Tax Planning Strategies for Pro Athletes and Professionals, with Robert Raiola

Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors.

Of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance.

Now your host, Ed Molitor. Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics of Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molitor Group, Ed Molitor. You are going to absolutely love this episode. Just an unbelievably interesting guest. Robert Raiola, Director of the Sports and Entertainment Group at PKF O' Connor Davies. Robert has over 20 years of sophisticated tax experience in both the public and private sector. Now what he does is he provides tax planning strategies and business consulting to high net worth individuals and their families in the sports and entertainment field. Robert is widely known as the Sports Tax man and has a following of approximately 50,000 on Twitter where there's a lively exchange of various sports, entertainment and tax topics. Really cool stuff. And I and I believe the last time I looked, which was yesterday.

He is north of 56,000 or 57,000 followers on Twitter. Also, Robert is a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated and appears frequently on ESPN, SportsCenter, Fox Business News, Sirius, XM NFL Drive and a variety of national radio and talk show programs. He co authored the book Winning Tax Strategies for Athletes and Entertainers and has lectured nationally on the topic in honor of his remarkable presence in the sports industry. This is really cool. Robert was Featured in the 2016 Topps Allen and Ginter baseball card collection and we jump into that story and have a lot of fun with that in this episode. In addition, Robert was a founding trustee of the Chatham Athletic foundation, an organization based in Chatham, New Jersey which focuses on promoting youth athletics and safety in athletics through public education programs.

In June of 2011, Robert received the Chatham JC Distinguished Services Award for his work with the Chatham Athletic Foundation. Robert, thank you so much for joining us today on the Athletics of Business podcast. I am really excited because this is going to be a unique podcast. Okay. I mean they're all unique, but this is going to be. Never in a million years did I think I'd be sitting here talking to the sports tax guy and it would be so much fun. So welcome Ed.

My pleasure. Very excited to be here. We talked about doing this for a while. Very excited to be on your show. Thank you so much for having me.

So Robert, tell us a little bit about what you do at PKF o' Connor Davies as the Director of Sports and Entertainment Group so we can bring the listener up to speed. And I'm really excited about getting into your journey and what got you to where you are today?

Sure, my pleasure. What we do is we basically act as a financial quarterback for athletes, entertainers, coaches, front office executives. 90% of my clients are in the sports entertainment world. And we'd like to help them with things that, you know, that go on off the field so that when they're on the field, they know that everything is taken care of. Tax planning, tax compliance, bill paying, home purchasing, you know, things of that nature. Anything financial related would like to help them.

So how did this come about? How did you evolve into this point of your career where you knew this is what you want to do?

Sure. Growing up, the first thing I did after I had my breakfast in the morning was always read the sports section and was always interested in hearing about how guys got paid. You know, as I became more and more into numbers, I was like saying, wow, that's interesting. Wait a second, he's working here, he's getting paid for this there. And sometimes guys have incentives in their contracts like college football coaches would, number of wins and everything. So I always found it extremely fascinating. I said, maybe I want to do that one day. And I grew up and I would always say, yes, accounting is a necessary thing to do, but I wanted to do something related to sports and the athletic talent simply was not there. So I grew up and decided to do something else. And I love coming to work every day.

You know, I read something about you recently where you said you realized at a very young age, growing up in Brooklyn, New York, that here in the United States, we are enamored with two things, athletes and money. Talk about how that ties into all that.

Sure. It's amazing to see, you know, what players get paid per game. You know, Chris Paul, at the end of his contract with the Houston Rockets, is going to be making something crazy like $500,000 a game, you know, for regular season game. And you know, most people in this world don't make that much money in several years or in a lifetime for that matter. So it's just fascinating to me to talk about that, to talk about how, like I remember one day, you know, talking about on Twitter, talking about an SEC team was lined up for a win and they about to kick the game winning field goal. Then I tweeted, if this ball goes toward the uprights, the coach gets whatever it was. $100,000, right. Nobody knew that. It's all about timing.

And you know, again, like I said, you alluded to America is Enamored with athletes and money, and they love to hear about it.

Well, so with what you do and to back up a little bit with what you do at pkf, o' Connor Davies. I mean, there's a lot to know. I mean, especially with these guys traveling different states to compete, you know, in. How, how do you stay up with that? How do you know, what happens in California is different than what happens in Minnesota. That's different than what happens in New York. I mean, how do you do that? How do you, how did that all come.

