The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlock Big Tax Savings with Renewable Energy Credits with B•10 Energy

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Unlock Big Tax Savings with Renewable Energy Credits with B•10 Energy B10energy.com About the Guest(s): Eric Gordon is the Vice President of Professional Services at B•10 Energy, a company specializing in renewable energy tax credits. He holds a degree from Boise State University and began his career in accounting before transitioning to commercial real estate. Gordon's professional journey includes a stint as an auditor with Deloitte, where he sharpened skills in areas such as pre-acquisition due diligence and asset purchase negotiations. Outside of his professional commitments, Eric is an avid traveler, baseball fan, and enjoys spending quality time with his family. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss speaks with Eric Gordon, the VP of Professional Services at B•10 Energy, a firm dedicated to assisting individuals and corporations in saving money through renewable energy tax credits. With a blend of insightful conversation and humor, the episode delves into B•10 Energy's mission of making accounting — and by extension, tax savings — an exciting and profitable endeavor for its clients. Eric Gordon discusses the intricacies and benefits of tax credits, particularly focusing on the renewable energy sector. The dialogue covers how B 10 Energy positions itself as a unique player in helping businesses and individuals maximize tax savings, emphasizing the opportunity to invest in tax credits at a discount. Gordon attributes much of his interest in accounting and tax strategy to a motivating early experience with an academic mentor, highlighting how the right guidance can pivot a career trajectory. He opens up about the company's vision of enabling businesses to change the world by offering tools that enhance their financial health. Key Takeaways: The Difference Between Deductions and Credits: Understanding the unique characteristics of tax credits, which provide a direct dollar-for-dollar reduction in tax liability, unlike deductions. Investment Opportunities in Tax Credits: Insights into how profitable corporations and high net worth individuals can leverage renewable energy tax credits for substantial tax savings. Transferability of Tax Credits: Highlighting recent changes stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act, which allows tax credits to become transferable for the first time. Strategic Use of Tax Credits: The pivotal role tax credits play in financial planning for those with significant passive income or those who own C-corporations. Educational Mission: Eric Gordon emphasizes the importance of educating clients and the general public about tax strategies, making them more accessible and actionable. Notable Quotes: "At B•10 Energy, we want to help those changing the world have more resources to keep on changing it." "Understanding some accounting, some taxation can do wonders for business owners and entrepreneurs out there." "The credits are a way the government incentivizes certain behaviors and supports specific industries." "If you're going to spend a hundred dollars, might as well spend ninety and benefit from it." "It's all about the time value of money, and making sure you're utilizing your capital wisely."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hey, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for coming by. We certainly appreciate you guys. As always, the Chris Foss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you,

at least not as harshly as the rest of your family. If you're watching this video in the next 10 years from now, we're almost to Christmas time, 2024. And you're like, no wonder he looks so young. But, you know, the great thing about sharing the show is you can make the world better and make people's lives better and improve them, And that way you'll have something to talk about around Christmas and dinner. It doesn't involve fighting or maybe not. I mean, I've never heard anybody getting fistfights over content on the Chris Voss show, but there's still time. Just add the box

wine. Anyway, go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris says Chris Voss, linkedin.com, for it says Chris Voss. Chris Voss, one of the tick-tockity, as the kids like to call it. I don't know what the kids call anything nowadays. I don't even get their lingo. I'm just like, I don't know. We have an amazing young man on the show with us today. He's going to be talking about his company, B10 Energy, your partner in renewable energy tax credits. We're joined on the show by Eric Gordon. He brings a diverse background, extensive experience in accounting and commercial real estate

to his role as vice president of professional services at B10 Energy. He's a Boise State University alum. Eric launched his career in accounting and accountancy after, is there a difference between accountancy and accounting? I don't know. We'll find out. After graduation, moved into the role as an otter with Deloitte in their Boise, Idaho office.

He eventually transitioned from public accounting to the commercial real estate sector, honing skills in pre-acquisition, due diligence, asset purchase negotiations, debt sourcing, and equity raising, which is what I have to do every time my girlfriend goes to Target. When he's not shaping the future of B10 Energy, he's an average traveler, baseball fan, enjoys country music, we don't hold it against him, and values time to spend with his wife and four daughters. Welcome to the show.

