Charge Forward Podcast

🎙️From Overworked to Empowered: Valerie Kemp's (CPA) Journey to Balance & Freedom

• Jim Cripps • Season 3 • Episode 7

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 🎙️From Overworked to Empowered: Valerie Kemp’s Journey to Balance & Freedom 

What happens when a successful CPA realizes her business is running her instead of the other way around? For Valerie Kemp, a realization at her 1st employeer's funeral . He was an old school accountant, after decades of working holidays and endless hours for clients, only a handful showed up to honor him. In that moment, she made herself a promise: “I will not live—and die—that way.” 

Fast forward to today, and Valerie has transformed both her business and her life. In this candid conversation with host Jim Cripps, she shares the strategic decisions, mindset shifts, and leadership lessons that allowed her to reclaim her freedom while building a stronger, more focused firm. 

💡 In this episode, you’ll learn: 

  • Why selling off payroll services—a “sacred cow” she once thought untouchable—was the most liberating decision her firm ever made
  • How empowering her team through weekly knowledge-sharing sessions created both confidence and better client outcomes
  • The power of shifting from transactional to strategic client relationships
  • Why letting go of control isn’t weakness—it’s the key to scaling sustainably
  • Practical insights on recent tax legislation, including misconceptions about HR.1 (the “Big Beautiful Bill”) and its provisions for overtime and tips


For the first time in 20 years, Valerie experienced a tax season where she could watch March Madness without a laptop by her side. That small moment symbolizes the bigger transformation: building a business that serves her life instead of consuming it.
 
Her story is a powerful reminder that professional success and personal fulfillment aren’t mutually exclusive. With courage, clarity, and the right strategies, you can have both.
 
👉 Ready to Charge Forward with a healthier, more balanced approach to business? Don’t miss this inspiring episode.
 

Contact Valerie Kemp CPA
🌐 https://vkdcpa.com/
📘 https://www.facebook.com/VKDCPAfirm
📱 https://www.instagram.com/vkdcpa/
☎️ 615-792-1766


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Speaker 1:

I worked for a tax attorney for 10 years before I started my firm and he was a wonderful mentor. The thing he taught me was that I wanted work-life balance because he had none but a great man. But when I went to his funeral there were a handful of our clients there Just a handful, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Hey team, jim Cripps here with the Charge Forward podcast coming to you from HitLab Studios here in Nashville, tennessee. Now I have a special treat for you today. You may remember she was my second guest on the Charge Forward podcast and she's back again to share some insights, some misconceptions and clear up things on the big beautiful bill. Welcome, ms Valerie Kemp.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for having me today.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely Now, valerie. We've been working together for a while, we have, and your firm runs way different than it used to.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, it is so much more just calm. There's just a calmness in our firm. We made some hard changes, some things that I never thought we would do, things that we never thought were possible, and it's given me and my entire team work-life balance and a better work environment. We work better as a team together and I don't feel like we're putting out fires quite as often as we were. So thank you so much for everything that you did to help that be a reality.

Speaker 2:

Well, no, it's actually. It's fun Selfishly. I love working with you because there are so many people out there that say they want to change or say they want to improve their business, and so few people actually want to go through the hard work in order to do that.

Speaker 1:

Well, I couldn't let you down. You know we've known each other for 40 something years.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And so I think that it's easy or it's not easy to make a change, but it's easier when the person who's helping you make those changes really wants to see you and your staff do better, give us more work-life balance, see our firm become more successful, and so it's been a joy to work with you, just because it's felt so cohesive, bringing us all together. I would say, if you surveyed our entire team, everyone enjoys their job and their clients and their life more now than they did a couple of years ago when we started working through this.

Speaker 2:

And I think what a lot of people don't understand about making that big a change is you will do more work in the middle to get to where you want to go.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

Because a lot of times people are like, well, this was supposed to be easier. No, no, in order for us to get to easier or get to better, we got to do some hard work.

Speaker 1:

Oh sure, it's like any journey that you have where you're trying to make a change, whether it's a lifestyle change with your diet and exercise, whether it is the high school athlete who's trying to get to that next level Change, whether it is the high school athlete who's trying to get to that next level Change ain't easy, that's right, you know. That is the pure, honest fact there. But it's so rewarding when you get through that. So, yeah, at first, when we started working together, I was like, oh my Lord, I'm going to die Because I had a big workload to start with and I had a lot of stress in my life.

