investors.

The more specific you get, the easier it becomes to really target and laser focus in on those guys. So if you wanted to focus on single family home real estate investors you can buy a mailing list of single family home real estate investors and if you’ve got a really good widget for them like a special report that deals specifically with the challenge that you know they have from your point of view, your accounting, that CPA type of stuff then you can really do a great mailing to them where they can request the information for free. Then you’ve got a much smaller list of people that have raised their hands and you can cater to that niche. So getting specific you get all those benefits we talked before about focusing on very specific niches. That’s one way to do it.

The other way to do it is to expand out. Most people don’t do this but instead of just offering accounting services you could offer accounting and business planning services. You can niche up instead of niching down into a specific industry you can say, “I’m going to expand and expand my services and maybe what I want to offer.” So maybe you offer a planning service where you do financial planning or retirement planning and you also do accounting, different ways to expand up and deal with that.

Then the other side is go with closely related niches like you Jassen, you probably could do some accounting type services or bookkeeping services but you also have the enrolled agent side so you’re specifically doing IRS, debt reduction and debt negotiation type stuff and so that’s a very closely related niche that you’ve expanded out to. Does that make sense?

Jassen: Yes.

James Orr: Okay. So those are really the two major ways and then the second way you had some kind of sub things which is niche down get into some really fine details. You can niche up and take on a bigger perspective or you could like side niches where you have closely related topics to do.

Jassen: Alright. Well this has been really informative. I hope that everybody on the line got a lot out of this. Definitely we went through a lot of marketing information here. I’m sure that people have additional questions on their mind out of this so if folks wanted to get in touch with you James, how could they reach you to kind to pick your brain on some more of these stuff?

James Orr: Well, I’m going to practice what I preach here and tell them you can go right to my blog at learntoberich.com and on the right hand side is a link that says downloads. Guess what? You’re going to find all widgets there. You’re going to find lots of special reports and audio downloads and great resources for you to access regardless of what industry you’re in. We cater to a lot of different industries. You’re welcome to go there and download the resources and you will then be automatically signed up to receive our newsletter and some information from us. So we would love for you to do that and get some more information. The website again is learntoberich.com and it’s all spelled out all the words spelled correctly and everything.

Jassen: Alright. Well, I really appreciate you joining us tonight and for sharing all these information with our listeners. Is there anything else you want to add before we close out?

James Orr: I think that’s it. I really appreciate it you have me on and I hope that everyone got a lot of great information and is going to actually act on it and implement some of the ideas to really increase their business.

Jassen: And that is the key right there, isn’t that is? Taking action on what you learn not just sitting on it.

James Orr: It absolutely is. That is the big difference.

Jassen: Alright. Well, thanks a lot, James. I’ll look forward to speaking with you again soon and you have yourself a wonderful night.

James Orr: I appreciate it. Thanks, Jassen I’ll talk to you soon.

Jassen: Alright take care.

James Orr: Bye-bye.

Jassen: Bye-bye.

James Orr: Absolutely.

Jassen: Okay. Now we’ve already talked about a little bit about meet-up. You mentioned that in an earlier segment but could go on to some more detail about using meet-up to meet new people and grow your CPA clientele?

James Orr: Yes I definitely can. There are basically three ways that I can think of to use meet-up and they sort of overlap in some ways. The first one is you can use it find niches that you are interested in serving as a CPA or accountant. Then you can join those meet-up groups, become involve in the group. Share information, be helpful, and learn about their challenges. Learn about their problems, see if you can help. Offer them access to your network and try to get access to their network and just overall become part of that community. So that’s number one is focus on specific niches your interested in.

The number two one is you can actually create your own meet-up group and cater to those niches. Seven or eight years ago I forget what it was now, there was not a local real estate investor group in Fort Collins nor in Colorado where we are and so I ended having to form a local real estate investor group. I started holding meetings and then I started networking with everybody. It turned out really great so I recommend people start groups if there isn’t one in niches that you want to cater to. Then grow your contact base from there. People will flock to you. People interested in that will want to join your group and provided you’re giving them good value and good information and great opportunities there, they’re going to want to keep coming back. They’re going to see you as an expert and be more likely to do business with you in the future. So you can definitely grow your own meet-up groups if you need to do it that way.

The last one is you can go outside of your local market and contact group owners outside of your area who you may want to cater to. One of the great things about being a CPA business is you really can do it remotely, right?

Jassen: Yes.

James Orr: So if you wanted to go and start saying, “I’m going to really focus in on this one niche.” You could go find other meet-up groups outside of your local area and cater to them and give them access to your special reports or your lead generation tools and then let them offer them to their group as a free resource that they can download as long as they get their contact information. Then you can start marketing to them over time to.

James Orr: I want to correct what you said because part of the challenge is that people do look at CPA or accounting business as a service business. One of the great things about using widgets is you can convert a service business to a physical product business. By going out there and creating products whether that’s a special report, a little mini booklet, a audio CD, maybe it’s a three hour seminar you do, whatever it is that you can do in order to create a physical product then you can start marketing things like physical products that will have an upsell or back end of your actual service. So you want to actually take that into account when you’re thinking about other ways to market your business. You’re right. Most people would be scratching their heads, “How do I market my CPA business on ebay?”