To be sure, a lot of reading and as a cpa, you're required to get professional education every year. You have to have, if it's specialized, you have to have 24 hours a year in tax. So you take a lot of classes and just a lot of reading. And you know, to me, reading up on sports was never really reading and doing work. It was always fun. And it's always interesting to me that you would hear, well, how much money did California raise in 2015? They raised maybe a couple hundred million dollars in money off tax and professional athletes. And I would get that number every year and I'd post that on social media.

And to me, the social media thing has really evolved into something that somebody dared me to do at the beginning and I started in 2011, and it's led to a lot of good opportunities. Whenever I do an appearance on ESPN SportsCenter or write something for Fox or Sports Illustrated, that gives me the opportunity to put it out on a platform and, you know, which once was a dare. Come on, Robert. Only twitch, don't tweet became something that I got a little bit enamored with and do every day and have a lot of fun with it.

Well, I mean, You've got over 58,000 Twitter followers. It's unbelievable. And I was reading some of your tweets today and I should have them pulled up. I mean, some of the things that you put on there are so fascinating. Can you share some stories with us about. Talk about the Raiders going to Vegas or talk about what you know, we've talked about the Tom Brady and the super bowl earnings and things like that. Share a couple stories with us because I, I really do find this fascinating.

One was John Jimmy Garoppolo. A couple years ago when the Patriots lost in the Super Bowl, Jimmy Garoppolo was on the roster for eight games and he got traded to the non conference team. He got traded to the NFC, the San Francisco 49ers. And because he was on the roster for eight games, he was still able to get a full share of the super bowl money. However, he was an Illinois resident and he didn't spend any time in Minnesota going to the Super Bowl. So he made more money than Tom Brady because he got as much of a share as Brady did. But Brady had to pay tax to Minnesota at like 10% and Garoppolo wasn't paying that, so he got more money.

So who buys dinner the next time they go out? That's my question. Now that, that is, that is, I mean, it's fascinating. I mean, it just, that kind of stuff blows me away. Now, how about the, what you're telling me about the Raiders in California and all that?

Sure, sure. So this year the Raiders draft picks, the Raiders are still in the worst tax state as far as taxes are concerned in America. California, the top rate is 13.3%. And the Raiders are now moving to Nevada sometime in 2020. We don't know when. So we're advising the clients that we have that aren't signing with the Raiders, including a couple draft picks, to take their signing orders in 2020, not in 2019. Reason being it's still guaranteed money. You lose a little time value money, but you pay very little state tax. There's no state tax in Nevada, so they'll pay a little what we call referred to as the jock tax when they go on other road games. But it's a big savings between taking the money now and then.

One of the other things we talked about that I found very interesting with players was Kirk Cousins was a free agent last year, and the two teams that were most rumored to be interested in him were the jets and Minnesota Vikings. So the jets, the top tax rate in New Jersey is 10.75 and it's close to 10% in Minnesota. Except Kirk Cousins lived in Michigan. So Michigan and Minnesota have what's known as a reciprocal tax agreement. Whereas if you're Michigan resident like he was, you wouldn't pay Minnesota tax, you'd only pay Michigan tax. So that way what happened was instead of paying tax of 10% or 10, three course in Jersey, I knew he was just going to play the jets and try to get more money out of them. And worked out well for the jets, they got Sam Donald.

But you know what I, what I said is I don't believe he's going to the Jets. He's going to stay in Michigan and get the lower tax rate and it would make a big difference in the amount of money he got and that.

So here's my question. So how does this look in your world with your relationship with the agents, your relationships with the, you know, the teams, the organizations, how, what's the fine line you walk? So you know he's playing the jets, right? You know he's playing the jets, he's going to go to Minnesota because he lives in Michigan. It all makes perfect sense. Do you reach out to the jets and say, hey, by the way, does the agent tell you, hey, Robert, you know, keep your mouth shut? I mean, how's all that go? I mean, the jets had to know that, didn't they? They had to have some sort of intuition on that.