Speaker 1:

And then we added this like second side hustle to it, which was working on the practice, working on the firm, working on the team, and so it was difficult, and I think it was also difficult for my team at times. We had a few very pointed conversations with one another. We had a few very pointed conversations with one another, but it is so much easier on this side of it. So I would encourage anybody who's trying to make a change, whether it is in their business, whether it is in their personal life, lifestyle change, whatever it is just keep going, because it's going to get easier.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and somebody out there right now because one of the things that you said people say all the time it's almost white noise because it gets said so much, but it really is what a lot of people are trying to figure out and it's that work-life balance and how to get more of that. And as a business owner, it almost seems unrealistic.

Speaker 1:

It really does. And I have to say, seeing it is believing, and so I told you a couple months ago I love college basketball. Love it, which is why I wonder, why did I become a CPA? Because tax season and March Madness don't go very well together, right. And so I judged this tax season as to whether or not I had good work-life balance, because it is one of the first tax seasons in the last 20 years that I can remember watching several games. Not watching games with a tax return going while I'm watching it in the background, listening to it, but actually sitting down ordering a pizza or cooking dinner and watching one of the basketball games. So it really that right.

Speaker 1:

There may sound like not a big deal to a lot of people, but it's a huge deal, and I know that there are people out there who want to go to their children's basketball games. They don't want to be stuck at the office, they want to go on vacation, they want to be with their aging parents before the time is too late, and so that was another big driver of mine my mother and grandmother. They're both getting older, and so we know that that is a finite period of time that we're going to be on this planet, and so I didn't want to just sit in front of my desk doing tax returns for clients that I love and I love what I do. But I didn't want to just sit in front of my desk doing tax returns for clients that I love and I love what I do. But I didn't want to sit there day in and day out with nothing else to feed my soul, and so it's been just wonderful working with you and it is possible.

Speaker 1:

I know we see all kinds of little diatribes and see things on Instagram and TikTok and all the social medias about work life balance, but for a self-employed individual it seems unattainable, and so I would encourage everyone to, if they are an entrepreneur, if they are self-employed, to make that be a priority, because you know, when you start a business, get that head down, work, make money, pay your bills, grow your team Numbers need to grow every year, year after year, and I still am that type A man I want to go, go, go until I hit the goal line. If you start learning how to do that early on, you are not going to be as overwhelmed as I was a couple of years ago, where I just want to throw my hands up and say forget it, let me go post out, find another job elsewhere. Sell the firm off, if I can, or just close the door Because it was to that point where it was just taking too much of my life from me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, much of my life from me, yeah, well, and that's the way I've almost always looked at money is there's a certain amount of life that I'm willing to trade for a certain amount of money, and that's also why I probably make different buying decisions than some people might think.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Because I don't want to trade that much life for that thing. And you know, when you're building a business in order to get where you're trying to go or that vision, there will be times where you've just got to put your head down and just push through Exactly.

Speaker 2:

And basically eat, sleep and breathe the business. And one of the misconceptions that I think a lot of times people run into is they say something like well, how do I find people that care as much as I do and you don't? Because if you do, that is one of the most rare things on the planet. Now I do have a client right now that has one of those and I said you do whatever you got to do to keep them. And I said you do whatever you got to do to keep them because it is so hard to find that that if you go looking for it it's like trying to find a needle in a needle stack, but it's one particular needle.

Speaker 2:

Like it's almost impossible, but you can.

Speaker 1:

in a lot of situations you can get your business running to the point where you have a little more life that goes along with your business. Oh, exactly, I have seen that and it just feels good to every day not feel such a heavy, heavy weight. Now, obviously, like you just said, there are going to be times where, head down, get it done.

Speaker 2:

Tax season.

Speaker 1:

Tax season is one of those. It's not ever going to be easy, but it's always going to feel real good when it's done. That's right, and I think what you're saying too about. You have to decide money and your time, because those are tradeoffs there. But it is possible to have work-life balance and be successful in your career. And you have to realize at some point you become unproductive. So if all you ever do is eat, sleep and breathe, whatever it is that occupation is, at some point your brain needs to be fed something else, because you can't pour from an empty cup.

