#125 Tax Time Survival: How Federal Employees Can Get Ahead

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Listen to the Full Episode:

Tax season can be overwhelming, but federal employees can stay ahead with the right strategies. 

In this podcast episode, Micah and Christian break down essential tax planning techniques, including the importance of estimated tax payments, understanding tax brackets, and how to avoid common pitfalls. Discover how proactive tax planning can save you money and reduce stress when it’s time to file. 

Don’t wait until the deadline—start planning today for a smoother tax season!

What We Cover:

  • Tax Planning vs. Tax Preparation
    • Tax planning is looking forward, like driving with a windshield view.
    • Tax preparation is looking back, like a rearview mirror reflection.
  • Why Tax Planning Matters for Federal Employees
    • Taxes are one of the biggest expenses in retirement.
    • A proactive strategy can reduce your tax burden.
  • Commonly Missed Items on Tax Returns
    • Incorrect names, Social Security numbers, or filing status.
    • Unreported income, IRA contributions, and Roth conversion errors.
    • Missed deductions, like Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs).
  • The Role of Checklists in Tax Review
    • A 37-point checklist helps catch common mistakes.
Action Items:
  1. Ask your advisor what checklist they use to review your return.

Micah Shilanski  00:00

Welcome back to another amazing episode of Plan Your Federal Retirement podcast. I’m your host, Micah Shilanski, and I am excited to jump in this topic today as our loyal listeners, you guys know, one of the things I love talking about is, that’s right, taxes, yes. Why are taxes so important? It’s probably the largest bill you’re going to have in retirement, and this is something we don’t pay enough attention to, and why I love airing this in April is this is tax time. Is tax season. This is where Christian and I and our other advisors in office I say shine, because we do a lot of good work around tax planning with our clients, and we’re going to jump into what planning versus preparation is, but because tax preparation is due just right around the corner, we also want to give you guys some solid tips on how to accurately review your tax return, whether you’ve done it or someone else has to make sure you’re not overpaying the IRS. So Christian, thanks for jumping on the pod with me this morning. I know again, this is something we just do on the daily basis, right? Going through taxes on a very continuous time and going through it, we have some tools and hacks on how to make that more effective and and easier for our listeners, but really appreciate you jumping on with me.

Christian Sakamoto  01:10

As always, Micah, it’s always fun to jam out with you and talk through different things that we just see on a day to day basis, especially when it comes to taxes, because we see the importance of it, and we’ve got multiple, multiple examples where we’ve caught something on a return when reviewing it for a client, and it’s a small mistake, maybe it’s a large mistake, and those mistakes can be hundreds, if not 1000s of dollars back in the taxpayer’s pocket, and is that important, and so we want to make sure we’re reviewing it again. It’s a fun topic for me to talk about, and for you, I know so I’m excited.

Micah Shilanski  01:47

You know, one of the things Christians we go through, I like to, like, informally track our error rate. No, I shouldn’t say it’s not our error rate, the errors we find on tax returns, right, whether they’re prepared by third parties or done by a client. So what I’m loosely defining with an error. With this is if we review the tax return and a correction needs to be made, right in any type of correction, and we’ll get into some little things and some big things, and it’s going to be an error on the tax return. It’s roughly 20% is kind of my numbers, so one out of five tax returns that I review, these are prepared by other people than they brought in, there’s something we need to tweak on the tax return. Now, great news is that means 80% of the time the taxes are good to go. We look at and we go through our our 37 point checklist. We’re going to talk about that and how we effectively use that. We go through that the tax return is good to go, but again, one in five ish, again, just a really light number we kind of track by is where we see errors, and errors do a couple of things Christian. Number one, like you said, it could cost you money. This could mean you’re overpaying the IRS and you shouldn’t. Number two, this could just cause stress in your life. If we incorrectly report something, I shouldn’t say we we’re not doing the reporting you are when you incorrectly report something on your taxes, right whether you’ve done it or a taxpayer has, and you get a love letter in two years from the IRS that says, dear taxpayer, pay me all this money or you go to jail. It’s a little bit more wordy than that, right? But that’s kind of immediately how we feel, right? We get this, you know, the panic sense that kicks in, that induces stress that we should just try to avoid, even if you don’t owe money at the end of the day, those are not fun letters to get. So we always are working with our clients on those two things. Is, how do we, number one, not overpay the IRS, but number two, not induce IRS stress for our clients going forward?

