Manufacturing eCommerce Success – with Duncan Glenn

Damon Pistulka  00:04

All right, everyone, welcome once again it is Friday and that means it’s time for the faces of row guys ended again, manufacturing eCommerce success. I always look I was looking at Kurt and we were on the show last night on my show last night and I was just thinking we were rolling right into a curve but this is time for manufacturing ecommerce success and we are going to be talking about research and development tax credits today with Duncan Glenn. I’m Damon Pistulka, your co host. And right over there that pretty guy. Right next to me is Curt Anderson co host take it away my friend

Curt Anderson  00:38

Matt Damon is this man I’ve been looking forward to this one this is gonna be a great conversation. Questions. Friday everybody it’s Man March man is the starting early here on our show. So this is gonna be a good one. So let us know you’re out there drop your no job. Your give us a hello in the chat box. Give a big hello to our friend. So we’ve got Dunkin donut Glen here today. Damon Did you know that says that, you know, just I don’t know. Founder himself and

Duncan Glenn  01:05

don’t ever heard that one since elementary school man. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  01:09

right. That’s, that’s the grade level that we’re at man is worth third grade right here. So, Duncan, happy Friday. Welcome to the program. How are you man?

Duncan Glenn  01:17

Doing great. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, guys. All

Curt Anderson  01:21

right, let’s, let’s dive in. So first off, Duncan got a couple of questions. We’d like to get to know you a little bit. So I’m going to open up with a question for you, Damon. I’ve never I’ve never asked this one before. So looking. Now where you’re you’re located where? Utah? Yep,

Duncan Glenn  01:36

Salt Lake City, Utah.

Curt Anderson  01:38

Awesome. Okay, so question for you. When you were little guy growing up, when you were a little guy growing up? Who was your hero? Who was your hero that you looked up to as a little guy?

Duncan Glenn  01:51

I mean, honestly, it was my dad. But in terms of like, athletics, I’m really into athletics. It was Michael Jordan.

Curt Anderson  01:59

Michael Jordan. All right. Well,

Duncan Glenn  02:01

let me clarify, I grew up in California, not Utah. In here, kind of, you know, after school and everything, but that’s why I would say Michael Jordan had grown up and Utah would probably be Karl Malone.

Curt Anderson  02:15

mailman. Alright. So great. Great. So I’m a huge Michael Jordan fan. So that’s a great answer. Let’s talk about dad for a second. Why was Dad Your hero.

Duncan Glenn  02:24

I mean, just the way that he was always helping other people showing me how to how to work hard and serve others kind of instilled in me. And he’s actually a scientist and I went into counting and taxes, which is quite different. But seeing the opportunities that I have to serve people and help them save money and do things like that. There’s a lot of parallel sales there. So he kind of he kind of laid a good foundation for me. It’s awesome.

Curt Anderson  02:48

So dad’s a scientist, that’s, you know, so when people say like, well, it’s not like your dad’s a scientist. Well, yeah, he is a scientist, right? So and what’s dad’s names? What’s dad’s name? Please,

Duncan Glenn  02:56

Greg. Greg. A

Curt Anderson  02:59

big shout out to Greg and I know on your LinkedIn profile, you’re a dad of five so your phone dad’s footsteps. Hey, Damon, we got a few friends who are dropping notes. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  03:06

we do. We got we got ball on this right here today. Greetings from the Netherlands cool. Alan’s in here from Indianapolis today. And we’ve got Whitney Houston

Curt Anderson  03:16

Whitney Houston’s in a house so and I think particularly Allen Allen Dude, you’re gonna love this conversation. So alright, Doug, and let’s go here. So, dad, Greg, Big Hero of yours. You grew up in the Bay Area. You end up I believe you’re a BYU grad man talking about March Madness. They’re gonna be in the March, though in the tournament here coming up in a week or so. Don’t you think Mr. Duncan been?

Duncan Glenn  03:38

Absolutely. Hopefully we can nail down a five seed maybe a four CD for lucky

Curt Anderson  03:43

that a boy All right. Right. Kooks? Right? Yeah. We’re rooting for you, dude. So let’s go here. So you’re BYU grad. What, what inspired you what led your your, your talents, your passion, your purpose going in this whole, like accounting tax world just share a little bit of like post-college what that looked like? Yeah,

Duncan Glenn  04:03

for sure. So I’ve always been kind of good with numbers and whatnot. And really just looked at the accounting profession as a as a stable kind of necessity and also really the Language of Business. So knowing that if I could learn accounting, I’d be able to kind of have conversations about all kinds of, you know, business aspects that really laid the foundation for me. And then really just starting out working at a large local firm here in Salt Lake and developing relationships with the partners there, all the different managers that I worked with. And then the clients was just a really good foundation for my career.