Speaker 1:

I worked for a tax attorney for 10 years before I started my firm and he was a wonderful mentor. He taught me so much about the tax code, so much about business. But another thing he taught me was that I wanted work-life balance because he had none. He worked from before sunup to after sundown. He loved to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I would have to at five o'clock on Christmas Eve, say, sir, my family's Christmas started like an hour ago. Could I please go home? I know it's year end and we have a lot to do, but I kind of want to spend Christmas with my family. So he's like Ebenezer Scrooge, I guess a little bit in that regard.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly what I had in my head.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but a great man. But when I went to his funeral, there were a handful of our clients there just a handful and of the hundreds of people that he had taken time away from his family, from his he liked to do photography, things like that from his passions, his hobbies. He didn't really have any of those anymore. He didn't really have relationships with his family and I sat there at that funeral and I made a mental note You're not going to let this happen to you. And so, mentors, you can learn. Going to let this happen to you, um and so, uh, mentors, you can learn a lot from both good and bad. But I am grateful that my life, now more than ever, as I am a few years away from 50, has more work-life balance in it than it ever has.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, you know you had a couple of I don't want to say visions, but there were a couple of times where major life events happened and your team stepped up and took care of things. Yes, and then you made some pretty powerful moves, some scary moves, to kind of remove some of the stress from your business. That was not just stressing you but was stressing your team every single week.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

And right now out there somewhere there's a CPA that has a death grip on payroll. Yeah, or something else.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

That is ruining the quality of their business and the quality of their life, because they just don't think they can give that thing up, right. And so what do you? What advice do you give to somebody that, whether it's payroll or whatever, it is that they've just got this thing, that they've got a death grip on, and it's really what's holding them back?

Speaker 1:

I think they need to look at the pros and cons of it, because together we looked at what money was this making? Was this a profitable line of services that we were offering? Um, what the impact to my team was and what the impact to the culture of the office was, and so, basically, this payroll, which, I will say, there's lots of third party payroll providers out there that do an excellent job, and my bread and butter is more tax planning and strategy, not typing in hours into software to formulate a paycheck. I didn't know that two years ago, though, I thought that if our office did not offer live payroll services to our clients, that we would not have any clients, and when I looked at the numbers and it was never meant to be a super profitable service that we offered, but it was supposed to be auxiliary to other services that we offered when I talked to my team about that, when we looked at was it really profitable? When I looked at the hours spent versus the income, versus the processing fees, I realized, man, it wasn't that, it was break even, it was like losing money, and it was making my staff crazy, and so, every Friday when paychecks went out to clients, it was like everybody, hold your breath to see what shoe falls.

Speaker 1:

You know what is going to happen today, and so our office decided that we would sell off our payroll services and find another provider for our clients to use.

Speaker 1:

It's been great, and you know people don't like change, so we had some clients that did not like that. We were able to smooth things over with them and tell them why we were doing this and that it was going to be better for all of us in the long run, because what it did is allow us to focus on what's going to save them money. That's right, not just the compliance piece that lots of companies can offer, because there are so many third party payroll processors out there, but to help us have more time to do the things that we're going to serve them better. And so I don't know that I would have ever been able to let go of that if you hadn't have listened to my team and then told me look, this is a problem. Your team feels like it's constant turmoil, trying to get the hours, trying to figure out just all the things with it, and so I'm really grateful that we did that, because, having off-boarded the payroll service at the first part of this year my staff. It's so much more peaceful in the office.

Speaker 2:

It is, and when we started talking about what you were passionate about doing, the things in your business that you really liked and, at the same time, what the marketplace is really looking for is not somebody to just file taxes. It is, and these two things were aligned, but businesses need somebody that is creative and open-minded and is willing to look at all the things in the tax code and services that are out there and all types of things in order to minimize their taxable liability.