Most of my, most of my clients are on the individual side. We recently have done work with a couple teams and helping teams and this is a busy time with that because we help a couple teams as far as free agency is concerned. And you know, how to replay is, how to best structure contract vis a vis signing bonus or whatnot to try to make it more tax beneficial. So we didn't reach out to the jets in that situation. I didn't reach out to anybody. A reporter asked me about it and you know, we wrote a story for Sports Illustrated about it. But if the team would have called me, I would gladly spoke to them again. Most of my clients are individuals, you know, like we talked about athletes, trainers, coaches, team executives, what not models.

But we have done some work for the teams recently in that situation. We didn't reach out to anybody because nobody had contacted us, right?

No. And it's just, it's fascinating to me because as I dig and I look at what you do, you know, Fox, Sports Illustrated, espn. How did you have this rise to. Now I want to say fame, even though it is. But how did you have this rise to becoming a matter expert, if you will, and having these platforms to talk on, to speak on, to write on. How did you get to that point? Sure.

So I think I've always been fascinated again with, you know, like most Americans, especially males, be fascinated with money and athletes and sports and how things are made and how clients make their money. You know, for example, the other day we talked about the Jeopardy guy. I got a call from Darren Revelle of the Action Network and, you know, everybody's talking about how much money he made. And you know, I always say it's not what you make, it's what you net. And I always say the gross paycheck may not be the Best net paycheck. We'll get into a story about that in a minute. But what I find fascinating was I was doing this. I've been doing this for most of my adult career. Again, I've been accountant and a CPA first, but I had always interested in the sports side.

And once we got to the medium of being on Twitter, some of the big people in idsbn, the Adam Schefters, the Darren Revells of the world, started to see what I had to say, and they liked what I had to say. And whenever there was a tax issue that came up, they always quoted me or retweeted me or whatever. So that gave me the opportunity to be out there more and more. And then, you know, ESPN contacted me, and one of the other things that, you know, I got into was talking about free agency. And when Dominican sue was a free agent, he signed for $60 million gross. But he signed with the Dolphins. At that time, the $60 million gross after taxes netted to $36 million in my.

In Florida, where there's no state income tax, the Raiders and Alliance Lions used to play for the Lions, who were very interested in keeping him. The Lions wanted to keep him. If they wanted to keep him, they would have to pay him $65 million and he's further into the cap. Or if the Raiders wanted to bid on him and max that net 36 million dollar number, they would have to pay him 70.1 million dollars. So, you know, and when you have a team with a cap that's very difficult to try to get, you know, say above the cap situation, get around the cap situation when you have big signing bonuses like that.

So more and more people started to try to contact me, and one thing led to another, and due to outstanding marketing department here, as these opportunities come up, they've really helped me out a lot. Perhaps the best opportunity that came up in terms of marketing was I received a direct message from the Tops company back a couple years ago, and they decided, for whatever reason, somebody with almost not much athletic talent at all, they wanted to do a baseball card. As an Italian kid growing up in.

Brooklyn, having a baseball, you're like, did I actually die? Did something happen here I don't know about? This is great.

Which one of my friends is trying to pull a joke? So they contacted me and they included me in a set and they. I had to go down tops and sign, you know, 500 signatures or whatever, and they compensated me for doing that. So it was a lot of fun. And, you know, people still mail in requests for to sign the card, which I flattered to do and glad to do, but it never ceases to amaze me. The followers is nice, but the recognition that comes along with it and be able to help out people. And I think that a lot of these athletes are not financially sophisticated. So we always try to, you know, do financial literacy and try to help them out. And that was one way where I've been able to get a lot of people.

Yeah. Do you see that a lot? Where guys get out of college or they get into the NFL or the younger guys in the NBA or Major League Baseball and they're obviously, this is something hard for them to wrap their minds around. Cause they have so many other things going on in their world. Right. And all of a sudden you put this tax piece of the puzzle. And again, I was reading some of your tweets and reading some of the things you've written. There's a lot that goes to how much educational things are out there for these athletes. I mean, do you. Do you have anything for these athletes to. Is that a way that you go about getting clients?

Sure. Through social media. A lot of people. I've had a lot of people, I've had a couple college football players contact me, their parents, whatnot, as a way to reach out, say, Robert, we really want us to do your. My son's taxes and whatnot and get. Get involved. And I've had been contacted by teams, by agents or whatnot. Unfortunately, there's not a class in college that they take that's really related to doing taxes for, you know, professional athletes. So we try to educate them as part of the process and try to make them understand, you know, with all the different states, if you ride, travel to a different state, it's not as high profile, not as high price, high salary with the athletes, you got high profile, you got high salary and easy to track with the admin of the Internet several years back.