How are you, Eric? Good, good. Thank you, Chris. Thanks for having me on. I tease the country, you know, music, and it's good music, you know. Devil Went Down to Georgia, that's a good song. Hey, it's Charlie Daniels. And anything by Hank Williams Jr., pretty much.

Eric, give us a.com. Where can people find you guys on the interwebs? Right now, so b10energy.com. We've also set up a special page for this. Anyone that's interested, it's info.b10energy.com slash Chris Voss. And the link for that will be on the Chris Voss show. So if you want to find that, you can look it up there. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you guys do there at B10.

Yeah, so real high level. We're accountants, we're attorneys, we're entrepreneurs who genuinely want to help people save money on taxes. We want to help those changing the world have more resources to keep on changing it. And we do that through helping people save money on taxes. So that's super high level. That's what we do. See, at first I thought that you guys were, you know, a vitamin company. You ever get that?

Just a little. Yeah. B12 was taken. So we had to go to B10. Yeah. B10. That's 20% less B12. See, I did math in school.

That was a bit of it. Yeah. Even already. So tell us about your journey through life. What got you into this business? So personally, I went to school, studied accounting, and really I owe it all to my accounting 200 professor, Norm Nimro. So shout out to Norm there. He made somehow, in a class of 900 students, he made accounting cool. And he was a professor that retired. I believe he retired from his industry job early 30s, mid 30s, actually went and taught for free accounting.

So he went to the university, said, hey, I don't have a doctorate degree. I started off at Brigham Young University. They go, we can't really teach here. You don't have a doctorate. You have a master's. He said, did I mention I would teach for free? And they said, when can you start? And so he went in there and just had a love of it. And I remember I took it as an elective thinking, oh, I should probably understand some accounting, getting in there. And his class made me fall in love with it.

And I was like, this is really cool. This is like useful stuff. Isn't that great how teachers have that ability to open the world to us? Yeah, it's his energy, his passion. And this was a class of 900 students. 900? 900 students in the auditorium. Hard to learn with that many people. But he connected with you. And that was the start. I remember I took that class. I took another one. I'm going to major in accounting. I want to do it. And the journey has been a little bit different over time. I started off in public accounting, like you mentioned. Great education. I switched in commercial real estate. It was a love and passion of mine. But actually, our current CEO that I work with here at B10, we worked in commercial real estate about 20 years together. That's where we

met. We just kept in touch ever since. We kind of went different paths and came back together after he had founded B10. I wanted to be part of the team. So like I said, I've done commercial real estate, done restaurants, but I've always worked in accountancy finance there. I think it's the language of business. It's amazing what understanding some accounting, some taxation can do for business owners and entrepreneurs out there. Oh, yeah. It depends upon which books you're using. Oh, that's an entrepreneur joke. Don't listen to that, especially if you're with the... So you guys, what made you prompted to start this business, V10?

What was the catalyst and how'd you kind of put it together? So the catalyst was really one of our founders had an exit, a successful exit from a company, right? Had sold the company he had started and really did not know what tools were available to him to help him preserve some of that precious capital, right, that he had earned. And in talking with our current CEO, they started talking. Did you do this? Did you do this? And he's gone. That was great information 12 months ago.

I wish we would have had this conversation last year. No, I didn't do this. I didn you do this? And he's done. That was great information 12 months ago. I wish we would have had this conversation last year. No, I didn't do this. I didn't do this. Hey, why don't why don't we do something he was looking for his next move kind of he's like, why don't we do something that let's do it and forgive me for saying this. He's like, you know, let's start an accounting firm, but make it a cool accounting firm. And he's that's that's an oxymoron. What are you talking about? You know, I'm just trying to get the chicks.

