break down the new law, the unanswered questions, and why waiting for certainty is a strategic mistake.
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big 4 transparency
by dominic piscopo, cpa
for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
what does it take to turn dense tax law into business wins? in this episode of the big 4 transparency, host dominic piscopo sits down with mark gallegos, tax partner at porte brown, to explore how a self-described “tax geek” became an eminence engine by teaching, writing, and speaking across the country while translating the new hr1 legislation into clear moves for clients.
more dominic piscopo | more private equity | more pay & compensation
gallegos serves on the aicpa strategic tax reform advisory group (“strike force”), where volunteer experts parse bills, surface practitioner pain points, and help shape the letters and asks that go to treasury, irs, and capitol hill. that inside track, pressure-testing interpretations with national peers, feeds his day job: delivering 50,000-foot explanations that prompt the most valuable question in professional services: “what should we do next?”
gallegos and piscopo dive into hr1’s planning levers.
on the individual side, gallegos flags tax-bracket management, a higher salt cap ($40,000), campaign-promised provisions like no tax on tips and overtime pay, a $6,000 senior deduction, and potential car-loan interest deductibility for u.s.-made vehicles. on the business side, he highlights the return of 100% bonus depreciation, §179 expanded to roughly $2.5 million, and the restart of §174 expensing, along with a path to address 2022–2024 capitalization once mechanics are finalized.”
sponsored by poe group advisors: helping accountants buy, build, and sell exceptional firms. see today’s special offer
the punchline: planning starts now. with hr1 signed on july 4, firms have rare lead time to build side-by-side scenarios (old rules vs. new), schedule fall touchpoints, and convert guidance into cash-flow and tax outcomes. gallegos is candid that not every detail is final, but waiting for perfect clarity is a missed advisory opportunity.
beyond technicals, gallegos makes a cultural case. if firms only reward hours, “the reward for great work becomes more work,” and advisory dies under a compliance crunch. at porte brown, he’s helped standardize a “one way” of doing the work, hire and train cohorts (20 new grads this year), and run the place like a “teaching hospital” where processes are shared, feedback is welcomed, and tinkering is constant.
gallegos’s path – from national firm track to a regional platform that merged into porte brown – adds a personal dimension. he credits a difficult life detour with sharpening his empathy, leadership, and commitment to treating everyone, from partners to interns, with respect.
that ethos animates his public speaking, becker’s teaching, and his involvement with primeglobal, and it explains why rooms fill when he’s on stage: the goal isn’t to hoard complexity, but to turn it into action.
4 key takeaways
- identify client-specific hr1 levers for 2025. determine who benefits from bracket management, the $40,000 salt cap, potential senior deduction, and car-loan interest rules; prepare client-level scenarios pending guidance.
- systematize advisory capacity. block recurring post-deadline planning windows (oct.–dec.), standardize “one-way” workpapers, and shift incentives to advisory outcomes (not just hours).
- send a short hr1 briefing to targeted clients; schedule two follow-ups (nov. and early jan.) to update on treasury/irs guidance and finalize moves.
- establish a rapid internal review of social-media tax claims (e.g., “no tax on tips” workarounds) to approve, adapt, or debunk before clients act.
more about mark gallegos, cpa, mst
mark gallegos, cpa, mst, is a tax partner on porte brown’s tax services team, based in chicago, illinois. with over 20 years of experience, gallegos has become a trusted advisor in taxation, specializing in mergers & acquisitions, international tax, and tax credits and incentives. his expertise is anchored in a deep understanding of complex tax legislation and the evolving regulatory landscape. gallegos is a prolific speaker and writer, frequently hosting webinars and delivering presentations on tax legislation and related topics. he is an often sought-after public speaker, known for his insightful commentary and his deep understanding of our complex tax legislation. he has served as an expert contributor to global media outlets, including the wall street journal, cnn, usa today, the washington post, bloomberg, fox news, tax advisor, the american institute of certified public accountants, and many local news publications, industry podcasts, and news radio broadcasts. gallegos is passionate about helping clients navigate the intricacies of the tax code and serving as a strategic business advisor to support their success.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
dominic piscopo (00:01.144)
hello and welcome to the big four transparency podcast. i’m joined today by mark gallegos, partner at porte brown. quite a different vibe than the previous person we spoke with from porte brown, which was wade runge, which did end up being a huge episode for the podcast though. so was a very popular one. so pressure’s on mark.
mark gallegos (00:18.509)
no problem at all.
dominic piscopo (00:19.982)
i know you’ll be here to shine. i’ve you know, we chatted a lot at at bridging the gap. you know, very, very charismatic, very well like presenter, i heard there was a packed room. i think it was maybe right before i was going up. so i unfortunately missed the presentation. but you did a presentation on the ob bba or hr one, i believe you said it was yeah, or hr one.
mark gallegos (00:43.313)
yep, yep, the new tax legislation, yep.