Curt Anderson  04:45

Nice, awesome. Okay, so let’s slide in. So today we’re going to do a deep dive into research and development tax credits. Now I know you know, so our show, manufacturing ecommerce success. We target manufacturers it’s a big thing in You know, every manufacturer is obviously looking for tax savings, great opportunity here. Let’s dive in. Let’s get into a little bit of like 101, if you will. So let’s start with, can you just explain to the folks give us a one on one level? What is the research and development tax credit? Awesome,

Duncan Glenn  05:16

definitely. So the research and development tax credit is a business income tax credit. Okay, so not something that you worry about on your individual return much, although if you do have a flowthrough type of entity structure, right, so an LLC, or an S corporation, if you’re structured that way, you actually do see the savings on your personal taxes, which is nice. But a lot of corporations also take advantage this credit, wanted to just at a high level, an income tax credit is different than your typical tax deduction, you all might have might be familiar with that phrase, you’ve got your revenues at the top, you’ve got deductions or expenses down below, that gets you to a taxable income number, right, they’re gonna apply a tax rate to that, and that’s your, that’s how much you have to pay the government. After you apply the tax rate, then the r&d credit comes in, and it offsets dollar for dollar that tax liability. So it’s actually much more powerful than a deduction itself. This has been around for over 40 years. And the purpose of it, Congress enacted it back in the day to help the US be competitive in world markets. And so over the years, it has incentivized job growth in the US in the tech sectors, specifically, biological science, physical science, engineering, and computer science. So those are kind of the four fields that we focus on manufacturing definitely falls into the engineering aspect of this. And, yeah, it’s just a it’s a great way for companies that kind of have a culture of innovation, process improvement, new products to be compensated, really for those types of activities. Excellent.

Curt Anderson  07:06

Okay, so let’s go here. So what I’m hearing I heard, LLC could be S corp could be a sole proprietor is that is that? So? So? Alright, so that’s a great thing. So maybe if folks if you’re familiar with this tax credit, there might be I don’t know, Duncan, have you come across this? If there’s a myth or like, well, that’s not for, you know, we have a 10 person shop. That’s not for me, that’s for like the big corporations. But you’re you’re dispelling that myth. This could be for solopreneurs, five employees, 10 employees. So this is definitely an applicable tax credit for any sized company, correct? Absolutely.

Duncan Glenn  07:38

Absolutely. And that became even more so apparent, after 2003, they used to have this rule in place that you had to is called the discovery rule. You had to discover essentially something new to the world to really qualify for this credit. They changed that in 2003 and said, okay, as long as it’s new to your company, then it’s okay. So for example, software development, like people have been developing software for a long time. If you decide to create an app in your company to maybe automate some things, you know, you can’t make the argument that you created the ability to create an app, like, that’s been around forever. But if your business your your specific business hasn’t done that before, then absolutely. We can, we can go and claim credits for you. Okay,

Curt Anderson  08:28

Duncan, man, you just perked my ears right up? Daymond? Let’s go there. Right. So let’s say hypothetically, I’m just asking for a friend, let’s say hypothetically, there’s a manufacturer on the planet that wants to get into, let’s say, e commerce could be I’m just asking for a friend Duncan. If a manufacturer wanted to get into E commerce, that’s a big serious investment, that can be 10s of 1000s of dollars, that can be six figures, right? If it’s new to them, is that are you saying? Is that a text? Is that? Yep.

Duncan Glenn  08:59

So as long as we’re able to tie it to one of those four areas, right. So if you’re diving into E commerce, I imagine that there’s avenues we can find to relate that to computer science, just in terms of the logistics on the back end of website development, different API integrations for you know, whether you’re trying to set up payment, you know, yeah, options and abilities, different API integrations like that. So all of that being new to your company diving into that space. Absolutely. And the way it kind of works is you look at the time that spent on different activities that are involved in creating the tech or the or the process. In this case, if you’re if you’re diving into E commerce, so if you have people that you’re paying wages to and they’re spending time then we can capture a portion of their wages that turns into a qualified expense, right? If you’re paying a third party, somebody who is not part of your company, but has software development experience or API integrate Using experience, you can pay them and those payments can qualify for this r&d credit. So a couple of different avenues there types of expenses to qualify the other one. There’s a couple other ones. If you’re creating any sort of software, AP or anything like that, and you’re paying for computer rental space is what they call it. Yeah. Back in the day, that’s kind of how it was just like big mainframes, you go and rent one. Nowadays, we would call that Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure. And really, you’re just paying for a subscription to use their computing data, right to try to try to create, you know, your app. And so those payments can be qualified as well. And then the last one, is supplies expense, we can dive more into supplies, because there’s a lot of manufacturing examples of where supplies can can be qualified. I would say software development, you don’t typically have supplies that qualify.

Damon Pistulka  11:02

Yeah. So I’ve got got it. Wow. Wow. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  11:07

there’s a lot here, man. The lot here, a lot of meat on the bone, Damon? Yes.

Damon Pistulka  11:12

So we’re sitting there today, we’re a manufacturer, we don’t have an e commerce website, we’ve got to buy the technology to enable our website, we’ve got to hire the people to do it. We’ve got to, you know, all the way through, like you said, payment gateways and other things like that. So that might be one thing we want to look at. Wow, that’s something for people that have to look at it, you know, they’re looking at implementing this, that’s one of the the costs is obviously a hurdle. And you mentioned this before, and I want to go back to this again. Now, this is a tax credit. This is not a deduction or anything like that. So explain that just one more time again, so people understand what that means.