I see what you're up to. But it was just a how can we help people? You know, so we don't do we don't do prep and file of tax returns. Right. So we're more of that specialist that can help a certain area. So we work with people's tax CPAs, tax professionals to help in certain areas. You know, right now we do a lot of work in the renewable energy tax credit space. That's where we spend the majority of our time, but we work with people there to help them, like I said, help them save money on taxes there. But that was, that's what started it right there. You know, I love entrepreneurism. We love entrepreneurism. So what are these tax credits you speak of for the layman and probably Gen Z to learn about? What are these tax credits, including renewable energy tax credits? So real quick, people talk about tax credits, credits and deductions,

right? And those sometimes are used interchangeably. Just the difference, right? A deduction reduces the amount of income you're taxed on. So it brings your income down. Well, credits reduce the amount of tax dollar for dollar that you owe. So that's kind of the difference between a deduction. We all hear about the standard deduction or itemized deduction. Then you have tax credits, right? So these renewable energy tax credits, it's just that, right? Credits are a way the government incentivizes certain behaviors and support specific industries

out there. So they've come out and the renewable energy tax credits have been around, geez, late 70s in one form or another. So they've been around for a while. And it's it's a way to incentivize people, industries to participate in the development, production, renewable energy. That's why they exist. That's what they are. And they they're they're probably back in the news, if you've heard about them lately, because with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, they've actually made these credits transferable for the first time.

So that's kind of, I mean, what's probably brought them out in the news cycle these days. That's pretty darn cool. Yeah. They can do that with them. What's my next question I have for you? So on these renewable tax credits, why does it matter? Like how big of a difference does it make? Because they're transferable, entities and individuals that don't have really any ownership or anything to do with a renewable energy project can purchase these.

And so if you're a profitable C corporation, right, you can purchase the tax credit, you can purchase it at a discount. And so I think that's what really kind of what makes a matter now is, you know, we at B10 Energy, you know, we are owners of commercial solar facilities, those facilities, when we place them into service, produce a tax credit, we then sell that tax credit to unrelated parties for cash and we sell it at a discount. And so it's a great way to save money on the taxes that you owe by buying a credit for less than a dollar on a dollar. So if you pay 90 cents for $1 of credit, you just save 10 cents for every dollar you bought. Oh, wow. Definitely. And then is this an investment thing that people try and do to make a,

you know, I know that like Tesla was doing tax credits for carbon tax credits or something like that. Is this something that if you're an investor, maybe you could look into? You know, if you're an individual, you can use them for yourself. So I wouldn't say there's so much as an investment, but as a way to save money on your tax bill. So you owe a million dollars in taxes. I do? Yeah, yeah. Sorry to break that to you, Chris.

Give me a flight to Mexico. But if you owe a million dollars in taxes and you can buy tax credits worth a million dollars for $900,000, it's like, Hey, you saved yourself a hundred thousand dollars. Really? You can pay that bill. And there's, there, there's certain people, individuals that can use them, certain ones that can't, and we can go into those details, but, but that's at its essence. I always probably when the best way to look at it is I think we've all been to Costco before, right? And we've seen that, that rack of gift cards, cards. And they're selling gift cards to a restaurant. It's, hey, buy a $100 gift card for $80, $85, $90. If you know you're going to that restaurant and you're going to spend $100, stop by Costco on the way, buy a gift card.

You only spent $90, but you got $100 worth of benefit from the restaurant. So that is a very scaled-down example. But that's what buying tax credits at a discount is very similar to. You owe the money to the IRS, right? You owe the taxes. You have to pay that million dollar tax bill. We'll sell you credits, right? And there's limitations and everything that we can get into, but it's just a way you can actually buy a million dollars of tax credits for less than a million dollars. And then if I, so if I owe the IRS a million dollars and then I buy $900,000 of tax credits, that means I only owe the IRS a hundred thousand. Can I go

sell those 900,000 tax credits? Maybe some sort of profit to somebody else or? So these tax credits can only be transferred once. You can see where my head's going. Yes, yes. Can I put these on that concert ticket site where you mark up everything 5,000%? There's rules on the transferability. They can only be transferred once. But like you said, if you owe a million dollars in taxes, you buy a million dollars of tax credits, right? So we can get into the limitations later, but you buy that for less than a million dollars. So you get the tax credits to pay your tax bill, but you pay less than their, you can say face value.