dominic piscopo (00:45.838)
and a lot of the kind of new opportunities that come from this bill for people in the tax world. so we’re going to touch on that a little bit. but before we do, i want to talk a little bit about kind of your role in the space. like it seems like you’re doing just a ton of eminence work for the firm, which, you know, when a lot of people talk about kind of partner roles, there’s like business development, there’s the subject matter expert kind of national tax office type role. and then this is something different that i haven’t
spoken to lot of people about. so can you kind of walk us through how that role plays out for you?
mark gallegos (01:21.053)
yeah, yeah, so i mean that my i’m a tax guy since day one of public accounting. i’ve always been in tax and i’ve taken tax and accounting to be like i want to be an expert i don’t want to be just someone that just knows a bunch of stuff and then i just i’m very surface level so i like to dig into it. so over the years i’ve just continued to dig into tax legislation understanding complex topics and you know everything from international tax partnerships to m &a and figuring out
how do we make all this complexity easy for us to understand? so one of the things that i get to do and it’s kind of i feel like it’s a privilege with porte brown is we don’t you we’re the size firmware. we don’t have like a devoted national tax office, but i would say you know when partners have questions or people in the firm have specific questions regarding their clients they’re coming to me to figure out hey, what can we do or how do we do it? beyond that i do a lot with the aicpa to really understand
dominic piscopo (01:52.545)
mm-hmm.
mark gallegos (02:18.267)
what can we do to understand like tax legislation or regulations or whatever’s happening in the moment, right? and so i sat on a committee, the strategic tax reform advisory group. it’s a strike force that really dug into the new hr1 bill through the development of it and still continuing now as we launch like figuring out what all this means, right? and so…
dominic piscopo (02:24.097)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (02:41.031)
is that a group within the aicpa? sorry. okay, interesting.
mark gallegos (02:43.653)
yes, exactly. made with volunteers just like myself from around the country. and so we kind of break down into the pieces of legislation and go, okay, hey, here’s what the bill says. and what does that mean from individuals, businesses, international, state and trust, planning for tax, planning for, you know, financial planning, all these things, because people want to know, you know. and so what is done is over the years is i’ve also had a passion for speaking to go out there and present.
dominic piscopo (02:48.341)
cool.
mark gallegos (03:13.629)
i started doing it in my 20s, but just really whether it’s a small lunch and learn growing into hey take a stage at a icpa engage conference with you know hundreds of people in the room and really try to say here’s something i want to tell you about tax on a particular subject matter, but how we make it interesting how do we make it exciting make you if you’re leaning into your chair and go, know what? want to know more about that or at least my goal always when i speak is to not just represent myself and porte brown but as to really have people lean in and go
there’s something different about him. i want to talk to him sometime today or at this conference. at least have a chat. because to me, i know i’ve done a good job is if people want to come up and have a conversation. if they want to ignore me, then i’m always like, did i offend them? i bore them? that’s never the goal. so with that being said, i get to go do a bunch of things between speaking, writing for the firm. we’re part of an association of accounting firms called prime global.
dominic piscopo (03:48.515)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (03:55.981)
yeah.
mark gallegos (04:12.613)
i do a lot with that. so to have that front center facing outward thing, and i also do some teaching for becker cpa. i do stuff with stratford. i do different podcasts. and so the idea is how do you take the expertise you sit there and learn in your free time and put it in a way that’s maybe, you know, if you’re a tax lawyer, i can talk to you where you’re at. but if you’re someone that’s just kind of like, hey, i dabble in tax, but i don’t know a lot, i got to know what these provisions are.
i can talk to you at the 50,000 foot level and least walk you through it in english. and i think that is the ability that i have at least gotten to do over the years and gotten better at.
dominic piscopo (04:47.032)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (04:53.816)
those were some of my favorite presentations. like when i was at deloitte working in tax, because again, i was, i was sort of like, i’m not going to be the guy who’s like deep in the, in the weeds and the research. like i knew that pretty, pretty clearly pretty early on. but i, i really valued understanding the functioning of these, you know, of these tax strategies and things like that and how they work behind the scenes, like what the execution of them looks like. and then how that kind of translates into a benefit for the client base. right.
and so having the ability to present that, and this is a huge issue in academia. so my partner, she is kind of in that world and the dissemination of information and doing that effectively is like one of the biggest challenges in academia. and i think part of that is you’re a little bit of like a rare intersection of a venn diagram, like with a very small middle where it’s like you are deep, deep, technical person deep into the research. you really enjoy that, but then you are also like an excellent
communicator and a good presenter and a good crowd presence, right, which, again, might not be a huge venn diagram. so i think that that’s a really, really cool thing that you’re leaning into all the way. i wanted to ask on that note, like, how does that translate into being beneficial to the firm? because obviously, you’re a partner, partner time is super valuable. and, you know, porte brown seems to be very supportive of that. so what’s kind of the strategy around
mark gallegos (06:21.307)
yeah, i mean, it’s a great question. spend, you know, i have my own book of business and i have clients that i’m, you know, dealing with constantly. and then i’m also helping everyone else’s clients. you know, the tax department plays a key role in the firm of really being that support system for tax. i a lot of partners, they’re not tax people, right? so they’re like, hey, my client’s got an issue. let’s call the tax department and then call myself or one of my other partners and figure out what do we need to do?