Speaker 1:

That's true. Now I want to say creative within the letter of the law.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because some people get real creative. You know that my team and I do a really good job of helping people look at their financial picture periodically during the year to see what are the tax codes that they can take advantage of. And then also, we know, since 2020, we've had a lot of tax legislation, a lot of things that have impacted businesses, and we've had to hurry and learn about those things. Most recently, you know, the one big, beautiful bill as it's being called, hr1, passed, and so that has a lot in it that impacts a wide variety of industries, a wide variety of our clients, and so I feel much better about my team and I being able to learn about that bill, see how it affects our clients, see what clients can take advantage of which pieces of it, then just help them generate a payroll check.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, the other thing too is, if we backed up two years ago, everything ran through you.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

Everything. And then I love that you're still doing your Monday meetings where somebody's taking the topic and teaching the rest of the team. How has that been transformative for the culture in your group?

Speaker 1:

Well, I think that it's helped in a variety of ways. Number one it has transferred a lot of knowledge throughout our team. It's also helped me because I've learned things from these trainings, and we've done trainings not just on tax legislation, but how to be more efficient answering emails, how to have better phone etiquette so a wide variety of topics we've been able to cover, and so it's helped us all have more knowledge. It's helped empower my team, where they really feel some ownership in that meeting and they take pride in that. We started out just doing where they would just hand out like a little handout. Now they're doing like these crazy pimped out PowerPoints with all kinds of pictures, all kinds of things, and the other thing that it's done is we're able to take that component from our weekly team meeting, pass that off to our social media team and they're able to use that to further add value to our firm for our clients.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I will say there's a big shout out to Miss Jordan.

Speaker 1:

Grubbs Amazing.

Speaker 2:

Because you recently went to a conference and got a unexpected kudos high five from, I guess, the time you walked in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I went to a tax conference, um, a couple months ago in Savannah Georgia and to sign up for the conference, you put your name, your address and, um, your website, if you had one.

Speaker 1:

And so, um, we were given an app about a week out of the conference so you could look at everybody's stuff is about 40 people there and as soon as I walked in, the people putting on the conference were like, man, your website is so great and I thought, well, they're probably selling me something, so they're just trying to butter me up. And then we got seated at tables with firms our size and we'd all kind of snooped on each other by the second day of the conference, and so I had so many people like, man, are you sure you're in a little tiny town in Tennessee Because your website is amazing? And I said, just because you're in a tiny town in Tennessee doesn't mean you can't stand up to the big city boys, you know. So she's done an amazing job at our website. She's done an amazing job with helping us look professional through our social media and engaging our audience, putting out information that they're interested in.

Speaker 2:

Well, and somebody out there right now, a CPA somewhere, is thinking I'm never going to get a client from TikTok.

Speaker 1:

Well, they would be wrong. Not only would they get a client from that, they probably have a bunch of clients sending them, texting them TikTok videos saying, hey, can I do this, hey, can I do that. What about that? There's a lot of people on TikTok and other forms of social media that are putting misinformation out there that's just trying to grab the attention of the audience, and so I think a CPA out there that's speaking the truth can definitely grow their business that way. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, and I remember the first day that you got a TikTok conversion, meaning somebody found you on TikTok and then came into business with you. Am I right that she had just moved here to the state?

Speaker 1:

Just moved to Tennessee. I asked her how she found out about us and she said TikTok. And I said what now? What? And yeah. So I mean people are using these social media platforms as their news sources, as their way to find professionals Everywhere from or anywhere, from a hairstylist to an attorney, to a CPA, to the restaurant they want to eat at this weekend. So I think that, like it or not because it's not my favorite thing, but like it or not, that's the way businesses grow now and that's also the way we have touch points with people to give them information and help them better run their businesses.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think you know one of your clients that I referred over your way. I asked them a very simple question. One of the questions that I ask when I sit down with somebody is I've got two or three tax questions that I ask that are pretty servicey, but if it's the wrong answer, it tells me right off the bat they need a new CPA. Answer it tells me right off the bat they need a new CPA. And I asked one of my typical questions and it was the wrong answer and they said well, we saw a tick tock recently and we sent that over to our CPA and we haven't heard back. And I said how long ago was that? A couple months. And I mean immediately.

