We all want to hold public officials accountable for paying their fair share of taxes, but just as importantly, we want to see how legally they save hundreds of thousands of dollars. You don’t have to be a politician to pull a page from their playbook and save your hard-earned money, too. After all, it’s not how much you make, but what you keep after taxes. Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. I’m joined by author Charles Renwick, who’s here to talk about his new book called All the Presidents’ Taxes. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to the show. I’m here with author Charles Renwick, who just launched a very important book, I think. It’s a very amazing, easy-to-read book about All the Presidents’ Taxes. I think I have some interesting questions. I know our audience will, too. I think this is something really interesting that our social fabric has always wondered about. Charles, thanks for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you.

Charles Renwick: Thanks, Hussein, a pleasure to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. This is exciting for me because these are questions that I feel like, I’ve always like, your eyebrow raises when you hear like, “The president pays $3 for taxes.” You’re like, “What?” You know what I mean? We’re going to get into all that good stuff because you have an amazing book filled with just historical references, and just ways of looking at this tax code, and how our past presidents and current president all do this thing, but also how we can benefit from all of it, which I’m really excited about. Before we get into all that, I’d love to know a little bit about you. Your personal background, perhaps where you grew up, and maybe a person or a place that inspired you to go down the path that you’re on today.

Charles Renwick: Well, great. I’m really excited to talk about the book. I agree with everything you said. It is something that’s really intriguing. For sure, that was part of the impetus. From my background perspective, I have a fairly unique background. My dad was actually born in Malaysia. My mom’s from Georgia. My dad was in Malaysia because at the time it was a British Commonwealth. He ends up moving to Scotland when he was young. They met in college when my mom was studying abroad in Scotland. She brought him back to the United States, so to speak. He’s a Presbyterian Minister.

I grew up a son of a preacher in a couple of different places, primarily in Lexington, Kentucky. Then I went to the University of Georgia, which is where my mom’s family had gone to school. My mom’s father was a politician in Georgia. I naturally followed in that direction, thinking I was going to go to law school. Then when I was in college, I started helping with a political campaign. The guy was running for Congress and he was an accomplished attorney. I started asking him for advice in terms of what area of the law he thought I might be good at in terms of practice. He suggested that I start taking accounting courses. He had a partner that he said, kept the lights on at his firm, and he was a tax attorney, his partner was a tax attorney.

I thought that was great because I was really good at math, but I also really liked reading and writing and tax is a bit of both. So it was a good combination of those skills. I start taking the classes, and all of a sudden I realized, “Hey, I really liked accounting.” I don’t even really want to go to law school. I started practicing accounting. I started my career at Ernst and Young in Atlanta. This is just a very large accounting firm. It’s one of the big four accounting firms. Then I moved into what’s called Industry. I then left the Big Four accounting firm and went to work for a large multinational company, I was still in Atlanta. Then we moved to Louisiana. I hung my shingle so to speak and started cutting my teeth learning how to do individual tax returns, and individual business tax returns.

It was really a bit of a career change even though I was an accountant and Atlanta corporate Accounting, an individual in small business accounting is really a completely different thing. Some of the principles are the same. You obviously need to understand income statements and balance sheets, and know where to find answers and problem-solving, and understand how laws are made and where the rules come from. If you haven’t done it before, you haven’t done it before. So I hadn’t done it. I was thrown into the deep end, primarily because I didn’t want to commute anymore. I wanted to work close to home. I wanted to have my own practice. I didn’t want to have to drive into the city every day. So I said, “Hey, you know what? I can do this.” I took the opportunity. We moved. We moved to Louisiana, really as a family decision. We were having kids and so forth. Probably the best decision I ever made was to go out on my own. I started doing taxes for people and that’s really where I’ve been for the last eight years.

