If you want to build wealth quickly, you have to learn as much about tax mitigation as you can. Most of these mitigation opportunities are in the world of real estate and business.

However, there are creative (and legal) ways to mitigate taxes for W2 employees as well—just not that many. And sometimes it’s not obvious that, despite a very attractive tax benefit, you should probably stay away. I learned that the hard way by investing in oil and gas multiple times.

Oil and gas drilling comes up often for high-paid W2 employees because of the compelling ability to deduct most if not all of the investment in the first year. The problem is that oil and gas investing, by nature, is quite risky. After all, you’re essentially a speculator hoping your team hits a well. Oil and gas is also ripe with fraudsters and charlatans I have learned.

Unfortunately, after multiple investments in oil and gas almost a decade ago, I have yet to get even close to recovering my money on any of the investments. I stopped investing in oil and gas years ago and now have stopped even interviewing anyone in that space. You’re better off paying the tax in my opinion.

Fortunately, there are a hand full of other opportunities available that don’t rely on speculation or trusting PT Barnum types. For example, recently I interviewed a guy on short-term rentals. If I was a W2 guy, I’d be all over that.

Ultimately though, you’ve got to figure out a long-term plan that potentially can transform your W2 income into non-W2 income. We’ve talked about this on the show before. In order to accomplish a complex strategy like this you need a good CPA.

Tom Wheelwright, as you may know, is a great CPA. So, while you figure out who’s going to get your tax plan together, take time to listen to this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast where Tom will update us on important new tax laws and give us some free tips on how to lower our tax bills. Listen now!

Tom Wheelwright is a CPA, CEO of WealthAbility (Tempe, Arizona) and Best-Selling Author of Tax-Free Wealth. Wheelwright is a leading wealth and tax expert, global speaker, and Entrepreneur Magazine Contributor. Tom is best known for making taxes fun, easy and understandable, and specializes in helping entrepreneurs and investors build wealth through practical and strategic ways that permanently reduce taxes.

As a Rich Dad Advisor to Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad), Tom frequently speaks at conferences worldwide to entrepreneurs on these topics. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Forbes, Accounting Today, Investor’s Business Daily, FOX & Friends, ABC News Radio, NPR, Marketplace and many more media.

Robert Kiyosaki, bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, calls Tom “a team player that anyone who wants to be rich needs to add to his team.” In Robert Kiyosaki’s book, The Real Book of Real Estate, Tom, himself, authored Chapters 1 and 21 of this book. Tom also contributed to Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Success Stories, Who Took My Money, Unfair Advantage, Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and More Important Than Money: an Entrepreneur’s Team.

Tom has written many articles for publication in major professional journals and online resources and has spoken to thousands throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia. Tom has also used his superior relationship and team building skills to advise the Canadian market in the art of investing in the U.S., by contributing to Philip McKernan’s South of 49 and Fire Sale.

For more than 30 years, Tom has devised innovative tax, business and wealth strategies for sophisticated investors and business owners in the manufacturing, real estate and high tech fields. His passion is teaching these innovative strategies to the thousands who come to hear him speak. He has participated as a key note speaker and panelist in multiple roundtables, and led ground-breaking tax discussions challenging the status quo in terms of tax strategies.

Tom has a wide variety of professional experience, ranging from Big 4 accounting, where he managed and led the professional training for thousands of CPAs at Ernst & Young’s National Tax Department in Washington, D.C., to in-house tax advisor for Pinnacle West Capital Corporation, at the time a Fortune 1000 company. Tom also served as an adjunct professor in the Masters of Tax program at Arizona State University for 14 years where he created the course for teaching multi-state tax planning techniques and personally taught hundreds of graduate students.

Tom has his Master’s of Professional Accounting degree from the University of Texas at Austin and his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Utah.

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