Luca Financial

Last night: power-walking to dinner, frantically texting my son back before he sends the follow-up "?????" (iykyk)

..and I walked directly into a tree. Full speed. In public. Recalibrated like nothing happened and kept walking. If you saw me, no, you didn't.

My wife looked at me and said "please don't turn this into a post about taxes."

So naturally: unlike that tree, a surprise tax bill is 100% avoidable with quarterly planning.

Sorry babe. Some things I just can't help.

Told the family we needed a "quick" photo on the dock.

45 minutes, 4 sunset attempts, and one kid asking "are we done yet" later ... we got it.

Turns out getting 4 people to smile at the same time is harder than getting a client through an S-Corp election 👀 .

A day in the life of a CPA during planning season:

6am: Coffee. ☕️
7am: More coffee.
9am-6pm: Spreadsheets, client calls, a client asking "wait, what's a K-1 again?", more spreadsheets, and apparently enough camera gear to make it look like I have a podcast.
6:15pm: Stare into the distance.
6:16pm: More coffee.

Glamorous? No. Worth it when a client saves $30K they didn't know was on the table? Absolutely.

Made a big decision this month: we're finally raising our minimum client revenue to $500K+.

Told my wife about it over dinner like I'd just closed a merger.

She said "cool, can you pass the salt."

This is what building a business looks like, folks. Glory. Fanfare. Salt.

The biggest tax mistake we found this week...

(Shared with permission, but keeping the client anonymous.)

We recently onboarded a new client who told us their business was a Schedule C.

No problem.

As part of our onboarding, we verify everything before we start making recommendations.

After a little digging...

We discovered the IRS actually had them classified as a C corporation.

Not a Schedule C.

Not an S corporation.

A C corporation.

They had been filing as a sole proprietor for years.

That's the scary part.

The issue wasn't that anyone was trying to do something wrong.

It was that everyone assumed the business structure was correct and kept building from there.

Sometimes the biggest tax savings don't come from a fancy strategy.

They come from slowing down, asking questions, and verifying the foundation before making recommendations.

It's a good reminder that the first step in tax planning isn't finding deductions...

It's making sure you're solving the right problem.

One thing I've really enjoyed over the past year has been guesting on podcasts.

I've found that long-form conversations are one of the best ways to share ideas. You can go much deeper than you ever can in a 60-second video or a LinkedIn post.

I'm looking to do more of them.

I love talking about:

Proactive tax strategy for business owners
Building and scaling a professional service firm
AI in accounting and advisory
Entrepreneurship and growing a business
Leadership and building teams

If you host a podcast - or know someone looking for guests - I’d love an introduction.

Also, for those of you who have been on a lot of podcasts...

Did you book them yourself, or did you work with a company that handled outreach?

Always looking to learn.