Tackling Taxes

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow. Yeah, man. I mean, I feel like one journey always leads to the next. I feel like the people that we come across, whether it be our parents, our uncles, or whatever, or just people that we start working with. I think it’s really powerful that you were given the opportunity to think about doing accounting. Then how it aligned with just what you enjoy, what you’re really good at, and what you lean into. Of course, like going into the corporate world to understand how that stuff all just works and plays out. I’m glad that you took the leap because it sounds like that’s really where you found your nook, your space of really—finding what you’re really good at great and serving the community.

How does this book really come about? I mean, I feel like we certainly ask a lot about how politicians on a daily basis, go about doing these kinds of things, whether it be their businesses, or whether they don’t pay taxes, or we can’t see their taxes, and all these kinds of questions, especially in the last, I would say, eight years, people have been really interested. I’m sure they’d been interested longer than that I feel with the advent of social media, and in the last few presidents have shaken things up a little bit, which made a lot of people, especially younger people really curious and trying to figure out where the transparency is. How did this book come to be? Like, did you decide, I want to clarify some of these questions or answers, or was it your own search of trying to put things together?

Charles Renwick: Well, that’s a great question. For sure, over the recent years, it’s coming to intense focus at the national level. One hundred percent follow national politics. I was aware that the issue, but really what it came down to, as most small business owners know. I became a small business owner. At the end of the day, no matter what your profession, whether or not your accountant, an attorney, a small business owner, a tradesman, or you’re contractor, you have to not only manage a business, but you have to learn how to sell your services. I’ve been working and I started working and reading about how to sell. When it came down to it, one of the main things I was selling is a tax plan.

The actual preparation of the tax return is one thing that is a bit of a commodity, though, what’s not a commodity is the plan itself. For almost all small business owners, once you even taste a little bit of success, it really is not. You don’t even need that much success. Tax, income tax, and payroll tax become your largest expense by a factor of three or four, right? Tax is incredibly important to small business people. I took what I was learning about selling and how that would make me a successful owner of an accounting firm. Also looked at the people to whom I was selling, and developed these plans. So oftentimes, I would have a plan. For example, they would come to me with their facts and circumstances. I would say, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do this, this, and this.” I’m projecting and I can’t make promises. It’s unethical for a CPA to make promises as it relates to tax outcomes.

I could say things like in general, when people do things like this, they save X percentage or X amount of dollars. A lot of times that amount of savings is significantly greater than the cost of the actual planning and tax preparation. That is actually a very easy thing to sell when I can sell something that’s value-added on both sides. That’s what we call right, a win-win. What ends up happening is that individuals small business owners are skeptical. They say, “Wait a second. Really? Is it true that what you’re telling me can save me this amount of money?” They want some reassurances that what they’re doing isn’t illegal, because they’re naturally concerned about not wanting to break the law, not wanting to run afoul of the IRS, right? These are things that people should be concerned about.

What I found myself saying, especially with one of the more popular small business tax strategies was, “This is what Joe Biden does. Look it up.” Right? He saved half a million dollars doing this. You can do it too. Then some other real estate strategies, for example, I would say, “This is what Donald Trump does. You don’t believe me? Google it.” Right? It turns out that that was a very effective way to close a deal where if there was skepticism, the main objective, the main objection to implementing a tax plan was the skepticism. That turning the tables so to speak, saying, “Hey, here’s this, like them or not, there’s a very high likelihood that they have very skilled tax professionals helping them.” If they’re using this strategy, you can feel confident that it’s a reliable strategy that you can use, too.