but beyond that, where porte brown’s been highly supportive is, you know, i love the write. i mean, that’s where it all started, is writing. know, write an article, whether it’s internally, externally, learning to communicate that way. and then speaking. and beyond that, you go out there and you’re building brand for the firm, right? obviously, you’re building brand for yourself, but at the same time, it’s really the firm. you’re out there speaking because what you do, your presence, how you act, how you communicate with people is going to be reflection on the organization you’re part
dominic piscopo (06:50.37)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (07:07.681)
mm-hmm.
mark gallegos (07:19.579)
right, including yourself. and so going out there and really representing that is key. and whether i’m doing that on the national stage, traveling the country and doing conferences or big events, but also at local, in chicago, there’s all kinds of organizations that are chambers or local communities that have different organizations for business. the illinois cpa society, all that plays a role so that i can go out and be an expert, right? but like you kind of mentioned before,
i’m a tax geek. mean, by nature, i love digging into tax code, tax regs, and just geeking out with other colleagues around the country that i consider friends and go like, hey, have you heard about this? are we talking about this? and then to be able to take all that complexity and say, all right, now let’s go out there and teach everyone what this is about, but make it fun. like make it fun so that it’s not like an act, like we’re actually, there’s a passion behind it. because no matter what i’m doing,
dominic piscopo (08:12.877)
yeah.
mark gallegos (08:19.229)
the that i, it’s like anything. when you know you’re supported by the place that you are a part of, it just makes it fun. plus, i’m bringing in business. you know, i go out and speak, people come to me and say, hey, my firm, we need some help in an m &a transaction. we need help with a partnership transaction. we don’t have this expertise. can you guys, i heard you speak on this, is there something you can help or someone on your team? and that brings in a lot of revenue and work for us.
dominic piscopo (08:44.128)
okay. so that’s kind of how it translates. and then what’s the, what’s the balance between, you know, speaking at accounting conferences versus like industry specific conferences, because i think you do some of both, correct.
mark gallegos (08:56.093)
i do some of both. would say i do more on the accounting side, it seems like, because that’s, do, i’d say my expertise usually lends to me speaking more so either on mergers and acquisitions, because there’s, it doesn’t seem like a lot of people are doing that, or on tax legislation, whether it tax cuts and jobs act from 2017, the new hr1, whatever it may be, and whatever is down the road. that’s just kind of where i spend my time.
dominic piscopo (08:59.853)
okay.
dominic piscopo (09:11.81)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (09:21.176)
yeah. okay, interesting. and when you’re when you’re kind of crafting these presentations, like what’s what’s the sweet spot there? because there’s also, you know, you want to give it away, you want to like give out value and help people with that. but then at the same time, is there a little bit of a counterbalance of like, you know, we maybe won’t get all the way into the weeds so that we kind of get the worker like how you know, if someone’s listening and they say, this sounds kind of like a cool role for me, like what’s the sweet spot in those presentations?
and crafting those.
mark gallegos (09:51.803)
yeah, first it always starts with like, what is the, am i speaking on and who’s my audience? like it’s the first question should always ask. like if someone wants you to talk about something like, who is listening, right? you should know that. and if they, they got to tell you, and then from there you start to craft it. and i don’t just go with the same old presentation. like i’m always redeveloping it and changing it constantly. tinkering is what i do. and with that being said, i try to give them enough, depending on the time that i’m supposed to speak and
dominic piscopo (10:02.861)
yeah.
mark gallegos (10:21.137)
i’m not afraid to give things away because it’s not like this is magic sauce, right? this is everyone has access to its public knowledge. but with that being said, you the idea is i want to give you enough to feel like, all right, i want to have a conversation with mark. i want to i want to come up to you afterwards and say, hey, can we have lunch? can we meet for whatever and or after the conference? can we exchange phone numbers? i love that. and again.
dominic piscopo (10:25.325)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (10:35.149)
yeah, okay.
mark gallegos (10:46.791)
for me, it’s just like developing other relationships, other people to call and talk to, and if anything, just to have great friendships. that’s the important
dominic piscopo (10:55.148)
yeah. yeah. and then things kind of naturally come from that, right? so it’s really, is relationship building at the end of the day, which is really interesting. and then this ai cpa task force, you mentioned, how does that work? like, is it like an opt in from a bunch of firms who send, know, their, biggest tax brains over and then everyone who participated can then sort of leave with the outcomes of that and the tax plans of it or
mark gallegos (11:03.505)
that’s right.
