A Tax Man Takes Account of His Life
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Even though it's tax season, accountant Doug Stives skied at Snowbasin in Utah last month. (Photo by Nicholas Draney)
CPA lives better, works less thanks to the art of deduction.
In the thick of tax season, most certified public accountants are chained to their desks grinding out returns.
Doug Stives, a CPA from Red Bank, N.J., went skiing in Utah.
"I always dreamed of coming here for peak conditions," he said in mid-March between runs at Snowbasin Resort.
The trip is among the many perks that have accrued from his decision, in 2006, to become, in effect, The Most Tax-Efficient Man in America. The experiment has led to a new career, frequent travel and obsessive documentation of expenses, such as a $6 hot dog he recently bought in the Philadelphia airport.
The "aha" moment came to him, he says, after a college approached him about a teaching gig and he realized he could put into practice many of the tax strategies he had learned over the decades.
[More from WSJ.com: 30 Last-Minute Tax Tips]
Step 1 was to change jobs. Mr. Stives had been a partner for 36 years at The Curchin Group, an accounting firm. By accepting an offer to teach tax and accounting courses full-time at the Leon Hess Business School of Monmouth University in New Jersey, he was able to tap into a broad array of tax-free employee benefits not available to him at the firm.
Step 2 was the formation of Doug Stives LLC, the separate consulting business to which he attributes an impressive array of expenses. In general, people who are employees and have side businesses are often in the best position to maximize the tax code's benefits, say experts. Mr. Stives calls this "the best of all worlds."
The result, says Mr. Stives, is that while he earns less than 75% of his earlier pay, he takes home almost 90% as much. And he says he reaps another $40,000 a year in tax-free benefits from his college gig. Among other things, the school adds to his 401(k) contribution and provides tax-free, discounted health plans for Mr. Stives and his wife, plus disability insurance. As a partner in the accounting firm, he had to fund such expenses himself.
Not that all is perfect now. One peeve: dealing with what he calls "airline nonsense" -- long lines, rising fees and canceled flights. But overall, he says, "my quality of life is so much higher."
His wife of 40 years, Elizabeth Stives, agrees. "We travel so much now for his business," she says. "Next is Lake Tahoe." |