Christian Sakamoto  03:31

Right, exactly, and I think when you mentioned we’re solving for a couple of different things if we’re getting an extra bit of money that we didn’t have to give you the IRS solid win, but also just that reassurance that we’ve done the return accurately, so that we don’t get those love letters in the future, and we’ve seen enough of them working with clients that maybe are newer clients, and they’re getting letters from years past where we weren’t reviewing their return and just being with them in that emotional state where it’s like, oh, my goodness, I just got this letter, what does this mean? How can, what can we do? It can be a little bit of panic, so if we can try to avoid that, eliminate that, you know, that’s that’s a win. So just right off the bat, if we’re starting with sort of this checklist, we’re not going to go through all.

Micah Shilanski  04:15

Let’s stop real quick before we do the checklist, if that’s okay Christian, right? What I’d love to do is just kind of give a quick story and get some kind of listener feedback as we go through this real quick, so let’s say that you are going to jump on an airplane right? You’re going to fly, fly somewhere for a great destination, you get on board, you sit down, you’re excited, my tires are coming whatever, let’s say it’s a tropical destination, and the pilot gets on it gives this great welcome message that says, you know what you know ladies and gentlemen, welcome on the airplane, we’re super excited to get to our destination, to get all these things done, you know what? I’ve been flying for 30 years. I got over 30,000 hours in the cockpit inside of here, and I have done this checklist, and I have flown this plane so many times that I know exactly what I’m doing, so good news is we’re gonna be able to push back from the gate a little sooner, because I’m not going to follow the 97 things we’re supposed to do before I push back. I already know what those are, I’m going to skip the things that don’t matter, we’re just going to push back from the plan, and I got this. So those checklists that are created, you know, those are kind of for rookies, I’m an expert, I’m a captain, I know what I’m doing, I can skip those and move on to the next thing. Christian, if you heard that message from a pilot, how would you feel?

Christian Sakamoto  05:20

Oh, I’m grabbing my bags, I’m out. I’m out. 

Micah Shilanski  05:23

Yeah, yeah, no, I am a pilot, right? With not, I do not have 30,000 hours in a plane, I just assessed the 180 around Alaska, and if someone ever told me that they’re like, skipping the checklist, I got a real big problem with that, right? And I do a checklist every single time, even if it’s, you know, a modified checklist, because they have the original checklist right? When I’m just coming to a plane cold, versus, if I’m kind of turning in a plane, there’s going to be something a little bit different that’s there, but I follow a checklist all of the time because the details matter, because it’s life and death. The one time I don’t strain my fuel to make sure there’s no water in the fuel, and water gets in the engine and then it doesn’t run, you know, I have a problem, we jokingly say, is pilots right? That big thing in the in smaller airplanes that spins around the propeller, you know what his job is Christian?

Christian Sakamoto  06:11

Well, pushing air, right?

Micah Shilanski  06:14

Its only job is to keep the pilot cool, because once that stops, the pilot starts sweating, right? So we want to check all these things to have very smooth flights and go through, but I’m always fascinated when I work with other professionals, and Christian I know you do the same is that we see some professionals very diligent in checklists, then we see other ones. They’re like and it doesn’t really matter, and I feel taxes is one of those things that we don’t always give it the do that it needs, which is why retirement tax services, we just copied their checklist is they come out this great 37 point checklist, which is more than 37 points on how advisors need to be reviewing clients tax returns, and some of the stuff is pretty basic, right? So Christian just talk briefly, kind of what’s at the top of the checklist, and why does that even matter to check some of these things.

Christian Sakamoto  07:00

You know, at the top of the 1040 the tax return is going to just be your basic information, your your full legal name, your if you’re married, so then your filing status are we in the right tax year if we’re preparing this and looking at dependents, and if we’ve had, uh, also our social security numbers and addresses, right? So if you had those kinds of changes, those life changes, that’s a good time to review them. We are reviewing them for our clients, just as a one of the parts of the checklist that we’re reviewing, but if you’re preparing your return every single year, it’s just good to skim over that before you submit it to the IRS, making sure that the act the information is accurate, so those are the top things that, again, I want to go backwards except, and I want to say, thanks for explaining that that scenario with the pilot, because we can absolutely get focused on just, hey, I’ve done this so much, I don’t need to do it, but this is just one of those things, even if it’s just making sure your name spelled right, that is that.