Speaker 2:

I was like, okay, well, you're, you're going to need to talk to Valerie. And it did take several months for that to happen. But they ended up with you and they're ecstatic. Their business is running better than it's ever run. And I think it was just the right time, in that you were kind of changing how your firm was operating. They were changing the scope of their business and really it's just been like rocket fuel for them changing the scope of their business and really it's just been like rocket fuel for them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I really like being able to watch clients propel their business and let them do what they do best, which is make a better widget, and we can help them figure out how to make that at a lower cost or at a better tax rate savings, and so that's what really fires me up is that strategic planning aspect of it.

Speaker 1:

At the end of the year, tax returns and tax season. That's basically just putting numbers where the IRS wants them. It's the during the year stuff that I really like and I think our team excels at, because we have gotten to be on the ground floor of businesses starting out that are looking to lease property, trying to decide whether to buy how many employees that they can hire new product lines, and man, it is so exciting to get to sit down with that person and say, look what we did. We work with a nonprofit that is a growing nonprofit and yesterday they were able to secure their first piece of property that the nonprofit owns. They've been paying rent for a lot of their facilities and so I got to go to that closing and I felt like a proud mama.

Speaker 1:

That's right you know, like I was. Just I know that they thought I was crazy because I said give me your cell phones and I start taking pictures all over that closing room because I was like we got to document this. This is a big, big deal. And so, man, I get goosebumps even thinking about it, because we're on that ground floor with them and, uh, they're scrapping and trying to make things work, trying to get grant money, trying to figure out how to rob Peter to pay Paul, and now they bought their own facility.

Speaker 1:

And so uh, it's, uh, it's, it's so rewarding.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think it's totally fine for us to give them a shout out, so I'll let you do the honors.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So Hustle Recovery. They are a nonprofit in the state of Tennessee that helps people recovering from addiction, so they are kind of like your one stop shop. If you need to get into rehab, they will get you into rehab. They have rehabilitation services. They have an intensive outpatient service. When you get out of the rehabilitation center they have a work program, a housing program, and it's just an amazing thing to watch these men and women come into the program that have just had life beat the hell completely out of them and then to watch them. You know, a year later, nine months later, however long it is graduate with money in their pocket to be able to buy. You know, put a down payment on a vehicle, put a down payment first and last month's rent on an apartment and get their lives back, or some. They've never had a life like this. It's just been a total life of couch surfing and from one addiction to the next, and so I commend the people at Hustle and I am just ecstatic to get to be a little bit a part of it.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think it's one of those things where I think the reason why they didn't immediately go oh, I've got to get my phone out to take a picture of this closing, but you did I think the reason for that is they get excited about their work. Their work is changing people's lives, getting them out of addiction. Your work that supports them is what has allowed them to buy their first property. So the same excitement level they get of turning somebody's life around, you get that type of excitement when now this company has become legitimate.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I do.

Speaker 2:

And is now kind of building its own firm foundation that it'll be able to take care of people for years to come.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's so true. And, having been in business for almost 20 years, I have watched people plan for their children's college, plan for how their business was going to support their family, and now I'm watching those kids go to college, or those kids are starting to have children of their own. And so to be able to watch that progression of financial stability, wealth building, asset management, like it just is, and it's wonderful, and I hope that every professional in my field gets to feel that, because that is what lets me on the days that are really hard during tax season, that's what keeps me going, because I have been able to see people make such progress with their finances, with their families, livelihood, and it's just a beautiful thing to watch.

Speaker 2:

So we haven't talked about this one. But I have often wondered. When you talk about Mr Tom Harris, I have often wondered if he worked until he was in the ground, because so you said it earlier that he would work day and night, year round, on these people's tax returns Wouldn't turn anybody away. He wanted to do every single one of them he could do, and then very few of those clients came to his funeral. I often wonder if the reason he didn't stop was because that's how he felt connected to people.

Speaker 1:

It could be. It very well could be, because I do think that there is a big connection between me and my clients. I mean they become like family and dear friends, because if you're doing their taxes and you're keeping up with their businesses, you know everything about them, because people will tell you some all kinds of stuff to see if it's a tax deduction, and year after year you're helping them plan and watching them grow and so I do think you build a relationship and a closeness with your clients, which I'm a people person and I don't want my life to be transactional, I want it to be relationship driven. So I really enjoy that aspect of my business and I've really never thought about that, but hearing you say that that could very well be why he did that.