So it's easy to know where they are. So you alluded to the fact that they have to pay taxes, go to all different states. So we try to make them aware of that as well. However, on the pro side and with broadcasters, especially as they go to all the different states, they got to pay taxes there. Now, let's take it for example. If we had a broadcaster who lived in New York state and he traveled on the road with a hockey team, and he would get taxed by all these different states, he wouldn't get taxed by Canada. You Know, when he, when his team played up in Canada, because there's a treaty between the U.S. and Canada protects him from being taxed there. But he would have to pay tax to a lot of other states in the US maybe 15 to 20 states.

And as he's paying taxes to those states, that would reduce the tax he's got to pay to New York. Let's say they played the Blackhawks, where you are, in Illinois, and he paid tax there at 5%, he would get a full credit back to New York State for the taxes he paid there. So that's how that works. You know, basically, Ed, if you play here, you're going to pay here. Yeah.

And that's an, I mean, how complicated does that get?

It's complicated, but again, it's, you know, our team here, you know, we have a team that works with us and they've been trained on this and it's been real good in terms of learning and whatnot. And, you know, there's always something that new you got to learn, you know, with states changing things or changing rates or whatnot and the IRS changing the things that are deductible for athletes, you know, we always get the famous stories, well, you know, can I deduct this, Can I deduct that? And now, you know, Trump's new tax bill eliminates a lot of deductions. But we heard, we used to get some very funny requests. Can I write off a hot tub or whatnot, you know, as an expense, or I use a training machine or I built in a swimming pool. So, you know, it's all good.

Which. Those are tax write offs, aren't they?

It depends. But team sport athletes now, employee business expenses, you know, are no longer tax deductible.

That's right.

Not just rapidly. So.

Yeah. So now, okay, let's take a team like the Lakers, right? So they're in California, worst possible state for taxes and things like that. And they're going after a LeBron James and they're trying to rebuild this debacle that they got going on out there. How challenging is it for someone like the Lakers to maneuver and still be able to bring in the top athletes with at the top dollar? How hard is that for them to structure those contracts and to be able to do that?

Sure. So the interesting thing about LeBron was when he went to Florida, you thought it was for a couple of reasons. One, to win rings, check the box. He did that when he went to Miami. And two was to not be a resident of Ohio would be the resident of Florida, where there's no state income tax. The big savings would have been on endorsements and on his investment income. However, what I found interesting is that in the summer when he was still with the Heat and it was rumored as to where he was going to sign as a free agent, maybe go back to Cavaliers, he. He put a post on Instagram saying, doing my civic duty, going to serve jury duty in Ohio. Well, wait a second, LeBron. If you were a Florida resident, what are you doing serving jury duty in Ohio?

So maybe it wasn't a Florida resident all along. And that's when I knew there was no way he was going to go back to the Heat because he wasn't taking advantage of the tax with the Lakers. I assume he's out in California, his kids go to school out there, and he's going to be California resident. He's just going to bite the bullet. But again, it's very easy to track how much he makes per game or his annual NBA salary from the Lakers. Who knows what he makes an endorsement income. Now what you do see, and I'll take for example, the baseball player, Clayton Kershaw. Clayton Kershaw plays for the Dodgers. And when he signed not this contract, but the contract before that, the first year, his contract, his compensation was $22 million.

Clayton lives in Texas, so his agent made a very smart move and they got him a signing bonus in the first year for $19 million. Because he had proper planning and proper language in his contract. The signing bonus was not taxable in California. It was only taxable in Texas. And a good answer, you guessed it, no state tax in Texas. Right?

Beautiful.

He was able to do some planning and do that. So there is some planning you can do with the US And Canada. If you have an American hockey player playing in Canada, his wages in Toronto would be taxed at 53.53%. Yes. That's not a typo. 53.5%, which is very high. However, signing bonus for a U.S. resident playing in Canada was only taxed at 15%. So there are some plannings you can do and there are some opportunities, but once they come back and play in the States.

So that leads me to a question with. You know, I just recently had Rob Roach on our good friend Rob Roach on the podcast. Great, great conversation. Just like this one. And, and so Justin Tucker gets 9 million in his first year. Which 8 million was a signing bonus? Correct. What's the benefit of getting that money up front and not into your salary?