Duncan Glenn  11:58

Sure. So let’s say you’re a manufacturing company, you’re diving into the E commerce space, you get it all up and running, your E commerce abilities, boost your revenue, revenues is top line, right? That’s dollars coming into the business. You also have expenses related to that the expenses to create the website, the expenses to pay developers to create API integrations to give you payment options online, different things like that, those expenses or deductions, okay, that’s reducing the amount of your taxable income, you have all this revenue, you’re offsetting it with business expenses, part of those business expenses, namely wages, contract research supplies, if they apply computer rental, you carve out a portion of those expenses that are related to the certain activities that qualify for this credit. And it generates go through a big formula. And at the end, it generates $1 for dollar tax credit, that’s generally going to be anywhere between six to sometimes up to 20%. Of what your actual expenditures were. Okay. And that that is a function of there’s a federal credit. So no matter where you’re located in the US, you can qualify for that one. And then I would say 3940 states out of 50 have a have an r&d credit at the state level as well. So state income tax offset? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  13:29

yeah. So you’re saying six to 20% of those expenses. So if we spent $100,000, we could get maybe get 10%. Just say that, because it’s easy math. For me sitting here today. That’s $10,000 as a tax credit now that tax credit is not a deduction on my income. It is actually if I have to end up paying the government $20,000 For my taxes. I now pay them $10,000

Duncan Glenn  13:56

That’s right. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  13:59

Yeah. Duncan, I told you, it’s like grade school here today, right? Yeah. Well, you know what, and I was generous and saying what I say earlier, second, or third grade. My wife’s a preschool teacher, Duncan. So we’re probably at the preschool level, when you’re dealing with me and I get above 10 fingers. You know what, I didn’t wear shoes and socks today, because I was prepared to count. So hey, we’ve got a question. Let’s get up

Damon Pistulka  14:24

here. We got Duncan, do you get a pushback from prospects who may think this is too good to be true?

Duncan Glenn  14:32

We get that we get that comment, but it’s not usually pushed back. It just it just leads to more questions. And they they’re like, Wait a second. So I get a deduction first, and I get a credit on top of that. And it’s like, yeah, it’s been a double dip type credit,

Curt Anderson  14:47

double check it. Okay.

Duncan Glenn  14:48

There is a little bit of a change that happened. We can go into this later if you guys want, but there’s legislative change that happens starting in 2022. And later, Congress is currently trying to reverse that, but in those cases where 2022 or 2023 credits, you don’t necessarily get the same double dipping of deduction and credit. You get, you get a small deduction, but it’s a lot smaller than it used to be, and then you still get the full credit on top of that.

Curt Anderson  15:15

Okay, so, so, Duncan, when we talk offline, it might be of your interest, you should be hooking up with ecommerce agencies who are implementing like, you know, massive six figure Yeah, you know, projects. You know, Damon, oh, my goodness, yes. And we need to definitely connect

Damon Pistulka  15:32

with a few people like, Oh, my head is spinning. Now.

Curt Anderson  15:36

It’s Harrington and free commerce. We just had Adobe Commerce on the show Monday.

Damon Pistulka  15:40

So you know, we’ll be big commerce. Yeah. So

Curt Anderson  15:43

So let’s, let’s go here, Duncan. Alright, so obviously, we’re telling the conversation, we’re excited about that whole ecommerce thing. Let’s go to the manufacturer. That’s, let’s let’s, I want to go a couple places. Let’s take the OEM original equipment manufacturer, they’ve been manufacturing widgets for a long time, but maybe they’ve created some new widgets, in addition to their current line. Are they applicable for this tax credit? Could you walk us through? I’ve invented a new mousetrap a better mousetrap better than my old one. And my applicable for this tax credit?

Duncan Glenn  16:14

Absolutely. I’m glad you brought that up. And just to kind of lay a foundation, I want to touch briefly on what’s called the four part tests. Okay. All right, we can count preschool

Curt Anderson  16:24

123412 I, I’m marking these down, and I’m going to repeat them as you go. So remember, we got to bring it at a preschool level. So number one, please.

Duncan Glenn  16:32

Okay, number one is creating a new product or process. Okay. So manufacturers are great candidates, because they’re typically creating new products. Sometimes manufacturers, they might not be creating a new product, but they’re typically always trying to improve their manufacturing process. Maybe they’re trying to make it more lean, maybe they’re trying to make it more reliable. Maybe they’re trying to increase the quality of their product. And that can be that can qualify for this first part of the four part test product or process. Number two, needs to be based on one of those four sciences that I mentioned biological science, physical science, computer science, or engineering. I guess that’s not a science, but that’s the last one. So manufacturers, we’re typically going to qualify that under engineering. And that’s it’s a home run. It’s a it’s probably the most common r&d credit industry in the country. Recent figures 59% of all corporate r&d credits were related to the manufacturing industry for this last year. So 59%, that’s number two. Okay. Number three, at the outset of creating your new product or process, there has to be some level of technical uncertainty is what they call it. That can be uncertainty. Like, we’re not sure what product we want to make. It can be uncertainty, like, we kind of know what product but we don’t know what the design should be. Or with our process, we know how we want to improve the process. But we don’t know how much better it’s going to make our end results, right. So there’s uncertainty there. Okay, that’s number three. Number four is you’re engaged in a process of experimentation, which can include things like trial and error testing, modeling, prototyping, simulation, different things like that, where you’re where you’re really just going through a process to try and refine your design, you’re trying to make it as good as you can. And that usually takes time. Right? And so that’s, that’s a big part of when we go and do our study. And we assess how much time people are spending on these types of activities. That’s usually one of the biggest ones is like, we’re not sure what the design is. We’re going to test it. We’re going to try something. We didn’t like that. We’re going to iterate on that a little bit. Test it again. Okay, now we got it. So that’s number four process of experimentation.

