We started investing in oil and gas three years ago because our clients needed bigger deductions, and we kept watching deals deliver the write-off but never pay back the investment. This conversation covers what we changed.

On this week's episode we welcome Cotton Graham, founder and president of G2 Petroleum and Newport Operating, and Joe Stroffolino of G2 Petroleum to walk through the Revo Oil & Gas Growth Fund 2026 LP, our fund of funds investing alongside the G2 TX-26 Energy Fund in North Texas.

Deductions That Have to Pay Out:
1. $200,000 of stock vs. $200,000 in a well.
2. How $100,000 becomes a $91,000 deduction. Of every $100,000 invested, roughly $70,000 to $75,000 pays for the drilling itself: the crews, the fuel and the rig time. That’s deductible in year one. When G2 buys a well that’s already pumping, part of the price also covers the pump jacks, tanks and pipe already on site, and that equipment can be written off in year one too. Together, that’s how the fund targets about $91,000 in deductions on $100,000.
3. Old wells still hold oil nobody bothered to pump. Picture a well drilled decades ago. In its first 2,000 feet it passed through 7 to 10 layers of rock that hold oil, but the original operator pumped the best one and moved on. The big companies wanted 50 to 100 barrels a day from a well. With its own rigs and low costs, G2 can go back in, open the layers that were skipped and make 5 to 10 barrels a day pay.
4. Owning the rigs keeps the oil flowing. Three years ago, a wet Texas spring turned the fields to mud. The other Texas operators in our first fund, which relied on hired drilling crews, fell about nine months behind waiting for contractors to get to them. G2 owns its rigs and has a crew of about 25 in the field every day, so it went straight back to its own wells. Every day a good well sits idle is money lost.

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Chapters
[00:00] Why a deduction isn't a win unless it pays out
[04:06] Meet Cotton Graham and Joe Stroffolino of G2 Petroleum
[09:40] Buying production first, then stepping out 300 feet
[11:35] Behind-the-pipe pay: the oil early operators left behind
[17:19] Buying the equipment: bonus depreciation on top of IDCs
[23:26] Why owning the rigs matters: the rainy spring
[35:06] General partner liability and GP insurance
[38:47] The tax math on a $200,000 investment
[41:12] Royalties, operating costs and the 90/10 split
[52:40] Q&A: material participation, AMT, recapture and exit

Investment in the Revo Oil & Gas Growth Fund 2026 LP is limited to accredited investors and is offered only through the fund's offering documents. Deduction targets and distributions are not guaranteed. This content is for educational purposes and does not constitute tax or legal advice. Always consult a qualified tax professional for your situation.

If you've had a gnawing feeling that your tax professional prepares your return but doesn't plan ahead to make you money, this episode is for you.

This week, we unpack what happens when a comfortable CPA relationship stops being a strategic one: a founder two weeks from signing a $25 million roll-up whose firm never mentioned Section 1202, a $5 million earner researching the Augusta rule with an AI chatbot at night, and two clients with the same breakout year and very different tax bills.

The conversations that never happened:
1. A founder was two weeks from rolling roughly $25 million of businesses into one new company. His CPA firm of 20 years first told him it would be a taxable sale. He found the Section 351 route himself with an AI chatbot, and nobody had raised Section 1202, the qualified small business stock rule that, if the structure qualifies, could keep potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of his future gain tax-free.
2. A financial advisor earning about $5 million a year, headed for a $2 million-plus tax bill, was asking an AI chatbot about the Augusta rule to shelter $15,000 to $30,000. Small strategies like that snowball over 10 to 15 years, but the first conversation should be about the big moves, and the client shouldn't be the one doing the research.
3. Two long-term clients who had been earning $1 million to $2 million a year both broke out in the same year, to well over $5 million of taxable income. One was too busy to meet. The other called in March, again in the summer, and again in October, when a railroad took the $2 million property he'd just bought, by eminent domain, for $6 million. Kevin estimates the tax at around $3.5 million with no planning. Because we'd been talking all year, we're tracking closer to a 3% effective rate.
4. By Mike's estimate, about 95% of the people who prepare tax returns are preparers, not strategists. If you're the one bringing ideas to your CPA every year, or no ideas are coming at all, that gnawing feeling is worth trusting.

Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=s4e31-i-dont-believe-my-cpa-anymore&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1

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Chapters
[00:00] "I Don't Believe My CPA Anymore"
[01:00] Preparers vs. Strategists: It's Not the CPA's Fault
[01:42] A $25 Million Roll-Up and a 20-Year CPA Relationship
[04:31] "Did Your CPAs Ever Talk to You About 1202?"
[06:29] The CPA's Reply: Does That Sound Like a Partnership?
[10:00] A $5 Million Earner, an AI Chatbot and the Augusta Rule
[13:03] Why Tax Planning Is a Two-Way Street
[14:30] Two Clients, One Breakout Year and an Eminent Domain Surprise
[19:21] What Proactive Planning Costs, and What It Saves
[20:37] Preparer or Strategist? Trust Your Gut

On this week's episode: most people assume Microsoft's 2.44% tax rate means the game is rigged for billionaires, and never ask what the tax code has already built in for anyone willing to invest the same way.

What the tax code already rewards:
1. Corporations pay a flat 21% tax rate — that's the rule. Microsoft backed into 2.44%, which means roughly $85 billion of its $101 billion in profit was offset by deductions and credits written directly into the tax code, available to any business that invests the way Microsoft does.
2. Buy $100,000 of office equipment and you write it off a little at a time over several years. Put that same $100,000 into qualifying AI data center property — or a rental property using the same bonus depreciation rules — and it's largely 100% deductible this year, against income you're already earning.
3. R&D tax credits aren't a deduction that lowers your taxable income — they're a dollar-for-dollar reduction of the tax you actually owe. Every dollar of W-2 wages paid to build genuinely new technology counts the same way for a five-person business as it does for Microsoft.
4. Most taxpayers don't lose out because the tax code is stacked against them — they lose out because they have a tax preparer instead of a tax strategist. The fix isn't a bigger tax bill, it's proactive planning before the year closes: we have clients landing at 0% and 2% effective tax rates using this exact playbook.

Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=s4e30-get-tax-strategies-like-microsoft&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1

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Chapters
[00:00] Why "the rich don't pay their fair share" misses the real story
[01:11] Microsoft reported $101B in profits and paid 2.44% in tax
[02:46] The math: backing into $85B in deductions
[03:19] These aren't loopholes — they're intentional tax incentives
[03:39] Inside the strategy: AI data centers and 100% deductible property
[05:12] R&D tax credits: a dollar-for-dollar reduction, not just a deduction
[06:54] You don't have to be a corporation to use this playbook
[10:01] Real clients getting to 0% tax — and how
[11:01] A retired client's capital gains deferral through a rural opportunity zone
[12:53] Tax preparer vs. tax strategist — the gap that costs people millions
[13:44] These opportunities exist for every taxpayer, not just billionaires

On this week's episode: most people assume tax deductions come from spending money you don't want to spend, and never ask what the tax code has already built in for anyone willing to take on real risk.

The math nobody walks you through:
1. Every other investment keeps active and passive income in separate buckets — but a working interest in oil and gas gets treated as active, even when you're 100% passive. That's not a workaround. It's written directly into the tax code.
2. Buy $100,000 of Apple stock and you get zero deduction, just a higher basis for later. Put that same $100,000 into oil and gas, and you deduct it this year, against your active income — a difference no other asset class offers.
3. Intangible drilling costs can turn a $100,000 investment into a 90%+ first-year deduction, not a rough estimate but a calculated share of what actually goes into the well.
4. Six out of ten retail oil and gas investments lose money. The fix isn't avoiding the asset class — it's buying leases that are already producing, which removes the industry's biggest failure point, the dry hole, almost entirely.

Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=s4e28-oil-gas-tax-plan&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1

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• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenMoneyPodcast

Chapters
[00:00] Introduction: oil and gas, and the tax code's best-kept secret
[00:02] Why "don't let your tax tail wag the dog" is bad reasoning
[00:03] Tax 101: active, passive, and portfolio income
[00:08] The exception: how oil and gas becomes "active" even when you're passive
[00:12] Real numbers: turning a $100K investment into a 90%+ deduction
[00:16] The Apple stock test: why this deduction is unlike any other investment
[00:17] The real risk: why most retail oil and gas investments lose money
[00:19] De-risking with insurance and the year-two flip to limited partner
[00:35] The strategy with zero dry-hole risk

On this week's episode: high earners often assume the more they make, the more they owe, and don't ask what the tax code already has built in for them.