Speaker 2:

Well, the reason, classically the reason that people struggle in retirement is because, let's just say, I work in a business and I have 20 people in my office. Well, I'm around 20 people all day, every day, five days a week. Most people don't have a social structure that is robust enough to carry them through retirement, meaning they leave the office where they're around 20 people every day, even if it's work related, but they're still the water cooler talk or the stopping by the office to say, you know, congratulations, or somebody's birthday or whatever Right. And most people don't consciously make sure that they grow their social circle enough to be able to support their social needs when they retire. So there's this depression that people go into.

Speaker 1:

I think that that's true, because you do hear about having work friends and friends outside of work, and so if you don't have that social circle built up or other things to take the place of work, I can imagine that it's a very difficult progression into retirement. I know that my parents, as you know, owned a small chain of grocery stores and they were fortunate enough to be able to sell those off, retain ownership of the property, but the first couple years after they retired they didn't know what to do with themselves because they weren't just around their employees, they were around the whole community, because everybody came in there buying groceries and they get to see them and catch up and all that, and so it was almost like there was a mourning period for what do we do? And so they became super involved in their church and that stimulated that for them. So I can I can definitely see that.

Speaker 2:

Well, we were talking about one just yesterday because I did not know and thinking back on it, it should have connected for me, but I did not know that your dad hired Jason Apple.

Speaker 1:

That's true. Yes, he did.

Speaker 2:

And he's still there today. He's the store manager at the Pleasant View location Right and he's crushing it. I actually met the owner and I'm drawing a blank on her name.

Speaker 1:

Sherry Means.

Speaker 2:

I met her the other day and she was an absolute joy. But you could tell she was excited about what Apple is doing there in that store and you know she let him run his show.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, they have empowered him and by empowering him he has run away with that grocery store. So my parents sold that store to Essency Foods and my father would be so proud of that grocery store, so proud of that grocery store. You know, sometimes when you go into a business that you used to work at or your family was affiliated with or you used to own, there's that they should do it this way. We know a better way to do it.

Speaker 1:

Man, when I go in there, I'd love to find something to criticize, because it makes me feel like the Kemp family wasn't on point, because they have made it just this fantastic grocery store in Pleasant View, tennessee. So if you're anywhere near Pleasant View, hg Hills in Pleasant View, sherry Means, jason Apple and their team have done an amazing job. They had a seafood extravaganza the weekend of 4th of July. I may have been their best customer that day, I don't know, but I bought so much seafood and it was just amazing to have that fresh flown in seafood right in the middle of good old Pleasant View, tennessee, located in between Nashville and Clarksville, and they're just doing an amazing job.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they are. Well, I think the reason that conversation came up was because of how proud you thought your dad would be of what Jason's doing. You know, going from a part-time stalker. Oh, yeah, yeah Now he's running what is probably the flagship of HG Hills.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, I think that when you're able to see somebody at their very beginning, you know the that, that little little beginning there, and see what they have excelled into. And it was not because of anything that my father did, not because of anything that we did. It was because Jason just found his passion and cultivated that and became an expert in his field, and so I get great joy and satisfaction out of watching people like that just grow into their own, doing what they are meant to do, and I know without a doubt, having grown up in the grocery business, that he is exactly where he needs to be.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely so. If you're anywhere near Pleasant View, even if you're not, make a trip over to HG Hill Food Store right there. What's the address? Do you know?

Speaker 1:

Highway 49 and Highway 41A. It's at the cross section there. You can't miss it.

Speaker 2:

That's it. But you will absolutely be impressed with that store and just how it's run, the fantastic faces that you'll see when you're there I'm not going to say everybody, but almost everybody will have a smile on their face just because they're in a community grocery store serving the community and it's just great to see. All right, valerie, we've got some big stuff to talk about, regardless of political affiliations. There's a lot of misconceptions, there's a lot of misunderstandings, there's a lot of questions about the big beautiful bill or H1, hr.1, hr.1. So, in your experience so far, what do you think is maybe the biggest misconception of what it is or what it isn't?