Micah Shilanski  08:02

And these are all mistakes that between me and a handful of other advisors and CPAs, I’ve seen them all Christian I know you’ve seen a bunch of these as well, and it’s a little thing as well is the client’s name, your name isn’t spelled right on the tax return, or it’s the wrong social security number. The problem is it’s going to get rejected at some point. The IRS is going to lose some information. Now you’re going to get love letters from the IRS, so back to the top of the podcast, we said there’s two things we’re trying to avoid. One is not overpaying the IRS. Number two is not having IRS stress and getting love letters from the IRS because you had the wrong social security number or address or contact information in there that creates undue stress. The IRS is not a very efficient system, right? They don’t have a lot of great processes to fix these things, so that means we have to be more diligent getting the right information to them. So simple things like checking those anytime you switch software, you switch taxpayers, man, go through those with a fine tooth comb, I laughed when you said checking the right year, I remember running into a client, and they escaped me their tax return, and it was for the wrong year, and I was super confused, and I was like, hey, I think you attached the wrong file. The file was for the current year. The file name was the current year, but the tax term was the previous one, and for whatever reason, that’s the one the CPA had sent to the client, and the client had just got it and sent it to me, and it’s the wrong year of it, and so really important things to check, so those are the kind of the easy stuff, Christian, let’s go ahead and dive a little bit more. We don’t have time to get into all 37 points with this, and this is a great question you should be asking your financial advisor. How do they review your tax turn? You should probably ask them to show you the checklist, right? What actual checklist do they go through when they’re reading the tax turns? But I know one of the first things that I like to look at is I like to jump down to line four, and one of the things a lot of our clients over 70 years young, they do QCDs, Qualified Charitable Distributions, and these get messed up on tax returns, so with our clients, we had a good system for but I see it with new clients, or I see it with, you know, other advisors as well, where this gets messed up and reported inaccurately, so if a QCD is messed up Christian, what effect does that have to a client?

Christian Sakamoto  10:03

Well, you’re paying taxes on money that you shouldn’t have paid. Essentially, what’s going to happen.

Micah Shilanski  10:07

Right! And so on, that QCD is a Qualified Charitable Distribution, and what this means if you’re over 70 and a half, you can actually send money directly from your IRA to a charity, it meets your RMD, and it comes out 100% tax free. Can’t do it with the TSP, unfortunately, one of those limitations, but you can do with an IRA, and so this is such an awesome tool to use, but if it’s not reported correctly, you don’t get that tax benefits, you end up overpaying in taxes. So that’s one that, again, I constantly see being missed, and so it’s one I always watch for.

Christian Sakamoto  10:40

So love it. Another one on the checklist, I’ll go up to number 16. Were Roth conversions reported correctly, and so we talked a lot about those Roth conversions, and looking at line four, A and B on the tax return, 1040 that’s also going to be where we check to see if those Roth conversions were showing up there, right? Because when we move money from the pre tax account to the Roth account, that does trigger taxes, so it should be reported on your tax return. That’s one of the downsides of doing a Roth conversion, right, is that we’re having to actually pay the taxes, and then you have to report on their on the IRS. Well, we have different ways that we can withhold and ways that we can pay for the taxes we can withhold, as I just mentioned, on the actual conversion, if we’re over 59 and a half or we can send an estimated payment to the IRS, so we just want to make sure a was the Roth conversion reported correctly, and we also look at form 8606 as well, because that’s specifically where that Roth conversion would be reported, but then also tying into that the estimated payments, which we could talk about a little bit later, or if it was withheld, right? So we just want to make sure, hey, we’re doing those Roth conversions, don’t forget, you got to report them.