Right. Time value money. He was able to put the money to work, you know, he was able to get, he signed the contract and I think he had the bonus within a week, you know, so it's basically a time value money. In football, the language about being refundable on the signing bonus and not being predicated upon subsequent performance is not there. So that even though he's a Texas resident, he would have to pay tax in Maryland. The advantage to him is if he's a Maryland non resident, they have a local tax. He pays a lower local tax as a Maryland non resident than he would if he was a resident.

So let's take a city like where I live, Chicago. Let's take the Chicago Bulls, the Chicago Bears, the Cubs, you got the White Sox. I mean, there's so much revenue generated within the city from our pro sports teams. Right. How much lobbying goes on with state government in terms of state tax laws from these pro franchises to try to shape the tax laws, if you will, or if that's even feasible, if it's possible. Am I thinking too much into this?

Well, it's interesting. Illinois recently raised their tax rate to 4.95% and they've been talking about raising even higher. The interesting thing is a lot of the people that, you know, talk about being able to make a decision in Illinois, the people that these tax laws are going to affect, the non residents don't get to vote there. So if you think about it, them not being able to vote is a thing where it's interesting, but they're not able to hurt them and to change the, to have an effect on who puts the laws in. But Illinois is rumored to increase that tax rate again. But Illinois at 4.95% has one of the lowest states. The states that have income taxes. And one of the things we do, I think a lot of athletes especially are pictorial learners.

So we did put out a map that has all the states in the US we show which states have, you know, depending on the sport, which states have lower taxes or higher taxes and which states have no tax.

That's really cool. Is that map for public consumption?

Yes, I'd be happy to.

I'd love to put that in the show notes. I just think the listeners will find that fascinating.

Right, right. We'll get it out. We'll get it out there.

That's really cool. So, so really like MLB or the NFL or NBA, they're not going to send folks and try and lobby to certain areas, certain states, you know, and say try to work with them on their tax bills to benefit their athletes, Is that what you're saying?

No, the Players association would be concerned about it. A couple of years ago there was two players went to Supreme Court against the city of Cleveland. Depending on the way that they taxed players most. There's two methods to tax non resident athletes. One would be the most prevalent method, duty days, which includes a practice day, a game day, you know, a picture day or whatever. Those are all considered the days played. And you look at a formula, you multiply the times, the salary times, the number of days in the state over total number of days worked in a year. And Cleveland was doing it based on a different method based on games played. And there's only, you know, a football player only plays 16 regular season games for now, a lot of talk about going to 18 and four exhibition games.

So there's a big difference in a fraction for a non resident if you do duty days instead of games. And these two football players, I believe was Hunter Hillemire and Jeff Saturday were able to be victorious and the Players association helped them to be victorious against the city of Cleveland. So they went out against the city of Cleveland.

So let's bounce over to the NBA and this free agency and dream teams and all this stuff. What's the best city to try and build a dream team? What's the, you know, now you got Anthony Davis staying in New Orleans because they got Zion Williamson or at least that's what everybody thinks is going to happen. Right?

Right.

Tell me a little bit about that.

So there's a number of teams that have no state tax. And again, I'm not naive enough to think that the only reason why somebody goes there, you know, somebody may sign with a new team because of a championship when the title, like LeBron when he went to Florida or Kevin Grant when he went to California. Some teams may go for, you know, they know they want to play with their buddies on, you know, from college or whatnot or other players they play with a point in their career. Or some people may go because the wife likes to climb it there. So it's a number of different things that influence things. Taxes should be one of the considerations. One of the best places to do it would be in either Florida or Texas.

But even though the Houston Rockets have gotten all those teams, they have trouble with one thing. They can't beat the warriors in the playoffs. So now they're considering the owners. Thinking about, the GM is thinking about blowing up the team and starting from scratch in terms of getting guys. So strictly from a state tax standpoint, you know, the state of Texas, the state of Florida works really well with there being no state taxes. Players would still have to pay taxes on the road, but no taxes in the state where they. They probably become a Texas or Florida resident.

It's interesting. I mean, you look at like the Rockets are thinking about blowing up the whole team. But hey, let's see what happens with the Warriors. What's going to, you know, they're. They're getting up there in years a little bit. They've been together. They. They've had a heck of a run.