dominic piscopo (11:24.684)
are these then published somewhere for purchase on the aicpa site? or what does that look
mark gallegos (11:31.069)
so, i mean, the aicpa is an advocacy group, right? that represents the cpas of the country and role agents, et cetera. and one of the things that’s important is we’re all volunteers. so, i volunteer on other committees with the aicpa over the years and i continue to do so. and the strike force is just a bunch of volunteers. again, a lot of times people for the strike forces get appointed based on who…
dominic piscopo (11:38.648)
sometimes.
dominic piscopo (11:58.626)
okay.
mark gallegos (12:00.743)
who are more like, you’re an expert in a particular area, and it’d be great to kind of be aligned with certain people to come together and kind of have a working group that actually can kind of work together and have the knowledge base to dig deep into whatever we’re trying to do. and then we’re basically producing materials, analyzing things, and coming up with responses on behalf of the aicpa so that they can package it together and put it out there for its members.
dominic piscopo (12:26.062)
oh, so like the aicpa can take on, you know, take on a position regarding maybe like a gray area or like a nuanced kind of tax strategy.
mark gallegos (12:33.521)
yeah, right or maybe they need to go to back to congress and say hey you know, hey 174 you guys allowed expensing but we need some more clarity on this. can we go to treasury? i mean all the letter writing that you see coming out of the ai cpa to really help hey, because there’s a lot of tax practitioners that are sitting there and small cpa firms sole practitioners. they’re like, i don’t know hey mark, this is great. you’re talking about this. but how does this affect me? because guess what? i’m up to my eyeballs and tax returns on extension
and i don’t have time to follow it, so i need some guidance. and that’s where the aicpa can advocate for those people, try to get the right answers and help them so their life is a little easier.
dominic piscopo (13:04.461)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (13:13.762)
that’s cool. they go to congress and like, we’ll seek clarification because, you know, i don’t know if there’s an equivalency in canada, but i remember like when, when this whole, you know, the crypto bill or, know, all the crypto tax stuff was coming out. was very, very gray. and i was kind of working on that team a lot at deloitte and we had like, you know, a couple of poor lawyers who were like, you know, my interpretation of this is x, y, and z. and then deloitte had to sort of be like, i,
i guess that might be the position we take now, but like there was never, you know, there was never that level of certainty. and it, felt very siloed where a lot of firms were maybe sort of independently trying to figure that out and, like submit requests to the cra. so our irs equivalent, which would maybe get answered, maybe not six, 12, 18 months down the line when it’s already like so far too late, right. and you had to take a position one way or another by then. so that is actually really cool.
mark gallegos (14:11.357)
and i know the they do a great job with it and i think you know in this tax bill that just passed this hr 1 one of the things that was important was that there were things that on the salt cap there were positions on pass or entity tax there were positions on 174 that you know, you heard various members of congress that were talking about hey, here’s what we want but then when it came to the negotiating table, are they gonna get there or not? you know, we had the house put out their first version of the bill and then
dominic piscopo (14:13.016)
that the aicpa does that. that’s a good service.
mark gallegos (14:41.021)
and then eventually they passed it and then they went to the senate they put out their first version of the bill and senate put out their amended version of the bill and then that’s what became the signed bill, right? so you have all the three different versions that came out the a icpa through the advocacy helped kind of say hey this is really what our members would like to see in these provisions because this is what their clients are saying right and i think that is huge because you know just because the tax bill comes out
dominic piscopo (15:04.013)
yeah.
mark gallegos (15:08.541)
doesn’t mean always along the way that everything is always great. and even if it is great for the client, there’s questions that come up like, hey, how are we going to do this on a tax return? how is this mechanically going to work? when are we going to get guidance on certain rules? like, you know, just throw something out there. like in the tax bill, there’s this new thing on a deduction on no tax on tips, no tax on overtime pay. and that’s all like, oh, hey, great. that’s great. and here’s the basic rules. throw it out there. and now we sit there and go, which particular people does this apply to?
dominic piscopo (15:19.33)
yeah.
mark gallegos (15:37.831)
how is this going to apply? are we going to do certain things with reporting from an employer for overtime pay and stuff like that? all those things that like the accountant hat goes on and you start to go mechanically between now and april 15th of next year. how is this going to roll out, right? this is the stuff that isn’t in the bill but needs treasury and the us treasury and the irs to give us guidance. and so the aicpa provides a role to say, hey, let’s get some help there, people. we need to move the needle to help our members so they can
dominic piscopo (15:38.008)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (15:52.866)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (15:59.288)
yeah.
mark gallegos (16:07.793)
get their work done.
dominic piscopo (16:09.452)
yeah, and absolutely crucial because you know, there’s some guy on tiktok going no tax on tip. here’s how i’m restructuring my business. i have a $1 invoice and a mandatory tip of $400,000 on this engagement, blah, blah, blah. like, you know, there’s some guy on tiktok talking about that, right? so it is good.