Micah Shilanski  11:59

You know, the other thing that I see reported incorrectly on Roth conversions is he mentioned 8606 previous basis, right? Oh, in an IRA account, there’s an a way that you might have put money into an IRA. Never got a tax deduction for that money, so it creates this after tax account in your IRA. It’s a bit rare, but it can absolutely happen, so whatever we’re working with the new client, we’re always looking for this, what we call 8606 money because where it should be reported on your tax return. Now the tricky part is for our listeners to pay attention to, if you’ve ever contributed to an IRA account, not a Roth, if you ever contributed to an IRA account, you should really go back and look and say, did I was I able to get a tax deduction for that contribution? A lot of times, the answer is no, because, quote, you had too much income not to contribute to an IRA, but to deduct that. So what I don’t want you to do is, again, overpay the IRS. So we always want to ask this question with clients, so ask yourself this question, have I ever contributed to an IRA? If so, do I have this 8606 form? If not, you probably need to create it, otherwise, when you start withdrawing money from your IRA, or you do this awesome Roth conversion, you’re going to overpay in taxes, so be very careful on that one Christian. I think that ties in really nicely to 15 on our checklist, actually, right above that, which is Ira transfers or, God forbid, if you did a rollover, and those complicated things, right? Try to avoid those, but our transfer is reported, now this is the one that if you did a transfer correctly, there’s no tax liability. If you go to the TSP, you say, hey, it’s been real, it’s been fun, hasn’t been real fun. I want to move my money to an IRA, and you do a transfer, it is reportable to the IRS. It is not taxable to the IRS, do what does that mean? That means you’re going to get a 1099 let’s say you had a million dollar TSP. You transfer that to an IRA, you’re going to get a 1099-R at the end of the year for $1 million right? And we always Christian, you know this, we joke with our clients whenever they’re doing a transfer. Says, look, we’ll talk about this now in January or the beginning of February, you’re gonna get this letter from TSP. It’ll be a 1099-R you’re gonna open up and says, oh, I’m not worried about it Micah, I said this wasn’t taxable. You’re gonna open up and look at that 1090 9r it’ll say, box one, gross distribution, $1 million and immediately that heart stops, right? We’re like, oh, crap, I owe taxes on this million dollars, right? And sometimes clients that they forget, they stop right there, they call us right away, and when you call me, it’s okay, we’re going to talk about it, I’m going to listen to your concern, I would say, hey, would you mind looking in box two, right below that, where it says taxable amount, and in box two taxable amount, it says zero, so this means it’s reportable to the IRS, not taxable to the IRS. Again, why do we bring this up with clients? This creates IRS stress. If we forget to report a transfer on your tax return, you’re going to get a love letter in 18 months from the IRS, and it creates a little undue stress. That’s why we want to get it right.  Whether you are close to retirement or planning for it years out, one of the top questions that I get is Micah, how do I fill out my retirement forms and not make any mistakes? This can feel a bit complex and overwhelming, and I understand that you’re making some pretty serious decisions that’ll affect you for the rest of your retirement our how to fill out retirement forms series is your ultimate companion to navigating these forms. You are going to learn how to avoid common mistakes. You’re gonna learn how to fill these forms out correctly and even save money in the process, we will walk you through the most important steps so you can safeguard your financial future. Sign up today for this video series at planyourfederalretirement.com/retirementforms. That’s planyourfederalretirement.com/retirementforms. Don’t let the paperwork stand in the way of your retirement. Let us guide you through it, step by step. Until then, happy planning!

Christian Sakamoto  15:52

Good example. Next one on our list, we’ll go to number 17, talking about capital gains, short and long term, and if those are reported correctly and accurately, so before we started recording this podcast, we were chatting through that because we’ve seen so many cases and different examples with clients where they might have accounts that we don’t manage, or there’s just different accounts out there that it can be confusing. It could add up to be quite a lot, so we just want to make sure that we’re reviewing those 1090, nines, short and long term capital gains. We’re especially paying attention to if there’s any carry over losses that we can report as well from previous years, and just again, making sure that everything’s being added up, the short gains and the short losses are being added, the long term gains and losses are being added, and at the end of the day that the capital gains are being reported and also paying attention to any property that might have been sold, especially with different basis information that we’ve seen multiple times this year, where someone’s maybe an inherited property or an asset, or they’ve had something that they’ve been held on to for a while that they end up selling, and we have to pay attention to what their basis was, their adjusted basis, and then what that capital gain would be just from selling an asset, not necessarily capital gains from our stocks that we have, so again, just wanted to double check, does that pass our straight face test and review what the 1040 line seven is, and the Schedule D form, 4797 those things.