So you pay 900,000 or 950 or whatever that may be, the price you agree on. So it's just, you're paying the tax. You can also use these to offset your quarterly estimated taxes. So there's some time value of money in there. Yeah. Yeah.

That's important. Yeah. So I sort of discount if I can have a found my foundation or a charity that I run own pay them, or is that just too many hoops for the, or there's not. Cause whoever buys them has to use them. And since those charities are,

are don't, don't pay taxes. So they won't be able to put them to work. Turn it. Turn it. Can I donate them as a write-off? Can I give them to somebody as a charitable write-off? So if you produce them, you can sell them, right?

If you own the solar facility, you can go through. But like I said, it has to come from the original owner owner and they can be transferred one time or sold one time so what you're saying is i need to start a solar facility is that what you're telling me go build some solar farms chris go build some solar i'm gonna put one in the backyard see if i can get the double dip on the write-off can you tell there's a certain entrepreneur does his own accounting yeah there's a reason we don't use normal accounts. So I think we've covered transferability then. And do you guys focus on this for your investment advice that you give people? This is where we spend a lot of our time. So we are owners, B10.

We own commercial solar facilities throughout the country. All right. We own those, manage those. When we place one in service, when we build one and get ready to make it live, it produces a tax credit. It's called an investment tax credit. It's based off what we paid for that facility. And so we have these tax credits, and then we work with tax professionals out there and sell them to entities and individuals for a discount. Why do I think that my old man, when he was, I think it was in the 80s or something, he had some barter group he joined.

You could barter stuff. Like one time he bartered, somehow he had some sort of lamp or some crap that was expensive. It would look like something from the 80s. It was just God awful, right? That you see in a pizza hut or something. And it was some big glass lamp. And he traded it for dentistry on the barter thing. I wonder if I could trade these credits on a barter system.

To date, we have not accepted any lamps in return. I mean the credits. Can I get the credits? I could trade them for, I don't know, food or Amazon. Can I get these? Is that on the list of Amazon things? Unfortunately, these credits are somewhat limited, and they can only be used for taxes, for federal taxes.

Wow. Is there a max you can deal with? I mean, can you write – like if I owned a million dollars in one year and I could write off $900 million in one year, isn't there like a limit where you have to – if you're going to write off certain very big things, you got to spread them out? Yeah. So you're looking at depreciation, right? So expensing like a building, right? You don't write off the whole building. Buildings depreciate over time. So 39 years for commercial there. So you depreciate it. Now there's different things you can do to accelerate that depreciation.

With these credits, these are general business credits, which means that they can offset approximately about 75% of a taxpayer's tax liability that qualifies to use them. Jesus, I'm going to do that. I mean, that sounds like way better than paying the IRS. I don't know why. I mean, pay the IRS folks folks. I'm not saying that. But, you know, I mean, technically, you know, you can do whatever. I'm going to start a solar company. Does it have to be? Anyway, I'm just joking.

There's some other things you guys work with in the space, IRR savings. Talk to us about some of these other different vehicles you have. Yeah, so really it's just as you analyze this, you know, when we talk to an entity, right? And real quick, there's two really ideal users for these tax credits. One of them are individuals that have significant passive income, right? These are passive tax credits. So they can only offset tax derived from passive activities for an individual. So that would be the first user. Second would be profitable C corps. So C corps are not subject to the same

passive activity loss limitations as individuals. So C corps can use these. So if you're a profitable C corps, you can use these tax credits to get in profits. So it's like it's on the so doesn't factor into your expenses and your profits. It's once you've done all your work and your accountants and all the work and they come to you say, OK, Chris, we did everything. We took the deductions. We came this you owe X number in tax. Right. You owe a million dollars. And that's there's nothing more we can do. That's what you owe the IRS. You know, so you're like, OK, so I have to cut a check for a million dollars.