Curt Anderson  19:09

Okay, let’s go ahead, dunk and keep going. Yep.

Duncan Glenn  19:11

So, so having laid that foundation in the manufacturing industry, like you mentioned, Kurt, there’s a lot of activities that that companies are engaged in that kind of fall under this umbrella, right things like optimizing your manufacturing process, things like improving your product quality. Maybe you’re developing a second or third generation product. It’s not the same as the original product you’ve created, but it’s an improved product, right? It doesn’t even have to be something completely different. It can be the same base product but an improvement on it right like version two point. Sometimes you are you have people who are involved in the tooling, right and the equipment fixture design. Maybe you have to change your your process for how your tooling machining up to create a manufacturing run, right? Prototyping, that’s a, that’s a big one. Anytime you’re starting to create a new product, you have to come up with those prototypes to make sure that you have minimum viable product and all that. Maybe sometimes you’re involved in alternative material testing. So generally the same product, but you found a new material that maybe is cheaper, or maybe is stronger, or higher quality. And so you start to try to create your product with that material. And that requires time and effort and testing. Doing things like trying to become more cost effective things where you’re trying to just improve your product performance. Okay. So these are just a few examples, but hopefully, that gives you an idea of the kind of thing that we’re looking for, for qualifying for this credit.

Curt Anderson  20:57

You know, Damon, I you know, Duncan just started studying this stuff like a week ago. That’s pretty impressive, Duncan that you’ve learned all this? Like, I don’t know, I just cannot believe I’m just teasing. And he’s been doing this for his whole career. So Duncan, this is super impressive. I usually wait to the end on this I in case people need to sneak off. Where in you’re not going anywhere yet, please. Where will people? Where can people find you? Because like, this is just yeah, this is really importantly, not like pure gold. Where can people find you please talk about your firm. You’re on LinkedIn, obviously. Just and then we’re gonna keep going. We’re gonna do this again at the end. But I’ve never done this before. I feel like people need to know where to yeah,

Damon Pistulka  21:36

yes, sure.

Duncan Glenn  21:38

Appreciate it. So I’m with B 10. Capital. We’re a tax incentives and strategy firm for business owners and high net worth individuals. r&d tax credits is one of our many service lines that we offer. I’ve been doing r&d tax credits for most of my career as a CPA. You can find me on LinkedIn, Duncan, Glen, my email is Duncan at the 10 cap.com. Shoot me an email if you have any questions. And then yeah, our our website be 10 cap.com If you want to learn more about what we do. Very

Damon Pistulka  22:14

cool. Very cool. We got some getting other guests here too. While we’re while we’re digging, right? We got Gail. She’s

Curt Anderson  22:20

eight Damon, she’s gonna be on the show in a few weeks. So

Damon Pistulka  22:23

do a note so Happy Friday, Gail, I gave thanks. Thanks for stopping by the a route Timothy back to

Curt Anderson  22:29

me from Amsterdam. So happy, happy to meet you.

Damon Pistulka  22:33

We got MD stopping by today saying hello to everyone. Yeah, thanks so much for the comments, everyone and keep them coming. So let me do this. Boom, there we go. But that I’ve just I’m my mind is this and you can tell my mind is racing, right? Because this is yes, we’re talking about manufacturers, it’s got to be far reaching beyond manufacturers. But when we look at this, and you’re in these manufacturers, I’ve got to imagine once you start talking to them, there are just things that fall out that are just like, Okay, here’s some, here’s some more, here’s some more that you never thought about. And then they’re thinking to themselves, I am so mad that I missed out on 20 years of this.

Duncan Glenn  23:21

Yeah, for sure. And one of the one of the good pieces of news that we can share is that if you didn’t know about this credit, and you’re wanting to learn more about it and get into it and take advantage of it, you can actually retro actively claim this for the last three years. Oh my goodness. So not not 20 years, but at least at least

Damon Pistulka  23:45

three years. Awesome. Because some of these people have laid out tremendous amounts of money, like you said, that change process to change whatever they’re doing. And not just digitally, but physically and all this and retroactive for three years.

Duncan Glenn  24:01

Yep. So if we think about, it’s from the time that you filed your tax, your tax return. So, so we’re still doing tax year 2020 returns, and they’ll go and amend those because those were the ones that were filed in 2021. Right. So if you extended that, you know, some people extended that out to July August, September. Yeah, you still got some time go back and claim 2020 We prepare all the documentation and and r&d tax credit, study and substantiation we provide that to your CPA so that they’re able to do a quick and easy amended tax return and get your refunds for you. Yeah. 2020 is still in play. 2021 And then like I mentioned 2022 and 2023. There was some legislative changes that made it not as lucrative to claim this credit but again, there’s there’s legislation in the works right now they’re trying to change that because they know that it is really stifled the the amount of the amount that People are investing into r&d in their in their because of powder.

Curt Anderson  25:05

So Duncan, let me ask you another really, really, I thank you for your patience and you’re putting up with my dumb questions today. So, you know, when you talk about the four, right, we’re talking about product process, the sciences, tech uncertainty we talked about, I can’t read my last writing, you know, experimental the challenge error. Right. Okay, so if I’ve got those four down, yep. I mean, arguably, it’s almost every function of a manufacturer is there is there? Are there things that are not as a reason not to do this is a reason like, why would a manufacturer not want to pursue this?