It really was this—then a combination of these things are in the national press, right? They’re naturally going to come up when I tell people to google it. A lot of people, I would just say, hey, that I would give that pitch. That would close the deal. There were definitely some people that said, “Okay, I’m going to think about it.” They would go home. Do the research, and then come back and sign up as well. It was just a very effective closing argument, so to speak. What better thing to write about, than something that can help people, but it’s also nationally interesting? It was just, it just seemed like a, I was surprised that no one else had done it yet. I leaped at the opportunity because again, I’ve always liked writing and politics. Here I can write about politics and taxes. It helps people. I mean, that’s great.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s a win-win, win situation. I love—

Charles Renwick: Right.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, because it bridges together, not only what you’re passionate about, but what you’re really good at as well, which is – I think, for me when I was a small business owner, and like, still am in a lot of ways. My own personal brand, and all that good stuff. When I talk with my accountant or tax people, I’m always trying to figure out like, what can I do now to ensure X, Y, or Z at the end of the year, or whatever? Right? When I was younger, as a small business owner, it was always way too late at the end of the year. “Oh, I should have done X, Y, and Z throughout the year to do this.” It was just learning. It was such a huge learning curve. I feel like as small business owners like you said, you just want to sell your product or sell your service or do the craft, the thing that you’re good at, and this stuff is really hard. When you tie in this idea that looks—our president is applying this tax strategy. It’s X, Y, and Z. It’s like, “Oh, it’s not illegal?” Well, yeah, because the President is doing.

Charles Renwick: Exactly.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Here’s the problem, though, right? Because you talk about this in your book, you talk about—you bring in a story of Richard Nixon, right? Where there are some ways that people either avoid taxes or you go into depth which is very cool. What are the most challenging, or maybe common misconceptions that people have about taxes? Certainly misconceptions about how the presidents do taxes. What are the common misconceptions there?

Common Misconceptions about Taxes

Charles Renwick: Oh, that’s a great question. As it relates to Nixon and just as it relates to this question, in particular. What I like to say is that there’s black, there’s white, and there’s gray. Okay. It is the case 100% that some people commit tax fraud. We talked about this in the book. We distinguish between what is tax fraud? What is tax avoidance? That is the crux of tax planning. You do not ever want to commit tax fraud, right? But there is nothing illegal about tax avoidance. Taxes are an inherent part of taxes. There are two main parts of taxes. Raising revenue for the government, but also incentivizing behavior or de-incentivizing behavior, so I drill into these two things, right, because that is a critical distinction.

If the government is trying to incentivize behavior, and the way they’re doing that is by giving credits or charging more tax on certain activities. Listen, there’s a big tax on cigarettes and pretty much every state. There are national taxes on things like gasoline, right? You can avoid, legally avoid paying taxes on cigarettes by not buying cigarettes, right? Like that’s obviously not illegal, right? If you can avoid that tax, why can’t you avoid other types of taxes? The answer is you can. You can avoid certain taxes if you structure things properly. If you avoid certain activities and here’s the other thing. You can actually get tax benefits if you do certain things. There are certain industries that in there certain business structures that have tax advantages.

If you learn, if you take a minute to understand what is tax-advantaged, and what’s not tax-advantaged, you may still decide. You know what? I want to have a business that engages in making and selling tobacco. Great, that’s a business decision. You just now need to understand that there are tax consequences to that decision, right? You might equally decide. You know what? I want to have a business that invests in real estate. Okay, that’s a great decision, because that business has lots of tax advantages, right? You can decide, and it changes your decision-making as an individual, as a business owner, and as an investor, what the tax consequences are because the tax consequences are material. This is real money. Does that make sense?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. That’s really powerful, too. Just like in thinking about that, right, it’s like, I feel like, I had maybe 10 to 15 sessions with all my tax people to finally understand some of the stuff you’re talking about right now. For young like small business owners, solopreneurs, of course, or people just that are basically just navigating those landscapes, it’s difficult. It’s difficult to get this stuff right. What are your, I guess, strategies in thinking about who you want to hire to help you with these kinds of things? Because I love this idea of, look, here’s what you do, here is what you’re into, here are all the benefits of being in this world, and here’s the things that you should avoid, or the traps that you should avoid, or whatever laying out the plan is so crucial.

What are some, I guess, tactical pieces of advice would you give to someone who, let’s say, I own a business, or a small business owner, five to 10 employees? What things, let’s say, they’re in the tech industry, right, where everything is online. What are some tax—I guess, advantages or ways to think about your taxes and expenses, of course, that could really help lay out a plan and a foundation for yourself?