Micah Shilanski  17:27

So like, how would I do that? If I was a listener, right? And then I’m not, you know, super tax savvy, somebody else is preparing my tax return. Here’s what I would do. Is I would get that tax return, I would get those 1090 nines, right? That from you have, from your brokerage accounts. Again, these are capital gains we’re talking about, so that means I bought a stock for $1 it rose to $2 and I sold it, right? Okay, now that $1 of growth you made, now that’s taxable. So is that reported? All I’m going to do, Christian real quick, is I’m just going to look and say, hey, on that 1099 does that match what my tax preparer wrote down on Schedule D? And I’m just going to look at a ton of top line. I’m going to really assume for hiring taxpayer they did all of the details correctly, so maybe you don’t need to go that far, but you do need to look at the top line and say, hey, does this number accurately match? And this is reason you should have a checklist to really go through that. And then Christian, that kind of jumps right into number 22 I’m gonna jump down a little bit on this list. But does your AGI or modified gross to Adjusted Gross Income push you into any shadow taxes, right? This is a really big thing, especially when we’re 65 years young. When we’re 65 years young, and I know we talked about this previously on the pod as well, when we’re 65 and no longer working, we have to sign up for Medicare Part A as an alpha, then probably as a federal employee, you should be signing up for Part B, as in, bravo, whole big discussion around that, just for discussion, let’s say you do, well Medicare Part B is based on your income. That means if you make quote, too much income, you have to pay more for your Medicare, part B. Now, if you say, Michael, what’s too much income? I have no idea. I’ve never seen too much income, this isn’t a problem that I’ve run into, right? But that’s my definition of it. The IRS has a different definition. The IRS says, if you make more, oh, Christian, what’s the number 206 to 214,000 bucks, depending on when they updated it, yeah, somewhere in there, if you may. Yeah, married, finally joined. Above that number is your gross income, you have to pay more for your Medicare Part B, and your premium starts going up, so this is a thing that we look at is saying, hey, is there any shadow taxes? Did we lose anything based on this AGI? It’s something great to look at.

Christian Sakamoto  19:39

So we’ll go back up, we’re kind of bouncing back and forth on this list here, number 18 was is talking about pensions and making sure those are being reported accurately. Well, as federal employees, your benefits, one of your benefits is your pension that you receive, and then possibly the FERS supplement, and so, just checking, just making sure that you get that 1099 you’re reporting it on your return. It’s also good to look back and compare this number to previous years as well to see, are we reporting the right years 1099 because we’ve seen that it should go up if we’re getting those COLAs. The other mistake, or possible mistake, that we have to pay attention to while I’m on this subject is for those people who might have retired that last year, and now we’re reporting that income, that there’s going to be a little bit possibly of a, maybe an issue when it comes to the intern payments that you would have received, and then at the end, when it finally gets adjudicated, but also with the amount of tax that’s being withheld. This is a good test to see if we haven’t done a tax software estimating what our taxable income is for the year to see how much we should withhold, just to make sure that enough taxes are being withheld, and if we’re seeing that now that we’re retired, our tax bill, how much we owe the IRS every year, is increasing. That might just tell us we’re not having enough taxes withheld, and one of those areas can be now this pension, because for years, maybe it was automatically done from your paychecks every year, and you never really had an issue, and now when you’re retired, you don’t have enough with health, so it’s just a good time to be checking, is there enough taxes being withheld from the pension? 

Micah Shilanski  21:25

That’s a great one, no one really likes to pay money at the end of the year to the IRS, and my clients that do, or should say, don’t, mind paying at the end of the year. They only don’t mind because they know how much it is, right? So, you know, it’s those unexpected IRS surprises that that we don’t like, and that kind of brings us into, let me jump down to 25 this is another one that I kind of commonly see, especially with our retirees. When we’re working, we’re truly not having to make estimated tax payments. We have a paycheck coming in, maybe one paycheck, maybe two, with your spouse working, and the withholdings get pretty accurate, and you’re pretty much on autopilot. You kind of know what that’s going to be, but now, all of a sudden, we retire, and our incomes coming from multiple sources. We have a pension coming from OPM, we have a TSP distribution, we have an IRA distribution. We have a FERS supplement, okay, that comes from opium as well. Might have a social security income coming you might have capital gains, right? Your wife might have a pension and Ira distribution, your spouse, etc, right? So now all of a sudden, you have, what, 678, different sources of income that’s coming in, and the issue that comes is, when that happens, they don’t accurately withhold for taxes, because each independent income source only looks at their income, so if all of a sudden, if you’re getting a pension for opium of 30 grand, OPM says, great, you’re married filing joint okay, your only income is $30,000 okay, well, then what does that mean? That means your standard deduction is, what, 24,000 or more than that, so that means you only have $6,000 of taxable income, so they withhold nothing, virtually nothing, in taxes, but the problem is, you had 30 from that, you had 30 from your TSP, you had 30 from an IRA, your spouse has a $20,000 pension, and you’re getting 30 from Social Security. Now I’m pushing what, 150 in income, and so now, all of a sudden, we don’t have enough taxes withheld, so it’s really important to look at this, and then that’s where sometimes we gotta make our estimated tax payments versus withholdings. Now, good hack on this one. Now the IRS has gotten better if you’re making electronic payments, and please only make electronic payments to the IRS tax when you send in checks, the IRS is fantastic at depositing those checks. They’re not always great about putting credit on your account for those checks they deposit, so you got to be careful with that, but Christian, what I love us to do, especially our clients and our listeners, I’d say the same thing, if you’re making quarterly tax payment, the dollar amount at the end of what you’re paying should represent the quarter of the tax payment you are making. What does that mean? Let’s say you’re going to make $4,000 in total estimated tax payments, so 1000 a quarter, great. Well, in quarter one, which is due on April 15, right, I would have a $1,000 payment. $1,001, 1001, for my June payment, it would be $1,002 right? Why am I doing that now each quarter, I can see so when, not, if, when the IRS sends me a love letter that says, hey, Micah, you only made three out of your four payments, and I’m like, no, I’ve made all four. Now I can quickly look at it and say it says 124, awesome. They missed the September payment because three is gone. Now I can go to my bank records. I could grab the three. I can support all of that information to my taxpayer or to the IRS before what would happen is they’d say, hey, we got these payments, but we’re not really sure where it came from. It has some dates, but the dates don’t match up with your bank, and it creates this confusion, etc, so always ending in that dollar amount again, really helps you in the future, when the IRS asks questions on your estimated tax payments.