Duncan Glenn  25:40

I mean, we, that’s what we say all the time. Like, we, we feel like it’s the gospel, right, you just got to preach it to everybody, because there’s just not enough. Not enough knowledge in Blanchard about this. And so, and, you know, to the, to the defensive, most CPAs out there, they do really have their hands full with all the complex tax law just to get things filed properly, and make sure all the forms are there and everything so, but that’s kind of why I started specializing is because I saw the value of this credit and thought to myself, like, if CPAs are afraid to claim this, because they don’t know enough about it, they’re worried about an audit different things like that, right? I want to learn about it get confident to where we don’t need to be afraid of an audit, because we’re following the law exactly to a tee. And we’re claiming, you know, really what is rightfully ours because of the nature of the business that we’re in, in our in our culture of innovation and really just being competitive, trying to stay competitive with other firms out there. So

Curt Anderson  26:42

all right, David, I wanted to take a little pivot here, if you don’t mind, because you know, one of my favorite lines of all time niche down right and so Duncan, we on this program is perfect. I just went to Coffee with a guy this morning. He’s an attorney. And, you know, apparently he must watch us on LinkedIn. He’s like, Yeah, I know, Kurt, you’re Mr. niche down, right. And so just, Duncan, what, you know, you could be a general practitioner, you could be you know, the all around accountant, just, you know, superstar guy that you are, what inspired you years ago to like, go like, how did you pick this? And are you know, and again, I know, you’re very humble guy. Do you feel like you’re kind of like building a reputation nationally renowned of like, the r&d guy, like what? Walk us through your process and what it’s done for you as an entrepreneur? And as a, you know, as an accountant, please? Sure,

Duncan Glenn  27:31

yeah. Now, so, you know, my background on an right out of school was learning just the basics of corporate tax LLCs partnerships, s corpse individuals. And it’s it was it was interesting was good. But the thing that I was lacking was, the general public doesn’t necessarily appreciate a tax return filed correctly. Yeah, it’s kind of a necessary evil for them. Wait,

Curt Anderson  27:57

wait, Doug. I’m sorry. I’m 55. Right? They’re supposed to be accurate, or they didn’t know that. Damon, did you? Why did you give me I didn’t get a memo. tax returns

Damon Pistulka  28:07

are supposed to be accurate, either. So that’s kind of important.

Curt Anderson  28:11

If the IRS is out there. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding.

Duncan Glenn  28:15

Yeah, yeah. So I kind of I dabbled in the r&d credit during those times. And I always felt so much better. Whenever there was a company that had this r&d piece and attached to it. I was like, wow, they’re saving so much money from this. And it really just inspired me because of the value proposition. And so and then the more I learned that so many CPAs, don’t feel comfortable claiming this because they don’t know section 41 and 174. They don’t know the case law. It’s like, okay, well, I could maybe carve out a niche for myself, and it’s gonna feel a lot better because you’re bringing so much value to these businesses and these clients. And so that’s kind of what inspired me. And the more I’ve gone on, you know, I was doing r&d at that original firm, like I said, but I wanted to specialize and only do r&d. So I left and to a company out of California that specializes in those. And during that time, just in my regular networking activities, I ran into the guys at v 10. Capital, and they said, Hey, we’ve been wanting to kind of add this arrow to our quiver. Would you want to come start that up for us? Yeah. Yeah. And like you said, that was a big part of my entrepreneurial journey because they they hadn’t done r&d before. Yeah, but they brought me in with my experience and said, we’ve we know you can do it. So let’s start it from scratch. And that’s that was three years ago. So

Damon Pistulka  29:42

nice.

Curt Anderson  29:44

All right. I absolutely love it. We’re coming into the top of the hour. Hey, Damon, Harry’s here. Oh, yeah, we

Damon Pistulka  29:49

got Harry players that are stopping by today. Happy Friday,

Curt Anderson  29:53

new Harry and so Harry, you’re gonna love this. So alright, let’s let’s dive right back in so I love what you’ve done. Just it admire what you’ve done with your career. I love how you niche down, man, you’re just like, you’re like the poster child of what we love the preacher Duncan. And on top of it, you’re like, you’re like Santa Claus, like giving, you know, given money, just, you know, building profit opportunities for literally almost every manufacturer so that you know, we should be screaming this from the rooftops. So for if anybody’s missed it, we’ve I don’t want to do a total recap. But let’s dive in that can you do you have some examples that you could give us? Like, do you have, you know, without giving away secret sauce or client confidentiality? But do you have some examples of like, you know, you must just have some wonderful success stories of, you know, ABC manufacturer, Mr. And Mrs. Entrepreneur just loves dunking, does he found this? Do you have a couple of stories that or anything like that, that you could share? That’d be Yeah, for sure.

Duncan Glenn  30:47

So one of my favorite ones is, we did an r&d study for a company on the West Coast. They manufacture winches, right. So I don’t know if you guys are familiar with what a winch is, but massive, massive piece of machinery that goes on either at tugboat or on a naval ship, right? It’s got these massive winding spools. It’s a way for them to move ships in and out of Harbor. And this company built custom winches for all different kinds of ships, right. And so we were able to go in there identify what they were doing some of their stuff was fairly routine, right? Like, they had kind of a line that’s like, Okay, if you’re this size, this shape, this is the one for you. We already know that. But they had so many that were not like that they had so many that were they had to get their engineers in there, they had to design it, they had to, you know, one of them that had to put the low deck was was one of my favorites, they put it below deck and that really constrained the amount of space that they had to work with, to build this winch into and to design it and put it in there. And so we did a study for them, and they were able to save over a period of two years. We did a two year look back on that one. And they it was almost $500,000.