Four things hiding in plain sight:

1. $50,000 into the right strategy can come back as a $250,000 deduction — a five-time return, backed by an independent valuation, not a guess.
2. If you clear $500,000 a year and skip tax strategy, your biggest expense isn't your mortgage. It's the IRS, and withholding hides the number so well most people never add it up.
3. That same $50,000 contribution saved $86,000 in federal tax in a single year. No property to manage, no material participation, no time required.
4. Overpay your taxes by $36,000 instead of investing it, and in 20 or 30 years you're down $144,000. The real risk was never the strategy. It's doing nothing.

Chapters
[00:00] Introduction: high income, no time for tax strategy
[00:01] The hamster wheel: why working harder doesn't fix a tax bill
[00:05] The real cost of not planning: your biggest expense at $500K+
[00:07] Why Q4 is the worst time to start (and the best time to act)
[00:08] Strategy one: the zero-time-commitment charitable deduction
[00:12] Real numbers: how $50K became an $86K tax save
[00:17] The biggest risk is doing nothing
[00:20] Buyer beware, and why "more likely than not" still isn't a guarantee
[00:25] Next week's cliffhanger: a passive deal with cash flow and ROI

Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=s4e27-if-you-have-high-income-but-no-time&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1

Take our 5 minute tax assessment: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=s4e27-if-you-have-high-income-but-no-timeutm_content=show-notes#taxassistant

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On this week's episode: two people can have the exact same income and still land tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars apart at tax time — and the IRS will never tell you why.

Four things we unpack this week:
Two employees with identical stock option packages can land 31 points apart on their effective tax rate. One paid under 1%. The other paid over 32%. Same income, same year, same opportunity.
Sell "non-covered" stock without documenting what you originally paid for it, and the IRS doesn't ask — it assumes your basis is zero and bills you as if the entire sale was pure profit.
Fall behind on filing for a few years, and the IRS assumes you had zero deductions and a 100% profit margin on every dollar reported to them — even after 50 years of clean returns.
An $80,000 vacation, taken past your tax-plan deadline, can quietly become a $600,000 line item once you count what the delay actually cost.

Chapters
[00:00] Introduction — Why two neighbors with the same income pay wildly different tax
[00:01] The IRS default: guilty until you prove yourself innocent
[00:04] Same income, same options, two Nvidia employees — one pays under 1%, one pays 32%
[00:08] Why the IRS actually helped fund Mike and Kevin's own commercial property purchase
[00:12] The $600,000 vacation — what it really costs to skip your tax plan
[00:15] Covered vs. non-covered stock transactions — why the IRS assumes your basis is zero
[00:17] The dementia case — five years of unfiled 1099s and the IRS's worst-case-by-default rule
[00:20] Why the IRS "works for us," and what that means when you push back
[00:23] Take control: don't let the IRS write your story for you
[00:24] Revo is hiring

Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=s4e26-the-irs-doesnt-care-about-fair&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1

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On this week's episode: owners focus on their personal return and never ask what could be done inside the business itself.

Four things we constantly see missed:
1. Your spouse already approves every big decision you make. They can be on the company 401(k) too — one business, two maxed-out retirements.
2. Twenty percent of your income, deductible, without spending a dollar. Most owners get a fraction of it and never find out why.
3. A swimming pool that was 100% deductible and the home office rule that made it hold up.
4. 76 cents a mile for driving you already do. Many people leave it on the table because they don't want an app on their phone.

Get in touch: https://www.revotaxpayer.com/?utm_source=revo-taxpayer&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=s4e25-tax-planning-in-business&utm_content=show-notes#contact-1

Chapters
[00:00] Why business owners plan on the wrong return
[04:20] Your spouse is an officer: doubling 401(k) contributions through the business
[07:00] "Have you strategized your QBI deduction with your CPA?"
[09:40] How QBI works: twenty percent, without spending a dollar
[11:00] The wage limit, and why contractor pay doesn't count
[12:00] The S corp advice that reversed in 2017
[15:50] The home office deduction without the red flag form
[17:50] What a red flag actually is
[21:50] The pool builder whose backyard was a showroom
[26:00] Business mileage, the new rate, and Big Brother
[30:40] Be proactive — tell us before, not after

Connect with us:
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