mark gallegos (16:26.097)
i’m sure there’s stuff i see out there good and bad on various sites. and again, some people are very good and they use the platforms to really help. and there are others that come up with some strategies that i would say maybe they need to reel in a little bit. needless to say, everyone’s got their own way of doing things.
dominic piscopo (16:33.698)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (16:43.608)
yeah, you’re a fine speaker, very politically correct way of handling that. like that. so back into your own journey a little bit here. so it seems like kind of an o8, you made a pivot from some of the largest firms into more like regional practices. and then from your career from that point on was all to my understanding, kind of more regional type practices. i’m curious what that decision was based on and how that has kind of influenced your career. because to me, again, if i’m you,
i’m probably going, i’m probably a national tax office kind of guy. but i think what you’re doing now is probably cooler on a dissemination of information thing for your, your, you know, unique level of skills and your unique overlap area of skills. so what was that decision based on to kind of switch to the more regional firms?
mark gallegos (17:34.801)
yeah, i i spent many years at rsm & gladry and a pretty large firm, the fifth largest firm at that time, pretty large firm still. and i enjoyed it. the people i worked with, they were friends. i mean, i can tell you, every day i went to work, i really loved the people i got to work with. and i would have stayed on that path and maybe made partner down the road there and all that.
but i you know life hits us hard at times and i went through a a relationship falling apart and that whole concepts personal stuff and i decided that it was time to to try to shore up the the personal side of my life that i had to pivot and do something different from a career standpoint to kind of make myself more available and so i went on a journey that from a personal standpoint created me to get stronger and
dominic piscopo (18:25.422)
okay.
mark gallegos (18:31.685)
i went on a journey from a professional life that kind of now took me out of my comfort zone and sent me down. you know, going to smaller meant, you know, maybe not as stable, maybe, you know, a little bit more unbalanced at times. and so you had to really start to rebuild both sides. and so i had to learn a lot about who i was along the way and figure out what are those next steps are going to look like. and so it took me down this journey.
dominic piscopo (18:50.614)
mm-hmm.
mark gallegos (18:59.133)
and that journey eventually landed me in a firm called bohart spellmeyer, in the same office i’m in now. and it was a firm maybe of 25 to 30 people. and the partners that started it were former grant thornton people, and they had really good sized middle market clients, had a great audit practice, had a great tax practice. and i joined and it was, it felt like i was back at mcgladry again, where i had amazing people i’m working with on a daily basis, where i really enjoyed them.
dominic piscopo (19:05.568)
okay.
mark gallegos (19:27.741)
became friends and i, you your life is feeling good from that side. and then eventually in 2016, december 1st, 2016, we merged into porte brown. and porte brown is a decent sized firm here in chicago and has continued to grow. and i knew when that day came, i also had very high respect for porte brown and i was excited about it and i still am. and so if you, what it’s done, the journey from
dominic piscopo (19:38.667)
okay.
mark gallegos (19:57.147)
being big to kind of going through, hey, trying to figure things out, not just at the professional level, but at your personal level, your emotional level, your spiritual level, every bit of who you are. it just created me to be more dialed in about everything i’m doing now. and so, i would say it’s not the ideal path for someone through all the various emotions that come along the way with it, but it has by, if you take the steps and you really work into who you are and what you’re doing,
then you know everything that all the steps you’re taking are gonna fulfill and it creates that passion. and i think there’s one thing that i have more than anything else and that is passion for what i get to do. the relationships i have in my life, the people i get to talk to or text or go to a conference to, the work i get to do, the clients, it’s all because i have this passion that i have developed that this is what i wanna do. and so i’m having fun every day. i don’t even view it as work. i’m just like, today i get to talk to you and i’m like, this is exciting.
dominic piscopo (20:32.302)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (20:51.981)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (20:55.648)
yeah. well, and i think that shines through a lot and in just the presence that you bring to everything. like you were a blast at the conference and we could tell like, it’s just very apparent that this is like your zone of genius and this is like what you like doing. and this is like, so it is really nice to see someone who’s very deeply satisfied by what they’re doing. and i think that’s kind of infectious for people. so i think that’s super important. yeah.
mark gallegos (21:23.985)
and i talk to people all the time that, public accounting is not my thing, or man, i was there and i had to leave because, and everyone’s got their war stories or their, you know, things that have happened to them along the way. you know, sometimes i listen to people and i’m like, i’m so sorry because like it, you know, i know that there’s times where people don’t get treated well along the way. and that is something that has always bothered me. and, you know, and again, i wish people didn’t have to deal with that.