Curt Anderson  32:12

But I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you how much was 500,000? Yeah, $500,000 of just found tax credit opportunity. Yeah, great

Damon Pistulka  32:23

profit, because it’s

Duncan Glenn  32:25

exactly, exactly. So it’s just, you know, stories like that, where I’m like, man, if you don’t know about this, like, just imagine how much that can help infuse back in your business hire, hire a couple more heads, you know, build some more infrastructure, like it just can transform your business. That’s insane.

Curt Anderson  32:45

So Duncan, let’s go here. Let’s talk about and I know the size of that company was at a sizable was that a large company? Or midsize or? It

Duncan Glenn  32:52

was? I think it was just midsize Yeah, I can’t remember the revenues off the top of my head. But revenues were in the like the 20 to 50 million range. So midsize companies feel

Damon Pistulka  33:02

significant money for him. That’s for sure. First of all,

Curt Anderson  33:06

let’s go here. If there’s any entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, you know, smaller companies out there, let’s go. Could you just share a couple of examples of like maybe things that you’ve experienced or possible opportunities for smaller manufacturers, smaller entrepreneurs that maybe you know, what taxes are week from today? Right? Isn’t it may 5, march 15. And so we timed this perfectly right? You’ve got one one week to figure this out, Damon, so don’t get any smaller examples that you can think of, or? Yeah, please,

Duncan Glenn  33:35

we do a bunch of, you know, seven to 10 to 15. Employee companies. We do a lot in the manufacturing realm. One of them that I really enjoyed doing was a company out of out of Utah here. And they manufacture supplements, right? So they’re, they’re involved in the formulations, changing all kinds of formulations, figuring out what works, how it affects the body, right? So we got the biological science aspect in their smaller company, but you know, we were able to save them. I believe it was 20 is either 20 or 25,000 per year. Right, right. So just wow, these things just add up. And it’s one of those things where if you’re already doing the types of activities, just in the ordinary course of business, yes. And it’s, it’s really you don’t have to change anything, you just take advantage of dollars that are on the table, recalculated

Damon Pistulka  34:40

every year and move forward. And then just it’s like added profitability every year for you, right? Yep.

Curt Anderson  34:47

Yeah, sure. And the thing is, it’s an it’s really creating inspiring innovation. Yeah, right. Is that kind of how is that how you would describe it, Duncan? It’s just, yep,

Duncan Glenn  34:58

the whole entire of Congress was to try to keep jobs here in the US in different tech sectors. Right? And you know, nowadays, I’m sure you guys are familiar. There’s a lot of offshoring that happens with like, let’s say, software development in particular, right. And the purpose of this credit is to try to say, Hey, bring it back here, bring it back here. Yeah, use our expertise, discover new things advance the fields, different fields of science and engineering. And let’s try to stay competitive in the world marketplace.

Curt Anderson  35:32

Right? All right, so cool. Alright, guys, so here, if you have any questions, boy, drop into chat box, and then strongly encourage you connect if you’re a manufacturer out there, and even if you’re not solopreneur, you have some tax questions, or this is sparking a chord where you’re like, hey, wait a minute, maybe I qualify for this. Definitely reach out to Dunkin. Maybe some of our friends across the pond, maybe not as relevant. But Chuck your local tax laws? What? For you, right? What do you have? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  35:58

I just, you know, we’re sitting here talking about so many different things. And I think of a manufacturing business. And I think there’s so much process innovation that’s done outside of the manufacturing floor, like you said, could be we’re adding ecommerce could be that we need a new ERP system or some integrations into our ERP system to change, or even just some simple process, where we’re spending some outside resources internal. I mean, are those other ancillary kind of things where we’re developing a new process for our company? With computers, with AI, with all that kind of stuff? Is that something that they should be looking at too? Yeah, we

Duncan Glenn  36:39

should absolutely look at it. Sometimes if it’s like a basic CRM or ERP that you’re just purchased off the shelf and kind of things and start that no, but if you’re adding like custom API integrations to your ERP, stuff like that, absolutely. Yeah. And then process improvement for sure. We, again, it goes back to the four part test that we talked about, right? So if we can, if we can tie that process improvement to the engineering side of things, right, or the computer science side of things. Yeah, absolutely. We should be looking at that. Yeah, cuz

Damon Pistulka  37:13

I think Kurt, you just think about the the integration of different systems, right, and not what standard stuff with all the things that you have to look at with API, EDI, or and then the systems that actually moving stuff back and forth and getting them all to work together. There’s a tremendous amount of outside resources that people spend every day to figure out how to move data in between our CRM, our ERP and our could be financial systems or any outside systems. That mean, the manufacturers are really becoming so tech centric, that there’s Yeah, all these things working together. It’s not just the physical product production, right? Yep.

Duncan Glenn  37:54

Yep. And you mentioned AI, right, like, the more companies tried to automate, and then use AI and other things to improve the speed improve the efficiency, like all of that stuff should be looked at for qualification, because most likely, it’s gonna apply.