Charles Renwick: That’s crucial, right? The plan, the foundation, and really, that’s to some extent, the purpose of the book. The book has a bit of—I would say, like a call to action, which is, we need the presidents to publish their tax returns. We need a national law that requires Presidents to publish tax returns, for a lot of reasons. There are obviously, civic duties that we want to make sure are being upheld. Another thing that’s really important and which I think the national media misses a little bit is that the tax returns are a great way to educate the public on the tax laws, right?

The conversation, obviously, nationally is toxic, right? It’s accusations on all sides. What this book tries to do is say, “Timeout, let’s actually learn from this information. This is really good information.” It’s very valuable to see returns that are prepared by the highest, most professional accountants in the country, right? The people that did President Trump’s tax returns are the best of the best. The people doing Ted Cruz’s, and Joe Biden’s are not the starter, level one accountants working on these returns. These are high quality returns, right? Using this opportunity to then learn about the opportunities within the tax code, learn about how our tax code is structured, and learn about the differences between tax fraud and tax avoidance, right? Just learning about that is step one, right?

Once you feel comfortable with this underlying structure of what is this really important thing. It’s super important for our nation as a whole, right? The tax code is probably the most important section of our national laws. It’s a very important section of all of our state laws, right? Understanding these competing incentives in terms of our competing priorities in terms of incentivizing behavior and raising revenue and where do I fit into this with what I want to do and how I want to make money, just learning that. It’s really not that complex in terms of the high level, right?

This is a great opportunity for everybody across the spectrum whether or not you’re a small business owner, you’re a W2 employee, you’re just somebody—a gig worker, like you were talking about, right? Learning where you fit into this is step number one, right? Then once you understand the pros and cons and the do’s and don’ts at a high level. Then executing, right? So this book isn’t really about the execution of a plan. It’s really about, hey, here are the high-level things that are going on in our tax system.

Here are the high-level things that these presidents have done. Here’s how you can apply these same things and actually recognize meaningful results just with these high-level concepts. You don’t have to even go out and pay a professional to start doing some of these things. Although I do highly recommend it as it relates to any business when you look at any line item on a business’s income statement. If it’s 10%, if it’s 15%, if it’s 20% of the bottom line, obviously, you should be engaging someone that’s a professional that can focus on that full time.

I certainly think it’s very valuable to engage a CPA to help with your taxes. I think step number one is at least learning, because a lot of people are scared to engage a CPA, because they don’t want to look stupid, right? They don’t want to go into an accountant’s office, whether or not it’s their friend, whether or not it’s a professional, they were referred to. They don’t want to go in there and not know anything. So they’re scared. A book like this really, helps people get that high level, know what questions to ask, and have a basic understanding of the structure. You definitely aren’t going to be stupid going into that tax meeting after you’ve read this book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. I love that. That’s so powerful because we all know that knowledge is very powerful. It helps, it answers those things, so that the fears can at least calm down for you to take some action.

Charles Renwick: Right.

Approaching Taxes With Confidence

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I think for me, man. I mean, hiring my first accountant, I was terrified, because you’re 100% right, I felt so, just overwhelmed with—man, I feel like I am failing, even though I was like, I had a pretty decently successful printing business. I felt like I didn’t know what the hell I was doing when it came to taxes or anything like that. So when I finally started bringing help, luckily, she was amazing, and just super kind and really helpful in helping me just understand things. The questions that we have, especially as young entrepreneurs or people as you said, even if you have a job, just go in there and ask the questions, because that’s what a CPA does—part of their job is to help answer those questions, and help you really determine a plan that can best fit your needs.

That took me a while, it took me a couple of years for me to really lean in and trust that, right? Because I feel like as a small business owner like every dollar counts, of course, but you don’t know that 30, 40 cents of that is going to taxes. You got to figure that out soon, sooner than later.