Christian Sakamoto  24:51

I love that tip, yeah. It makes it super simple, yeah. I love that. Well, one more tax tip, one of the tax review things to look. It on the your own personal tax return, we’re going to go up to 19 on the checklist is Social Security reported correctly, and just like what I was talking about with your pension, especially if we’re starting Social Security that previous tax year, we want to make sure now that we’re reporting it, because we do possibly owe taxes on our social security payments and our income, but it also is income based, so the more money that you make as a taxpayer, the more that you’ll pay in taxes for Social Security. Somewhere between zero and 85% of your Social Security income will be taxable, and so we just want to make sure that that’s also being reported, but also similarly, what I said to the pension about having taxes withheld, you have five options for withholding, for Social Security, and 0% is one of them. But then on the W-4V you can withhold 7%, 10%, 12% or 22%. Those are the only options for withholding on Social Security. So if we’re in that 12% bracket, you know, good rule of thumb, maybe we just check that 12% box on the W-4V and have the Social Security have taxes automatically being withheld, whatever your tax bracket is, you know, pay attention to that, because Social Security might sneak up on you if you didn’t have any taxes withheld, and then also pay attention to on the state side, if we need to have any withheld, if you’re if you live in a state that taxes Social Security as well, pay attention to those details as well.

Micah Shilanski  26:35

Christian, just to clarify we were talking about, is when the on the tax withholding, it’s the marginal rate, not your effective rates. If you look at TurboTax, TurboTax loves to tell you what your effective rate is, and it’s this low number of like 7% or 10% always withhold at your marginal rate for Social Security, the current bracket that you’re in is that right?

Christian Sakamoto  26:53

Yeah, because if you’re now making those extra dollars, you’re already in that marginal rate, then those new dollars are going to be taxed at that marginal rate as opposed to your effective rate.

Micah Shilanski  27:06

I love it. Well, here we are, we’ve already gone a little bit over time that we had allotted kind of for this, so I really appreciate our listeners hanging in there. We only talked about eight items on this 37 point checklist, and I feel that we weren’t light on those eight items, so the really important takeaway here is you need to have a checklist. You need to have a plan on reviewing your tax return, so that’s what I’m going to say, is your first homework assignment. If you work with an advisor, that’s fantastic. I would reach out to him and ask him, say, hey, how do you review my tax return every year? What checklist do you use to review it? And again, this is the same thing, like with pilots. I want to see them using a checklist and going through things, and if they’re not, I’m going to be a little worried if a financial planner says, hey, I’ve done this so many times, I don’t actually need a checklist anymore, I’d be a little worried, right? Because there’s a reason we have checklists to make sure things get done really well, so I’m going to say it’s a big homework assignment for you. Christian, what else should our listeners be thinking about this week?

Christian Sakamoto  28:01

If the listeners are preparing their own taxes, and we talked about something that was interesting, really pay attention. Maybe go back and listen, but especially if we’re just going to be submitting our own taxes, just double check the information on the top and just kind of asking through it please before you submit your return. I think that’s really important.

Micah Shilanski  28:18

Awesome. Well, hopefully this information has been super helpful. Our goal, as you know, is to help another 1 million federal employees with retirement, and we can only do that with your help. So go ahead and share this information out there so more people can listen to great information about your federal benefits. Christian, thank you for joining and until next time, Happy Planning!

Christian Sakamoto  28:35

Happy planning!

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