Curt Anderson  38:09

Now, nice. Now, Duncan, in my feeble attempt to pretend that I knew what I was talking about today, I did a little homework and I have a question for you. Is there such a thing as the 80% rule? I don’t know if you’ve covered it already. And I missed it. But I my close on that question, am I with that question, what is the 80% rule?

Duncan Glenn  38:31

That’s impressive, Curt, I appreciate that. So the 80% rule, there’s actually a couple of different 8% rules. The one that most people are probably a little more familiar with is, if I’ve got let’s say, I’ve got an engineer and my staff. And he’s pretty much all day every day, except for when he goes to the bathroom or he travels or he’s punching in his time clock. He’s working on a new product, right? So if the end if in the end, we come up with, okay, he spent 85% of his time on qualifying activities. Well, Congress put in the rules that if you’re 80% or more, you can actually count 100% of that person’s wages. So you got a little bit of a buffer there 20% buffer to say, hey, if we can hit that 80% threshold and justify that, then we get to count all of their wages. The other 80% rule is that the way that you kind of identify the qualifying activities is you do it by project, right. So let’s say one project is creating a new product on the manufacturing floor. The way that we kind of view that is they want 80% or more of the time spent to be on a process of experimentation, right? And that’s usually pretty easy to hit because of the way that you define the business component which Is that first part of the four part test the new product? You say? Okay, we started here from scratch, we got to here to where we’re in production. Once we got into production, r&d is over. Right. So from that start to finish point, if 80% of that was the testing the simulation, the iterating on the design, and you’re good to go. And that’s usually pretty easy to get.

Curt Anderson  40:25

All right, thank you for that clarification. I’m glad. I’m glad that worked out. Well, yeah, Damon there, there’s just so much value with this conversation. And I just I hope anybody that’s here today. Hey, we’ve got a great comment from Timothy if we want to hear so yeah,

Damon Pistulka  40:40

this is a good example. This kind of thing is he’s talking about that’s one of their services within the company. He’s with, you know, they’re doing API integrations. And all of that stuff is customized. I mean, because API’s are unique for systems and the different people that are using them. So yeah,

Duncan Glenn  40:59

yep. Yep. So in that case, there, what we would look at is to see, depending on how your customers are paying you, if you’re doing custom API integration for clients, right, that’s, like you’re doing the service for them. It’s either you would qualify it or they would qualify. Right. And that just kind of depends on what the contractual language is. I don’t want to get too technical here. But yeah, definitely, whenever you’re involved with API integration, we want to absolutely look at that. Yeah. Okay,

Curt Anderson  41:30

man. All right. So let’s, let’s start winding down. I want to be mindful of your time because man, it’s tax season, Duncan, you have a lot of money to save for our manufacturer out there. Right. And your clients. Let’s start winding down. Is there anything that we didn’t cover? Any, if you want to just kind of put a bow on things, anything that you want to wrap up? is recovering this whole topic today?

Duncan Glenn  41:49

Yeah, just, you know, anytime that you come across, you know, somebody else or you know, in your own business, where there’s a culture of innovation, right, new products, new processes, we should definitely be looking at trying to save money through the r&d tax credit, something that Congress wants companies to be taking advantage of. Again, I know we mentioned it briefly. There is current legislation in place right now. It has passed the US House of Representatives. It’s awaiting action in the Senate right now. But basically, what that law would do is kind of restore the r&d credit to its former glory. Right now, we still have 2020 and 2021, in play under the old rules that are the very, very good rules. So that’s what we would want to look at. And then hopefully in the next month or two here, we open up 22 and 23, as well. Yeah. Great

Curt Anderson  42:47

question. Hey, Damon. Trish is Trish is on the show next week. And she’s got a question here. So Trish Stewart, dear friend, she’s a global expert. And Damon, what do you got?

Damon Pistulka  42:59

She said, is it too late to apply savings to 2023? And, Duncan, you’ve explained this a little bit, but explain it to Trish the change in legislation and how that’s affecting them now for 2023. Yep,

Duncan Glenn  43:13

so it’s not too late. Trish. Again, you can go back up to three years in the past. So we’re still doing 2020 tax returns, we’re amending them, and then you get refunds. So for 2023, definitely not too late. One thing you need to keep in mind is they require a capitalization of your section 174 costs, which are your r&d costs, right? Normally, like I mentioned, you got the deduction and the credit, in this case, you have a much smaller deduction with the credit. So sometimes it ends up resulting in more tax, we can look at that situation on a case by case basis. Sometimes people have losses that are carrying forward so it doesn’t hurt him. And technically, if you have any sort of r&d type expenditures, you are required to do that capitalization under under the rules, right. So, you know, we kind of say, if you have never claimed the r&d credit, and you’re looking to start claiming it, it might be a little risk, but probably wait until that law changes, because that’s where you’re really gonna see the benefit of it. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  44:23

Now, Duncan, for anybody out there you so though you’re in Utah, you cover nationally, so any state that somebody is out there, they can certainly reach out to you on LinkedIn, drop you an email, drop you a note, and you can kind of coach them walk them through what the so any state you are able to help?