Where did you find the most like giving this chunk of advice is probably the thing that moves the lever, right? For entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, or people who just have a job, right? Their doctors or engineers or lawyers or whatever, what was the piece of advice that you always like to give for people to make that shift or move the lever a little bit in a way that gives them confidence?

Charles Renwick: Yeah. That’s exactly, you hit the nail on the head really, is that getting past that fear, what’s the confidence? Really, when you put numbers on paper is really where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, especially a lot of small business owners, it’s really that first year that they’re successful. If they haven’t implemented a tax plan already, right? If they didn’t plan ahead, they see that first tax bill, and they don’t have the money. It’s a sad situation, because they’re sitting there and they’re doing their best to be an entrepreneur, grow the economy, potentially hire new employees, and get a $30,000 tax bill, right?

They don’t know what to do, and they get scared. Then worst-case scenario, they stop even filing their taxes, and they completely drop out of compliance. That really strangles their growth, because if you’re not in compliance with your taxes, and if you’re not doing your taxes properly, you’re going to have very limited ability to access capital, right? You’re certainly going to have a very difficult time borrowing money from the bank. It’s really, to me, you have to be comfortable with taxes. If you’re going to be a small business owner, you have to understand and you have to be prepared for it, whether or not you’re a real estate agent. A lot of people don’t realize real estate agents or 1099, which means they’re a small business owner too, right?

Real estate agents doing it for the first time get a 1099 for $50,000. If they haven’t planned they’re getting a big tax bill, right? Knowing when to plan, not being afraid to plan, not letting that first tax bill where you missed the boat, you missed it that first year, you better get on board, right? Because if you’re not implementing a tax plan for the next year, and if you don’t set up the payment plan, or if you don’t get that first one settled with the IRS, then your business is not going to succeed. You got to bite the bullet, either have planned ahead and the best obvious scenario is you planned ahead and you were in front of it. But if you weren’t in front of it that first year, you just got to bite the bullet and you got to get ahead of it for the next year because if you don’t, it’s going to pile up. That’s not good for your business long term.

I think for a lot of people, it really is that first year. Even if they’re using an accountant, they think maybe, “Hmm, this seems like a lot of money.” Yeah, definitely get a second opinion, right? Don’t, this is an important thing in your life. Don’t just trust the first person you talk to. Talk to a couple of people, make the right decision, and get some recommendations from your friends, or some other small business owners that are already successful. Talk to them about what they did. Read some books, right? Read this book, read – do some Google searches. There’s so much you can find just on the internet about all of this tax planning and listen to podcasts, right?

There’s a lot that people can do. I think just making an interesting, right, just with all things is part of the challenge. A lot of people just throw up their hands and say, “I don’t know how to do it.” Right? Well, just teaching anything, if we can make it interesting for him. I’m excited because I do think there’s a subset of the population that’s very interested in politics. In that group of people, they’re small business owners that hopefully I can reach and get to them either before they start their next business, or they’ve already had this situation where they’re in a bit of a pickle and owe the IRS money. They don’t really know what the next steps are. Then just generally, educating the public as a civic duty, I’m just excited about the whole breadth that this book hits.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Dude, I’ll tell you right now, man. I, from a professional perspective, definitely have owed my fair share of taxes, because I throw so much, I didn’t know. I always used to toss it up to, “Shit, I don’t know.” You know what I mean? Like I don’t want to deal with that and I just avoided it, put it on the back burner. Those were huge mistakes. I’ll be honest. I feel like, I’m still navigating those mistakes today. This was years ago, but I still trying to figure out and fix my stuff. I’m on the back end. It’s one of those things, man, where taxes, I feel like obviously, I don’t care to pay them. I feel like it’s my privilege to be an American, to be a part of this society, this culture. It’s being distributed and all those kinds of things. I have my fair share of like, I shouldn’t go there, but those are things that are out of my control.