Speaker 1:

So you know, regardless of political affiliation or your viewpoint, some people think that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Some people think that it is going to be the worst thing in the world for the US debt and the economy. But there are some common misconceptions, and the reason that there are so many misconceptions is because, if you'll remember, it was in the early part of this year of 2025 that it was introduced, and so it's gone back and forth, back and forth, back and forth on what's included, what's not included. The final law was signed into existence on July 4th by the president, and so one of the biggest misconceptions is that there will be no tax on bonuses. So originally, when this passed the House, there was not going to be any tax on bonuses.

Speaker 1:

Tips and overtime Bonuses were excluded from the final law that was enacted, from the final law that was enacted, and so we do have tips and we also have overtime that are exempt. Now there are rules around that. There are income limitations and there is also caps on how much you can deduct, but one of the biggest misconceptions around that is everybody thinks that when they get paid that overtime, when they get paid those tips, they won't have any taxes come out on it. So we've had a lot of people reach out to us and say hey, I worked overtime.

Speaker 1:

My boss took federal income tax, social Security, medicare off of this. I know he's not supposed to because this was enacted for 2025. Please, you call him up and tell him he didn't know what he's doing. Well, we can't do that because the way to take that deduction is when you actually file your taxes at the end of the year. So when you file your taxes for 2025, you'll be able to take an exemption for overtime and for tips.

Speaker 1:

Now, there's caps on that and there's also income limitations on that. It's only federal income tax that you will not be paying on that. You'll still pay Social Security, you'll still pay Medicare. One of the reasons that they enacted the law with that is because one of the biggest issues that they got hung up on which is why it took so long to pass it is because we hear all the time how Social Security is running out of money, right? So a lot of the people in Washington said hey, if you exempt overtime and you exempt tips and they don't have to pay Social Security on those, you're exacerbating the problem of Social Security running out of money sooner. So it is subject to Social Security, it is subject to Medicare, and so that's one of those concessions that they made to be able to pass that.

Speaker 2:

And is it $150,000? Is the cap as far as income cap or where you start to phase out?

Speaker 1:

I do know that the overtime is $150,000 for single. It phases out $300,000 for married. So if you go over that you would not be able to take the deduction for that overtime.

Speaker 2:

Which is probably why it is at the end of the year that that shakes out versus throughout the year.

Speaker 1:

Exactly that's the reason that they did that, Because you won't know until the end of the year what you and your spouse's income will be. Or people have income not just from that W-2. So they may have investment income, they may have retirement income, they may have other things like that. So it's at the end of the year that they take that deduction.

Speaker 2:

Well, and somebody out there is thinking, oh well, they're getting over on me. No, the reality is they're trying to protect you from accidentally going over that number. And then, all of a sudden, you don't qualify for that and now you have a significant tax debt to the IRS and I can tell you you do not want to owe the IRS money.

Speaker 1:

No, you do not, and that is their logic behind that. For sure, and as a tax preparer and I speak for a lot of tax preparers when I say this we are so glad that they did it this way because we don't have to worry about it every single payroll cycle. We don't have to worry about what if you have overtime, your wife doesn't have overtime, but you're going to exceed that $300,000 threshold. So it's much better, like what you said, so they're not looking at a big tax bill when they get there at the end of the year.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's kind of protecting people from themselves, exactly.

Speaker 1:

It is Because protecting people from themselves, exactly it is.

Speaker 2:

Because that would be terrible to get to the end of the year and all of a sudden you owe $20,000 in taxes that didn't get collected.

Speaker 1:

That is true, and we don't want that to happen. We do not, because along with that comes penalties and interest as well. So we don't want that to happen.

Speaker 2:

Another big misconception is Team. Is Jim Cripps here with the Charge Forward Podcast? I just want to tell you I love you. I appreciate you listening, I appreciate you for subscribing and sharing the Charge Forward Podcast with people you know and you love, because that's what we're here for. We are here to share the amazing stories, the things that people have been through, the ways that they were able to improve their life, so that you can take little nuggets from theirs and help improve your story and be better tomorrow than you were today. I hope that this is the tool you needed at the right time and that you find value in the amazing guests that we bring each and every week. Thanks so much and don't forget new episodes drop every Thursday.