Who knows where KD goes? You know, kd. It is possible for KD to live in California, but to not be. To not be resident. He could be a resident someplace else. I don't. I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. How's New York? Did they bounce back from that lottery yet? The NBA lottery? Everyone. Everyone and brother thought they were gonna.

Yeah, he's a playing Yankees are playing well, so everybody's talking about the Yankees and the Mets aren't playing that well, so everybody's talking about the possibility of changing, you know, manager whatnot, but still excited for free agency and they'll be absolutely crestfallen if KD doesn't come here this summer. There's a lot of talk about him coming here.

Is there still a chance that could happen?

There's a lot of people that think that he is. That New York would be the number one choice. But until he announces it on his Twitter feed or his Instagram or signs a piece of paper or Stephen A. Smith or one of those people, Adrian Wojnowski, break the story. You know, New York fans were still not certain they didn't come yet.

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely going to be. It's definitely be interesting. I mean, you live in the Mecca of all this stuff. It's just there's so much action, so much activity. And what has been some of your. With being on Fox and ESPN and writing for Sports Illustrated. What are some of the favorite stories that you've covered or even more important that you've been a part of?

Sure. I think we've been helpful to a lot of. I had a player was playing for the Toronto Raptors and he. He became a free agent and he didn't understand the difference in taxes between Canada and Texas. And you know, Toronto came up and up, but it was no longer even though Texas had again one of these. The best gross deal may not be the best net deal even Though as much money he had slightly less money from the Rockets as an offer, he was able to get more money net because of the Canadian tax. So it was a tremendous opportunity and he decided to sign with the Rockets.

So I like to be involved with these deals and we generally are behind the scenes with talking to the agents or sometimes we talk directly to the teams on the players behalf, but on trying to make things work the best way for taxes, and we talk about signing more. There was a lot of opportunities as to when agent fees were paid under the old law when they were still tax deductible. We'd like to talk about that as well. So I love being involved with these things. The Tops thing was, for me personally, it was a great thrill to be asked to be, you know, part of the Tops family and to get a Topps baseball card.

But I like to think that we can help a lot with these athletes and again, making them understand that the NFL stands for the National Football League, but the NFL also stands for not for long and that one day the music's going to stop and they're not going to play anymore. So, you know, it's a tough thing. We want to make sure you are prudent and you save a lot of money when you can.

That's awesome. And don't forget, when I'm out in Jersey at the end of this month, I'm getting one of those top cards autographed, correct?

You're getting the card.

Hey, you said you had one for me. And if you haven't, when I get there, if you have it ready, one of those nice little cases and we.

Can get the nomination for you, that.

Would be perfect and authenticated and all that. That would be awesome. I mean, for a kid from Brooklyn, that had to be. You had to be out of this world. When they called you first off, what was your initial response?

The initial response was, I thought it was somebody was trying to play me. I thought somebody hacked my account. And somebody said to me, you know, Tops, we want to include you in our set. We love you. And it's funny because again, that gets all back to Twitter. I'm not 21 anymore and I didn't really know how to use social media whatnot. But as a dare from one of our managing partners was, come on, Robert, only Twitch, don't tweet. And started out slow. Took a while, but I could have never imagined all these things that it's led to. And clearly the baseball card was for my Twitter content and a lot of People like to hear what I have to say. And I'm never tweeting about my clients, except if they have a charity type thing.

I'm tweeting up and never tweeting about inside information that I have. But, you know, always tweeting about, you know, how much things mean to, like, you know, tonight, the Rockets, I'm sorry, the warriors and Toronto play game three. And, you know, it's fascinating to me that this. This is going to cost Kawhi and all these other guys more money. Tax in California. They got to pay California tax for the games being played there. And I'll go back and I'll find my tweet from 2015, when I used to call a franchise tax board before they stopped publishing the money. Did the amount of money that players take, pay tax on, and they'd give me that dollar amount, whatever, two hundred and something million dollars that we've raised in a year by taxing athletes. So to me, that's interesting that.

And it has to be done while you're watching a game. So it just became, you know, as watch. Everybody watches the game with their phone anyway. So I just became used to tweeting with my, you know, when the game was going on.

I mean, how much time you think.

You spend on Twitter a day depends on the season. During tax. During tax season, not as much. But I would. I would say at least an hour and a half.