i mean, life is already hard enough to have to go to work every day and then become an expert, take the cpa exam and whatever else you’re doing and go sell business. that’s a lot of work. we’re just talking about work. we’re not talking about anything else going on in your life, right? and when people have, well, this is what happened to me or this is how i got treated, i’m just like, wow, that’s terrible. and the one thing i do love about porte brown and being a partner here is that we treat people, i’m not saying nothing’s ever perfect, but we do go out of our way to make sure that that’s not how we’re treating our people.
dominic piscopo (22:06.958)
yeah.
mark gallegos (22:23.889)
whether it’s me to another partner or all the way down to admin and intern. everyone’s going to get treated with the highest level of respect because guess what? that’s the only way we get to do the fun things we get to do is because everyone’s working towards the same goal.
dominic piscopo (22:24.227)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (22:38.476)
yeah, yeah, no, i absolutely love that. and what do you think is different in your life now as a partner versus had you stayed on that kind of top 10 firm track? like, you know, do you ever look back and say like, wow, i think i’m, i’m way more satisfied than i may have been. or, you know, how do you think that change in direction has kind of impacted your life and, and, you know, career?
mark gallegos (23:04.413)
yeah, i rarely look backwards on anything in my life. mean and reflect on it more than how do i learn from it? right? and when i was there, i remember when i put my notice in and i told that i was leaving and people are like, wait, what? why are you leaving? like, and again, and even i in my moment was like, what am i doing? right. but it was the right decision at the time for me and what i needed to do. and, you know, when i think about it is
dominic piscopo (23:08.728)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (23:14.083)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (23:25.517)
yeah.
mark gallegos (23:32.571)
yeah, i’m sure i would have been happy, right? just because i’m a very glass half full kind of guy. but what it did is it sent me on a path of trying to figure out a lot of things that i didn’t know. there were a lot of more pain and struggles and just figuring life out that was about to hit me over the next number of years that i had no idea. and i would say that i am a better man because of it now. i’m a better partner. i’m a better employee. i’m a better…
dominic piscopo (23:43.374)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (23:55.128)
mm-hmm.
mark gallegos (24:01.725)
i’m just a work coworker with whoever i’m working with because life experiences teach you no matter what, how do you treat other people with the highest level of respect. the fact that you’ve been through some different things when you’re working with, especially younger people and they haven’t been through any of this yet, you have a, least there’s more empathy towards, hey, i’m not gonna tell you i know what you’re feeling because i don’t know what you’re feeling. but the reality is i’ve kind of been in similar situations to kind of.
dominic piscopo (24:05.613)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (24:15.907)
yeah.
mark gallegos (24:29.853)
help you through this situation. i think that’s maybe sometimes it’s just having the ears to listen versus just yappold.
dominic piscopo (24:36.086)
yeah, i love that. however, i am going to get you to yap a little bit about something. so let’s get into the to the you know, the tax content for that for the tax nerds who’ve been who’ve been patiently waiting. what are some of the kind of key highlights of opportunities coming from hr one that you have presented on or maybe that you haven’t presented on yet either way?
but what are some of the biggest things that you know, a tax practitioner listening to right now should should know about should identify as like big opportunities here.
mark gallegos (25:11.505)
i always say when i when i’m out talking about it, obviously i’ll tell you hey here are the provisions that are in the individual tax the business international here’s the things that state and gift we want to talk about right and then from there it’s like what really is important no matter what the rules are. it’s tax planning and tax planning we we i do a lot of it in the fall, but i mean tax planning is all year i mean it’s talking to clients and saying hey dom, here’s your tax situation. here’s what’s changing and knowing the law to go
dominic piscopo (25:29.539)
mm-hmm.
mark gallegos (25:41.447)
here’s what we should be thinking about. and so when i talk to people now, we’re starting to think about from what’s come out, we know what the rules are for 2025, right? so when you’re, here we are now in august of 25 and you’re thinking about, hey, i know a lot of people are like, hey, mark, but i’m still finishing up clients, extended business and individual returns, right? and i get it. but with that being said, we’ve got to get on the planning mechanism. and the only thing that’s so great about the bill being signed on july 4th,
is that it has given us some time to digest it and really start to put together some plans so that this isn’t happening. because i can tell you, i have spent a lot of holiday seasons and new year’s eve’s digging into what’s happening in tax law and what are we prognosticating on versus knowing what’s happening. but when i think about it, tax bracket management from an individual standpoint, we know what the tax brackets are going to be. understanding that.
dominic piscopo (26:25.727)
man, yeah.
mark gallegos (26:38.781)
not just to say, you’re in the 37 % tax bracket, but how do we utilize planning to make sure we maximize it? maybe you’re a retired individual and you got x amount of dollars you’re gonna make every year and you could accelerate some income. maybe it’s a traditional little roth conversion or something like that. how do we eat up the tax brackets by doing some planning in that situation? thinking about the salt cap that got raised to the state and local tax cap to $40,000.