Duncan Glenn  44:40

Absolutely any state that has a Bible r&d program, we we take that into consideration whenever we provide our estimates to you. Yeah, and by the way, we do a free consultation on all of this. We won’t ever charge you a dime unless we know that we’re going to save you money and and you want to work with us. So don’t be afraid to reach out out and just get your assessment. Awesome. Yeah, I

Curt Anderson  45:03

hear the word Daymond. I hear my favorite word free. Yeah. Once you repeat that one more time, but did you say did I hear you say free? Yeah, we

Duncan Glenn  45:11

do a free assessment upfront, we want to find out if you qualify first and then how much you qualify for. And if you like that, those dollars on the table right then and you want to go through the process with us then at that point, we send an engagement letter and share the fees and all that stuff, but free doesn’t hurt at all to try and just see if you qualify and how much you potentially qualify for.

Curt Anderson  45:36

Duncan, I’m Damon, I’m showing my age, money free money. I show my age people. Why don’t you know the old Jerry Maguire, show me the money. So Duncan next time you come on the show, we’re just going to call this show me the money right? Yeah, that’s

Damon Pistulka  45:49

nice. Yeah, yeah. Making it rain. All right,

Curt Anderson  45:53

let’s start winding down. So Duncan, we have a number in America, you and Trish need to connect. Patricia is our guest next Friday. Robbie, to everybody in the chat box here. Please connect and do yourself a favor. Go back if you are manufacturer entrepreneur here in the States and you want to get a better understanding. Boy, there’s recovered a lot we now Duncan did a nice job. He kept it at a preschool level for myself and Damon, just keep it simple. But go back and rewind, go and just follow what he shared here today. And just better yet, get that free consultation, because he’s here. He’s you know, Damon $25,000 For one small manufacturer half a million dollars for another manufacturer. There’s an incredible, enormous opportunity out there. So how about how about a big round of applause for Duncan and Glenn today? So just absolutely hitting the ball out of the park? Yeah, Damon speaking of hitting the ball out of the park. Should we? Should we asked him to. I have one last question. Should I ask him that question or should we just should let’s do it. Should we do it? Duncan, my friend we do. We’re besties now and we were busting I have one last question for you. Okay. And it’s it’s it’s pertinent. So let’s go here. I know you’re a basketball fan. We’re talking about March Madness. Are you a baseball fan? You’re a Bay Area guy. Are you giants? Giants? Giants. Okay, Barry Bonds maybe so

Duncan Glenn  47:15

bonds will Clark back in the back

Curt Anderson  47:22

of the book will Clark fan okay. Let’s see. All right. Giants are playing the hated Dodgers. Right if you’re a giant like you do not like right okay. You so you feel you feel the momentum right? Oh, yeah. So it’s bottom of the ninth guy on second base. Two outs. Giants are up. Okay, tie score, bottom nine guy in second base manager standing like we’d like we need a hit. We need a witness game turns down the bench and says, Hey, Glen, grab your helmet. Grab your bag. Get up there. I need a single we got to get this run. And do we got to wrap this game up? Right we need this when you walk up. You grab your helmet. You grab your bat you’re strolling up to the plate. You are just you’re in the zone. As you walk to the plate, what is your walk up song? My

Duncan Glenn  48:12

walk up song I’m gonna go with I’m gonna go with still Dre. What song still Dre, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

Curt Anderson  48:29

Damon, you got it still Dre?

Damon Pistulka  48:31

You gotta I don’t have it. I don’t have it.

Curt Anderson  48:36

Dre Dr. Dre is out on your Spotify. It’s on

Damon Pistulka  48:39

my Spotify but my phone started and

Duncan Glenn  48:42

ACDC TNT.

Curt Anderson  48:46

Dr. Dre TNT. You got a winner right there. Had an ad. No one was run off Dr. Dre, Dr. Dre and an ACD dude that’s like two negatives make a positive right. Yeah. You know, so All right, Duncan Great answer. Thank you for playing our little game right there. I appreciate it. Again people can find you at is it Duncan

Duncan Glenn  49:11

Duncan at beaten cap.com Perfect

Curt Anderson  49:15

Okay guys, connect with Duncan on LinkedIn. Drop him an email boy. He’s here to help you. Save money, make money. Shoot him a note. He’s got a free consultation for you guys. So man, Duncan, thank you. We appreciate you. We appreciate everybody in the crowd today. Thank you for joining us again lots of valuable information here. Damon you want to take it away my friend.

Damon Pistulka  49:35

Yeah, this is in just wonderful. Thanks so much, Duncan for being here. today. We’re talking about research and development tax credit for manufacturers uncovered so many great things if you’re listening now came in late go back to the beginning because these are tax credits that actually reduce your taxes dollar for dollar and just go back and do a little math and think in and how much that real really makes a difference for you. So let’s let’s go back to the beginning, reach out to Duncan, and learn more about these r&d tax credits again, help you do more with your business. And it’s not a one time thing you can go back up to three years. He said we’re still doing some 2020 tax return stuff on this. So hey, check it out. And see what I can help you with Daymond

Curt Anderson  50:23

eight real quick so Trish says Hey, happy International Women’s Day. So we got to say that two favorite women in your life so I know Duncan, you’ve got favorite women in your life. So everybody out there give a big high five and appreciation to inherit anger says the same thing in your Happy Friday to you, my friend is mere fact Trish will celebrate International Women’s Day with you next Friday. We’re just going to get the whole month anyways. I guess. Hey, we’ll close out have an amazing weekend. We just We God bless you guys and just go out and be someone’s inspiration just like our dear friend Duncan wants today. And we will see you here on Monday.

Damon Pistulka  51:00

Yeah, have a great weekend, everyone.