However, you’re 100%, right. The more I learned, the more I read, and the more I listened to a podcast here or there. The more I just my fears just went down a little bit. I’m like, okay, I know what question I can ask. I know what I can bring back to the table. I know what I need to email my CPA now. Just like, overcoming that fear of like, saying like, this can work against me the rest of my life, or this could work with me and for me, the rest of my life. It’s that shift that I think for me, happened like two, three years ago, that I was like, “Okay, there’s obviously a lot of people that are doing this in real estate, or a small business owner, whatever.” But they never talk about any of this stuff.

It sounds like they have it all figured out, right? It’s because whether they have a whole team behind it, or they’re just not talking about it, because it’s very uncomfortable. I love having this conversation, because it eases the pressure, right? It’s like if you can get in front of the right person that can help you set up a structure and get your things back in order. That’s the plan you want to go with. I love that. Your book really opened my eyes to that.

Charles Renwick: Well, I just think what you’re saying really makes sense. It really drills into this really underlying concept that’s similar to the competing objectives that I talked about in terms of revenue versus incentivizing behavior, but when you’re talking about, “Hey, it is what it is. I owe what I owe.” That’s really where tax planning shifts away from that idea. It isn’t, it is what it is. I owe what I owe. There’s no obligation to pay more than you owe, right? There’s not this overlying thing like, “Hey, you need to pay your fair share. It’s not the individual, small business owner. It’s not the individual small business owner’s responsibility to determine what their fair share is. That’s already been determined by the government when the government passed the laws, right?

There was a separate political process that establishes what everybody’s fair share is. Once that process is done, once those laws are passed, we are free to take advantage of those laws, right? If those laws result in me or you or even the most powerful person in the United States, the President not paying any taxes, that’s what it is. There’s no ethics beyond that. It’s saying, “Oh, he didn’t pay any money. That’s not ethical.” Well, if he engaged in a lot of activity that was incentivized by the government. If you engage in a lot of activity that’s incentivized by the government, you’re not going to owe any taxes either. That wasn’t your ethical decision. That was the population’s decision when we elected representatives.

The book talks about that a little bit in terms of, we have a representational democracy. We have a legislative process. The legislative process is inherently ethical decision-making. People might argue whether or not our process is corrupt. The fact of the matter is, our process is better than all the other processes. We have a democratic process that has withstood the test of time and is very fair, there is no popular uprising, saying, “Hey, let’s get rid of the tax code.” It’s just not the case. The tax code is widely supported. It’s just the fact of the matter is, our tax code is ethical because it was passed ethically. If it results in somebody not paying taxes, that’s an okay result. We can’t get angry when a president doesn’t owe any money. If we don’t like that it’s not his fault. It’s you have a problem with the laws.

You can say, “Hey, we need to change laws. We think real estate shouldn’t be an advantage—to get tax advantages.” The problem is, there are a lot of people that do think real estate should receive tax advantages, right? It’s just there’s a wide consensus that real estate should enjoy some tax advantages because the government believes that growing the real estate industry and building buildings and developing properties is a productive thing for our economy. That’s where the ethical decision was made. It wasn’t made when the person fills out their tax return and it shows that they don’t owe any money. You don’t owe any more than you owe. That’s the facts.

Giving Benefit of the Doubt

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. Yeah. It’s really powerful to put that in context and to realize that again, this whole for me, I guess, when I made the mind shift is that, there are things in place, but they’re not there to be against me. They’re there to work for me and with me. If I can understand them, and realize how I can use them in an appropriate way, I can basically take advantage of what’s available to me. I think, when we think about politicians, when we think about extremely wealthy people, well, yeah, they have a team of people or teams of people that are sitting there working really hard diligently, every single day, figuring out ways to maximize their potential of where taxes should be paid.