Okay, so will you watch the game literally with your phone sitting right there the whole night tonight?

I think most people do anyway. Most people do anyway. But, yes, I do. And then I see opportunities, like, if a guy gets a technical foul, I'll say, okay, Draymond Green is lost. You know, whatever. He's lost $700,000 in his career to find his suspension. Now, it used to be the law was on a fine. Was that a fine was tax deductible as long as it wasn't against public law. In other words, if Draymond's going to practice and he gets pulled over for the cop by. By a confiscating, that wouldn't have been tax deductible. But if Draymond is late to practice and Safeguard decides to find him, that fine, you know, against legal team rules, would have been tax deductible. Now they are no longer tax deductible. But. So I thought that would be very relevant if he gets a technical file.

So doesn't the NBA, though, donate that money to charity?

That doesn't make a difference as far as the tax Deduction is okay. Again, Trump changed the tax law so employee business expenses such as cell phones, union dues, agent fees, you know, all things of that ill technical files, fines are no longer deductible. But when it was, the fact that they donated to charity did not make a difference.

Interesting. And I'm biting my tongue right now because I have like five Trump questions I want to ask you. But we're not going to go there because I mean, a bunch of them just popped in my head thinking about that. And I started. Anyways, I digress. Now that's, that is really fascinating. So you know the one thing before I start to wrap things up and I don't want to wrap things up because I'm having so much fun. Where can people find you on Twitter? We talk so much about Twitter. Find more about PKF O' Connor Davies.

Sure. The PKF OConnor Davies is the website pkfod.com and if you click over onto the sports section, you know the industries, you can find the sports entertainment section. You find a little bit about what we do on a daily basis and how we might be able to help. And then also you might be able to find me once or twice on Twitter at Sports Taxman, as it sounds at Sports Taxman on Twitter.

I love it. I love it at Sports Tax man now. So you're sitting in front of, let's just imagine you're sitting in front of soon to be graduates at Pace University and they say, robert, I want to be just like you. Okay, what stories would you share with them and what keys to success would you give them not just to be another Sports Tax guy, but to really figure out what it is that you want to do and how to go about doing that. Because I, I can't imagine you just woke up one day and all of a sudden it was really easy and here you are. You had to ha, you had to really grind and deal with some adversity to get to the level that you're at right now.

Sure. When I was a kid, my parents were very, my, both my mom and dad were very extremely supportive of, to pursue your dreams. And I thought about being a sports broadcaster. I used to watch games in the basement of my parents home in Brooklyn and used to have a little, you know, the microphone in my hand and would announce the games. Except I was the oldest in the family and when it comes down to me choosing a school, I was only applied to two schools in those days, Pace and one other school in Manhattan, and I was accepted to both. But I decided to go to pace. And I always thought I worked harder than anybody else.

I made sure I did all my homework out there and would learn as much as I can about my particular area, what I would tell an incoming student. And I actually had this conversation with a mom the other day about our son is a senior in high school, junior in high school, and he wanted to do something in the sports area. I said, well, first of all, you know, you're probably not going to be Mike Breen or Marv Albert or somebody like that or Joe Buck and be a broadcaster. That's very hard to get. But, you know, if you want to do that, there's schools you can go to try to do that. But I think it's, you got to work hard, you got to pursue your interest, and if it's something that you really love, it's not work. Right.

And you got to be really willing to work hard and do as much research as you can to learn more about that than anybody else in that industry.

Well, if there's anyone that operates in their sweet spot, I mean, it's you. Every single day you wake up, you love what you do. There's so much. There's so much to be said about that. You're very good at, obviously, you're very successful, very good at what you do. I appreciate you carving time out to be with us today. It has been. This conversation has been awesome. And to hear this, itunes, Stitcher, Google Play. I mean, I'm sorry to hear other podcasts like this. You can go to itunes, Stitcher, Google play, you can go to our website, theathletics of business.com and please, after we finish up here, go ahead and rate and review us on itunes. That way it helps our reach, we can impact more people. We have been downloaded in 17 countries, which is absolutely awesome. I love it.

And Robert, I can't thank you enough.

For your time and thanks so much for having me. Great to be on the business sports podcast and look forward. Let's have some dinner together when you come to New Jersey.

Absolutely. You know we will.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to the athletics of business.

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