Right. Your options are like I can cut a check for a million dollars, right? Now your options are like, I can cut a check for a million bucks, right? And pay that for a hundred thousand, whatever that tax liability is. Or if you're one of those use cases that I just talked about, hey, I can buy the credits that can pay that million dollars, right? Or in this case, up to 75%, you know, 750,000, I can buy those for less than 750,000. So I can save money, it still goes to the IRS, you're still paying your taxes, these credits are just used to offset that federal tax liability. But when you buy them, and for how much you buy them for, you know, and offsetting your quarterly estimates there that you don't have to pay because you're using tax credits, you know,

that's where that kind of factors in where, hey, you're actually saving significant money, maybe even more than just the offset of the 10 cents of time value of money comes into play when you do that. So that's what we talk about IRR, takes into account the time value of money and what you paid and when you paid it and everything. But those are some of the, I think, the pros of using these, like I said, if you're in that use situation. Time value of money. You know, a lot of people don't think about that sort of stuff.

You know, they don't equate time and money. Yes. It's like, we'll even talk to, you know, I learned a long time ago, and I think it was from an executive, maybe at Apple, but your time, especially if you're a very busy person, is, you know, if you're just sitting around playing video games all day, like who cares, I guess. But you know, your time value of what you earn is important for you to know per hour. Like how much time am I worth per hour?

And especially as an entrepreneur. And then you kind of have to go, is this worth that time? You know, if any time I would, I i don't know what's a good example anytime i would go get some office supplies at office max or something you know i'd be standing in line and waiting for that and you'd have to ask yourself what's the time value of my financial billable time per hour that i do and why am i using an hour to go buy, I don't know, stapler supplies. We'll just make up some. When really I should delegate that and my time should be utilized for, you know, client

being in front of clients and earning more of that money. And, you know, just thinking about things like that, you know, how much time you waste on stupid stuff. You know, I learned, i think from the same executive i think he was from apple and he is he gets a lot of mail and you know companies do too and i used to when we had our big companies and he's i don't touch mail twice i process it once and i i make the decision as to whether does it go in the trash or does it go on the thing and so i got really good at that in fact my employees would kind of laugh when I dump, you know, I just quickly processed mail and junk mail into the garbage.

They're like, holy crap. And, but yeah, time value of money is really important. Yeah, it's kind of, it reminds me of the other thing we learn in school too when they talk about sunk costs. And this was another norm lesson that he taught us. And I remember sitting in his class, he's like, you guys got to understand sunk costs. You're going to be accountants. You're going to be executives and this and that. And he gave an example of, he was in California on some business retreat and they had all paid to golf at a very expensive golf course. And they had prepaid for it. The day came and it was rainy and it was windy and it was awful

and he was with a group of financial executives and they all go to the golf course right and he's what are you doing like no we paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars we're gonna go golf and he's guys that's a sunk cost that cannot fact do you want to play golf in the rain yes or no no then don't play golf he's i went had a great time with my wife doing other things because i didn't factor that in and they were stuck on this sunk cost move on move on so go back to kind of you know using your time those are those are some you know fun lessons that you can do sunk cost fallacy describe my first nine marriages i don't know what that means but you'll figure it out but yeah it's you know throwing more money after bad essentially and and feeling trapped in it when

really you should see outside the box and be like, it's probably just better to burn it, especially for the time, which does explain my first seven marriages. Anyway, what is your ideal client for different things? Is there a minimum net worth they have to have? Do you look for individual investors or more corporations, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah. So when it comes to an ideal client, really those two situations. And I would say we start off, really, you're looking at individuals that probably have a half million dollars and up per year tax liability from passive activities. So they owe tax based on passive activities. And

that includes all your passive except portfolio or investment income. So if you have some real estate that you're a passive owner of, passive investor, if you have some K-1s that you're a passive, have passive ownership in. So that's one. So an individual's significant passive income with that tax liability probably of a half million or up or a profitable C-corp. So a profitable C-corp with at least a half million dollars in tax liability a year. Those are probably the two ideal client situations that we deal with. Just as I said, because those C-corps aren't subject to the passive activity loss and credit limitations. And so they can use that to offset up to 75%, these being general business credits. So passive activity individuals