I’ll be honest, from my perspective, there are a few things, of course, I don’t agree with, right? How people take advantage of things, but it’s because of my lack of knowledge, right? It’s because of and when these people know how to apply these things to their respective income and all those kinds of things. Then there’s an opportunity for them to grow. But because I don’t know that, I think for me, the anger or the frustration, or the emotional aspect of things, those are the things that we tap into and it’s like, “I can’t control that, but what can I control? How can I help myself go forward?” Well, there are a lot of tax advantages in real estate. Well, okay. Let’s dig into that. Let’s pick up a few books as you said. Like knowledge in a sense, it creates that freedom especially lessens the burden of fear. Then you can go into that space, knowing how to navigate it.

Man, that book is so powerful. I can’t wait to swim through it throughout the week and the weekend. I’m really excited to have had you today, Charles. Besides all that good stuff around the book. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together? Because I know as you said earlier, you like to read, you like to write, and of course, do taxes. You bridge them all together, but what was your favorite part of this journey?

Charles Renwick: I think really, the thing that I enjoy the most is that I think this is just a really timely topic. It’s getting lots of attention. I really am discouraged, probably like most people just at the tone, the National tone when it comes to politics, the accusations of corruption, and the intent things getting at. It’s just really tearing our country apart in many respects. It’s tearing families apart. I’m really excited to maybe tone it down a little bit, shift the focus and say, “Hey, let’s take the approach that—let’s give everybody the benefit of the doubt, right? That’d be a great place to start. If we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt, why don’t we learn from them, too? Let’s not pull everybody down. Let’s build people up. Let’s learn from the things that are going on around us. Let’s have a civil discussion about it. We can see these consequences. If you don’t the consequences, there’s a civil way to change them.

Let’s not attack people and on this topic in particular, there’s a lot of let’s jump to conclusions, right? Let’s give people the benefit of the doubt, so I really want to shift that I’m excited. It’s exciting to be part of that. As I’m writing the book, obviously there are developments happening in the world. Obviously, Trump’s world is evolving. Biden’s world is evolving. There are new candidates coming out. So this is not going to be a topic that goes away. So this is book number one. I’m really excited. I hope it’s a success. I hope people go out and they buy it, and they read it, and they enjoy it. I’m also excited, because I already, pretty much have enough content for Book number two, just in the things that have happened, really, since this book was pretty much finalized in the fall.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. Well, Charles, I’ve learned so much. I can’t wait, not only to get through it myself, but I can’t wait to get this book out in the world and see what it can do. I’m sure like you said, helps evolve the conversation to more of a positive one, when we can all learn and sit down, and learn from and really educate ourselves and our friends or colleagues. I think it’s really powerful. Thank you for taking the time to put your wisdom down. It’s such a cool way to weave in the questions that I feel are inherent in our culture today. Again, man. Thanks for your time, Charles. I learned so much. The book is called All the Presidents’ Taxes: What We Can Learn (and Borrow) From the High-Stakes World of Presidential Tax-Paying. So besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you? LinkedIn? Any special websites, all that good stuff?

Charles Renwick: Sure. Yeah. Obviously LinkedIn, Google, Charles Renwick, but also, I have the URL potus.tax, so P-O-T- U-S, which obviously stands for President of the United States common acronym potus.tax. You can go to potus.tax, you can—Right now the book is available for preorder on Amazon, for Kindle. The official go-live date is February 28. I really hope this reaches a lot of people and helps a lot of people and hopefully, it elevates the conversation nationally. That would be my stretch goal. Let’s just call it that. I really want to thank you for having me, Hussein. This was a very productive conversation.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. I love that. I have so many more questions for you.

Charles Renwick: Well, you can maybe invite me back. Book number two is coming.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I feel like again, these conversations are usually done behind closed doors. They’re very intimate between CPAs and people and all these things. I love that we get to open it up here. It really gets people thinking about these things that of course, impact all of our lives. On that note, man. I know your book is going to be very important to our culture and our conversation today. I’m very proud of that. Charles, it’s been an honor today. Thank you, my friend.

Charles Renwick: Well, thank you.