can people now be able to utilize that more effectively in addition to some of this acceleration of income? how does that help certain people, right? we had campaign promises i mentioned before, the no tax on tips, no tax on overtime pay. we had the new senior deduction for those 65 and older to get $6,000, right? so that’s a planning item, charitable, to be able to take maybe some additional planning on that side of things.
you know, there’s even this new thing with the car loan interest to be able to deduct if you buy a car manufactured in america and be able to deduct up to $10,000 of the interest expense all this stuff we don’t know all the rules on like i said but to start to plan with our clients that maybe this affects or doesn’t right? and then you’re thinking estate and gift i’m talking about raising the the lifetime exclusion of 15 million starting next year in 26 that’s planning and i know i get this
question all the time. so now it’s 15 million, maybe someone’s married, we got 30 million between my spouse and i. we don’t have to worry about estate planning. and the answer is, well, maybe not, but maybe you should still do trust in estate planning. i always recommend that no matter what, even if your income’s below the threshold, because you need a basic will, you need a basic trust set up just to run your life properly. and then on the business side, you’re looking at all kinds of things like the expansion of
dominic piscopo (28:23.405)
mm-hmm.
mark gallegos (28:28.829)
bonus depreciation back to 100 % 179 increased to two and a half million the planning there for my business clients is huge 174 i have you know, we’re in the midwest here in chicago so we have a lot of clients in manufacturing and they do a lot of r &d type work and so they have the 174 costs that had to be capitalized starting in 2022. they’re all excited when i’m calling saying hey guess what?
dominic piscopo (28:47.234)
yeah.
mark gallegos (28:54.801)
we get to start in 2025, get to start expensing that again. so we don’t have to capitalize. and on top of that, we get to do something with the old stuff for 22, 23, and 24, and get to write that off. whether we’re go back and amend or go forward, we’re still waiting on guidance. but all these things create huge boosts to my business clients. and so the planning side of it, just to answer your question is, i get this front row seat to call everyone up and say, hey, i’m sending an email, here’s some things that would affect you. let’s get a meeting, let’s take a few minutes on the phone.
and we’ll have multiple touch points between now and december to really go over a lot of this stuff. and we normally do this stuff, but this is even just a bigger way to really show value.
dominic piscopo (29:30.744)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (29:34.966)
yeah. yeah, i mean, political leanings aside for anyone, like this should be a relatively exciting time for tax practitioners, where, yeah, i mean, there’s there’s a whole new set of rules out, there’s a lot more new things you can do. you know, i remember when i was in tax, there were some big changes. and there was always like this looming thing about a change to the capital gains inclusion rate. where, you know, there’s so much planning to do there to like crystallize gains ahead of time and
and, you know, maybe you could you could artificially like realize some gains to avoid the risk of that happening and that being captured and things like that. and i find this is where, you know, tax firms who become so compliance heavy, and like, don’t make the space for themselves to get into that planning work. well, you know, whatever we call it, like you’re so burned it burdened down by $200 an hour work that you don’t have time for the $800 an
or the value billing, maybe even $2,000 an hour work or whatever it is, right? so i think it’s like a very important thing for people to kind of make space for this and not be so deeply overburdened that you can’t even think about that. you know, even even just as a finance person, i’ve been in both seats, i’ve been in one role where i was so overwhelmed with just everything that like i didn’t even have a second to think. and then i had
another role where i actually had room to breathe, i had room to think, and that translated into some actually pretty massive financial wins for the companies because i was able to go out and look for these opportunities that i was able to then implement for the business, right? and i think we need to think about our client base in the same way where you actually, need to give yourself room to breathe, to be able to do these things.
mark gallegos (31:23.325)
100 % and and you know one of the sitting on committees with the aicpa and volunteering there with the state society and really going out and speaking i get you know the front row seat to kind of talk to you know people in the big four people in large regional firms but also a lot of people in small firms, right in various parts of the country or sole practitioners and so my door is always open. you want to call me you want to email me feel free to
dominic piscopo (31:44.429)
yeah.
mark gallegos (31:51.185)
but i understand that they’re like, hey, that’s great, mark. you get to do all this tax planning. it sounds amazing. but here’s the problem. i’m still working like crazy right now. i’m working weekends to get to the september 15th deadline. and then i got the september 30th extension for my trust clients. and then i’ve got to the october 15th to get my individual tax clients. and i can tell you, mark, i’m going to be working all the way until that october 15th. and then what ends up happening is they bill all this stuff out.
dominic piscopo (32:00.141)
yeah.
mark gallegos (32:20.253)
and then they basically stare at a wall from october 15th to november 15th because the entire year has left them in a state of being like a zombie. and i get it. i get it. and i’m not faulting you for that. and you’re just like, i need a break. i need a moment to just sit here. then next thing you know, it’s the holidays. and yeah, i’ll do some planning and getting ready for tax season. we’ve to get the organizers out and engagement letters, all that stuff. they’re kind of maybe they’re not a big firm and they’re doing it all themselves. right. so it’s a lot.