and profitable C corporations are who we work with the most. The next question I have for you is, is there a lot of work that's required by the CPAs versus the clients? Is this going to add a lot of problems? Are we going to have to work, eh? You know, we try to do as much of the heavy lifting as possible. So we work with the CPA, you know, making sure everything is filed correctly. We prepare, for example, the transfer election statement. You know, we give you a copy of our return that created the tax credit for your reference. You know those questions. CPAs are familiar with these tax credits. They may have not transferred them before. They know what they are in general, but this new transfer, they may not have done that. So we really try to do all the heavy lifting.

We hop on phone calls with your entire team, from your general counsel, other legal representation, your financial advisors, your tax professionals, to really make sure we answer the questions, go through a proper due diligence period, and get them what they need. So there is some work on there. And as far as filing the tax return or amended tax returns, if you're doing a look back at prior years, but we really try to do as much of the heavy lifting as we possibly can. You answered my next question that I had set up was, you know, you guys work at the CPA and all that good stuff. I mean, it's amazing. I need to really get familiar with more of this stuff because that's why we do the show.

The dollar for dollar offset, safe and sound, smart use of capital. I love it, man. I mean, utilizing your money for something that doesn't just get thrown away into the government. I like a lot because, you know, I don't know, money's money and return on investment. What are some things we haven't talked about, what you guys do there at B10 Energy that I've asked you or covered? You know, we really try to help the entrepreneur network out there, right? And so this is, these tax credits are one way. It's where we spend a lot of time right now.

We try to help, you know, if there's an upcoming exit, right, and you want to plan for that. Other tax credits, we do a lot of work in the research and development tax credit field. We help high net worth individuals. And just like I said, that's what pushes us every day is, hey, how do we help? In this case, we're tax strategists. We're experts in tax. That's how we help those who are changing the world, right? That's how we change the world in our little sphere. We help those who are doing it out there have more resources. So anything like that, we really love to do. And it's great being in the renewable energy space. So we have these projects across the country. Demand for energy is not going down. The price of energy isn't going down. And we want to help on that side. And then like I said, if we can help with corporations and helping people offset some of their tax liability with these credits,

that's what we're here for. Do you guys get Christmas cards from that Thunberg chick? What's her name? Is it Greta? I had the joke set up. And then when I did it, I lost the Greta. I just blanked. Alzheimer's kicking in. So yeah. So you guys like doing this business, renewable tax, energy tax credits, and then tax savings for high net worth individuals, passive income and C-Corps. What a great thing. I mean, I just learned something new today. So hopefully our audience did too. As we go out, give people a final pitch and then tell them how they can onboard or reach out or find out more, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll find out more. Remember it's info.b10energy. So info.b10energy.com slash Chris Voss is a great page. You can reach out there. Like I said, we're here to help. So

if it's any type of tax questions you have for high net worth individuals, entities, entrepreneurs looking at potential exits, hey, we're here to help. If you want to offset that tax bill that you have, give us a call. I spend a lot of my time on the education side, right? Because this is new. And so educating, you know, the entrepreneurs themselves, as well as tax professionals, and we work with tax professionals every day. So it's, it's what we're passionate about. Like I said, I mean, it's maybe accountancy doesn't get everyone out of bed in the morning. It's fun in the field that we've kind of made our niche in an area that we really enjoy. And we think it can provide a lot of help to people.

Yeah. I mean, accountants that are fun. I hope this works out for you guys. You guys can get the chicks. Anyway, I'm just saying. Making accounting cool again. There we go you know here we go accountants i can just see like accounts being really cool like they're just they have supermodels surrounding them there's like an ad with supermodels surrounding them they're throwing yachts in miami and and i don't know partying and throwing money

around throwing money i don't think your accounts would do that yeah i don't know us accounts have problems throwing money around. We have really cool 10 keys and multiple monitors and stuff like that. That's why Chris does his own accounting. I guess I'll be the only one going to jail. I don't know. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys

next time.