Jassen: So explain real quick, how do they do that?

James Orr: Well it’s easy. What you do is you go create a very specialized report for a very niche industry and you sell that report as a product on ebay. So for instance you might make a two hour audio CD talking about how to setup your bookkeeping system for electricians or for retail shop owners or get more specific than that in mind but you can go and do all the variety of these things.

It might be really simple things that you have – a normal conversation about with all of your clients and it seems so second nature to you but every time they hear it they’re like, “That makes perfect sense. So now I know how to setup my file system,” or “Now I know how to setup quick books,” or “Here is the software I need.” Whatever those questions are you could make an information product, a physical product. Maybe it’s a booklet, maybe it’s a special report and you could sell it even at a loss – I don’t recommend it – but you could sell it at a loss and consider it cost subduing business for your lead generation. So maybe you have a CD that cost you a dollar to make, you’re going to sell it for $0.99 on ebay and with the marketing fees you have to pay ebay maybe you’re at a $0.30 loss. But now you’ve got someone’s name, address, telephone number and e-mail address who is interested enough to pay a dollar for that product. Now you’ve got an opportunity to put them on your mailing list. There is a much higher probability that they would become a client than just someone on the street.

Jassen: Exactly.

James Orr: Does that answer your question about how to market a service on ebay?

Jassen: Definitely I’m sure some of our listeners are surprised in what they’ve never thought about being able to market a service on something like ebay with it’s geared toward physical products. But they’re very, very doable.

James Orr: Yes. I would generate a hundred plus new increase a month from selling information products on ebay for a business.

Jassen: Okay. I think most of our listeners would be thrilled if they were able to generate a hundred new inquiry in a month into their CPA firm.

James Orr: I agree. I was doing a lot of products and this is not just one product doing this. I mean would create lots of very niche focus products and I’ll be able to sell those over a period of time. You know as in aside, if you hook up with someone else that has a product or service that they’re selling, couldn’t you do like a joint venture like let’s say somebody was creating websites. You can go and joint venture with somebody who’s selling websites to electricians or contractors and network with them and bundle the two together in a special report on how to setup your business from the tax side plus this website. Now you just share the names and addresses and contact information.

James Orr: Well I’m going to tell you that this is one of the more aggressive ideas I have. So it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. I don’t recommend people use traditional business card. You can definitely have a traditional business card. What I’m more talking about here is like a mini flyer. You can have mini flyers printed up online or you could use business cards for it but the business card is really an offer for one of your widgets – special reports, something that they can download, free consultation, whatever it is that you’re trying to market. The idea is to get these out as aggressively as possible. It sort of inline with a lot of multilevel or network marketing companies might do in order to just blast the word out in a gorilla marketing style. Just get it out there as much as possible.

So I’ll just name off a couple of different ways to do this and you can decide whether or not you want to do any or all of them but realize that some of them are a little bit more aggressive. You may get some slack for doing some of them but just make sure you’re complying within the law and don’t do anything crazy. So here’s some really basic ideas.

Whenever you go out to a restaurant you can definitely leave a business card with your tip. The bigger the tip the better it’s going to be at being detected, I can tell you that. If you’re going to a restaurant you can leave your card with free information about that. You’re probably not going to get a huge amount of business from it but you’ll never know. You could have the right person to pick it up and you kind of get one and these things are cheap. The more you get out the better it is.

Another one is ATM machines. Anytime you go to an ATM machine to make a deposit or withdraw money, you can leave a business card near the ATM machine. Where I got this idea from is a lot of these networking companies will stick like half cut open envelopes with [20][01:13:50] business cards right inside of the machine and people find that effective. They made it work. I know people that are marketing their network marketing company business with that. So just adopt it and use it that way.

Here’s one of my favorites and that is if you go to a library and you’re taking out books and reading on things, a great bookmark to use would be a business card and if you happen to forget that when you return the book then so be it. If you happen to be in the library reading the book and you happen to bookmark it and put it back in the shelf accidentally so be it that way to. The same thing goes for books in bookstores. You’d be surprised how many books I see in the bookstore where they somehow have a magical business card stuck in the middle of it.

Jassen: Yes. [laughter]

James Orr: So it is a way in order for you to get your word out about your business. Leaving them as bookmarks in bookstores but you can also use bulletin boards. Anytime you’re out in the supermarket or the mailbox place or anything like that that has a bulletin board and you’re allowed to post things on, the university library, any place like that you could put little things on the bulletin board. Just make sure you put it out there and replace it frequently every time you go there go ahead and replace it.

Jassen: You just carry these things around with you and so when see the opportunity to leave one then do so.

James Orr: Absolutely. My first real estate broker told me that if you leave in the morning with 10 business cards in your pocket, you should do whatever you need to in order to get those out during the day. Whether that’s posting them on bulletin boards or handing them to strangers or whatever you need to do and if you do that everyday you’re doing a good amount of marketing just to get your name out in the business world.