dominic piscopo (32:27.246)
you’re completely burned out. yeah.
dominic piscopo (32:48.962)
yeah. yeah.
mark gallegos (32:50.417)
i will say, with all that being said, you need to figure out how do you pivot and say, this is a great opportunity, right, to take all this content and guess what, you don’t have to be the expert in the area. there’s plenty of stuff out there that’s being put out there. understand the things that affect your clients. go out there and talk to them, especially when you’re talking to them now. say, hey, this stuff may affect you for next year. we should set up a follow-up meeting to go over this. and i can tell you, you can bill for that because you’re adding value.
dominic piscopo (33:09.197)
yeah.
mark gallegos (33:18.033)
hey, here’s what your tax return would look like based on the old rules. here’s what it’ll look like based on the new rules. it’s going to save you this or here’s what we can do to save more money, right? that’s key. and you will always have a long-term client because your clients view you as, hey, mark’s got my back. he’s looking for everything. and at the end of the day, that’s important,
dominic piscopo (33:18.222)
for sure.
dominic piscopo (33:28.459)
hmm.
dominic piscopo (33:37.794)
yeah. and that trickles back even further. like i view things a lot from like a compensation and firm structure lens from what i do. but basically a lot of that can trickle back to, you know, if you want to have managers and senior managers and people maybe below the partner level who are motivated to do these things, like it can’t be that the reward for doing exceptional work is more work where you’re on the like billable hour model and you’re not considering right the value and the
realization and all of these things, you can’t, you can’t just run a firm based off of like, who’s hammering those hours, because then again, the incentive is away from going out and like actually consuming and have to have the homework’s done for them by, you know, maybe that ai cpa task force. but if you don’t even have the bandwidth to go do that, then you’re like, well, i’m not going to take the time to read this to then sell work that i’m not going to be rewarded for in any kind of way.
even though it might be way higher margin work, i’m just going to keep hammering billable hours, right? so i think that’s like a really unfortunate thing for a lot of, you know, tends to be maybe more some of the smaller practices that are that are kind of stuck in that. but i think that’s a really important conversation to have for sure.
mark gallegos (34:50.063)
and one of the things i think that’s an excellent point is that in public accounting, age-old saying is, hey, if you’re really good as a staff person, you get rewarded by getting promoted and getting more work. so the top performers have always just gotten more work, more work. and hey, i can carry it. i can do it. and before you know it, there’s going to be a time in your life where you’re going to go, i can’t carry this weight anymore. i don’t care who you are and how good you are. you may be the
dominic piscopo (35:14.253)
yeah.
mark gallegos (35:17.511)
brightest mind, the best worker in the world. at some point, you’re going to go, i can’t keep going forward because i’ve got all these other things going on too. maybe as you’ve got a family, maybe you have children, maybe you just have a social calendar that you’re not able to get to. no matter what it is, you’re going to have that moment where you’re going to go, all right, i need to balance. this is where, and again, like i said, porte brown, we’ve done a great job. nothing’s perfect, but it’s the idea of working smarter, not harder.
let’s not burn people out. and i always say when i’m talking to other people, we’re kind of like a teaching hospital to some level in the sense of like we go out, we don’t really offshore anything at the moment, right? so we bring in a lot. we hired 20 brand new staff out of college this year. and we have these, every year we have a new group coming in. we have interns, but we have a new group coming in. and we have people in our firm that not only want to service the clients, but they want to make sure that these young people know the right tools, the right ways.
dominic piscopo (35:46.509)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (36:01.08)
yeah.
mark gallegos (36:13.949)
the right process and procedures to say, hey, if i’m working on a 1040 for one of mark’s clients, how do we do this the porte brown way versus, hey, i’m going to do it mark’s way, but i’m going to do another person’s way. no, no, no. it’s just one way we do things. so everyone just learns the one way. and then guess what? if you find out, even if you’re like six months in, you’re like, hey, why are we doing it this way? i want to hear that feedback because let’s tinker with it and make it better because that’s the only way we all get better.
dominic piscopo (36:39.118)
mm hmm. yeah. yeah. mark, i think i think a lot of people could learn a lot of things. you know, i hope i hope there’s time for some introspection on the way some firms might be operating. you know, even personal introspection on you know, where am i at in that journey? am i headed towards like, imbalance and that may cause kind of some some issues down the line. so
you’ve you’ve shared a lot of value as you do with people, both on the technical side and the non technical side. so so thank you so much. i’m gonna make sure i link your linkedin profile so people can kind of go check you out get in touch. you know, please do get in touch. i’ve been around mark, he doesn’t bite. he’s a great guy. so i’ll do that. and i mean, you’ve sold me on 40 brownling. if any if anyone’s looking for roles like
you know, stay posted on that for sure. and and yeah, thank you so much for taking the time.