Outsmarting the System: Lower Your Taxes, Control Your Future, and Reach Financial Freedom

by Anthony C. Campidonica

Do you feel broke no matter how much money you make? Are you worried you’ll never get ahead? If so, this book is for you. Learn how to take advantage of the tax laws in the same way as the rich, no matter your current income level. The rich are already lowering their taxes, and now you can too.

The system that taught you how to reach financial freedom has fooled you by causing you to pay excessively high taxes. As your largest expense, taxes significantly reduce your income and can lead to feelings of helplessness and frustration. Paying too much in taxes prevents you from reaching financial freedom. The trick in lowering your taxes is to change how you make your money.

This book is written for the busy individual who has limited time to read. It’s written as short and succinct as possible, and illustrates overall strategies to outsmart the system.

Take the first steps towards joining the rich in outsmarting the system.

Genres: Finance, Personal Finance, Nonfiction, Money

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Brian Carlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure; I was given a copy of this book to review, and I am a client of the author. When Tony gave me the book to review I groaned a little inwardly. What could be more exciting than reading a book about taxes and such? My usual taste in books runs to detective novels and old fashioned science fiction. Anyway, feeling honor bound, I started reading and was pleasantly surprised right from the get-go. This book is very well written and really held my attention. At just a few over 100, there aren't too many pages, so it's not like a person would have to put their life on hold to read it. Moreover, the author uses straight forward language that the average Joe can understand, and he shares lots of inside tidbits of information that will open your eyes. For instance, in first few pages I learned that a 401k is not the smartest choice when it comes to keeping most of your hard earned dollars. That was a counter intuitive revelation, because I had always been led to believe that sheltering my savings in an IRA to avoid taxation during my earning years would be smarter than paying tax on the money. The rationale is that we avoid the higher rate of taxes during those years and only pay a lower rate after retirement. Well, I am now retired, so let me tell you that my rate of taxation hasn't gone down because there are other streams of income that the people this book is aimed at are receiving. Basically, the author explains that during a person's working years, capital gains in a brokerage account are taxed at 15%. However, if one invests through an IRA, and then comes to take distributions later in their retirement years, those distributions are considered to be income and are taxed at 25%. So you end up handing over more dollars to the IRS than you would have done had you just invested through a brokerage account and paid the taxes as you went along.
There are other little gems of information that will catch your attention, but mainly the book is aimed at people who want to rise above being just a working stiff; those who want to be or already are investors, landlords, or small business owners. Mr. Campadonica deals with each of these in turn and shows how you can achieve financial freedom in any of those pursuits. He frequently holds out the example of the rich (think the Mitt Romneys of the world) who are landlords, investors and business owners, showing how these folks make other peoples' money work for them instead of using their own wealth. Don't get me wrong; this is not a get-rich-quick book - just a solid no-nonsense set of strategies to help achieve that financial freedom.
Along the way, Campadonica provides some valuable insights into the IRS, especially the auditing side of that organization. This is first hand information, because he was a real, living, breathing IRS auditor himself. One revelation blew my socks off - it's hard to believe, but I have it on Campadonica's good authority that IRS auditors are less interested in screwing the last nickel out of the subject of an audit than they are on closing the audit and moving on. That's because they are measured on how many audits they can close out and not on how much of a bigger share they can score from an individual's hard earned income.
The reader doesn't get off too lightly. At the end of the book, Mr. Campadonica sets some homework, just to make sure you were paying attention and for you to get the best out of the great advice he has provided.
I would recommend this little gem of a book to anyone who wants to keep more of their income, and legally pay as little as they possibly can to Uncle Sam. Not only is it a good read the first time through, but will also stand one in good stead as a handy reference. Now, back to those detective and science fiction novels.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm giving this book 5 stars because it was easy to read but still taught me a lot. It started with a high level view of how taxes work and narrowed down to strategies that will help a person save money... which is what I'm interested in (as most people probably are).

If you're one of those people that get angry/upset about how little the wealthy people pay in taxes vs. how much you pay in taxes, read this book. Outsmarting the System explains how the rich are doing it. Best part is, the book shows how lower income people can do the same. (I'm not going to spoil it by telling you how)

I'm ranking Outsmarting the System up there as one of my favorite finance/tax/retirement books for how smoothly it breaks down complex strategies and adds a touch of inspiration for those of us overwhelmed by high tax bills.

[Private Account · Rating 1 out of 5]

Major lessons from this book: always own your own company AND have a pet project business you are trying to get off the ground (for the write offs), never live in a house you own until it is all fixed up--while you are fixing up a place you want it to be a rental so the repairs can be write offs and never have a 401K or an IRA, BUT it's all entirely useless if you make more than $150,000 because the IRS doesn't really let you write off anything after that. AND even if you maximize the amount of taxes you are not paying (if you are in a high tax bracket), the best you can do is keep 54% of your money instead of 47%. So either this book was written by the IRS to convince you that you are screwed either way or there is a better book out there. F--- this country, I'm leaving.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very easy to read/understand, with logical, easy to follow advice.

[Lauren Machta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book about how to work with the tax system. Easy to read and written in a way that is easy to understand.