Before You Sign

Welcome, welcome everybody, to Before You Sign. I'm your host, Anthony Buck, with Ten Point Financial Group. This is the show where business owners learn how it really works, before they sign anything. Let's get into it.

The tax savings gets all the attention. But the care is the reason this works. So today, let's open the box and look at what your people actually get.

This is the part most people skip. And it's the part that matters most. A program like this is only on solid ground if the care is real. If your team can't use it, it isn't worth doing.

Start with a doctor in their pocket. Telehealth. Your employees can talk to a doctor any time, day or night, seven days a week. No copay. Urgent care doctors, primary care, mental health providers, and specialists. And if they need to be seen in person, there's help finding care close by.

Think about a worker with a sick kid at two in the morning. They don't have to sit in a waiting room. They pick up their phone.

Next, a health scan app. This one surprises people. Your employee looks into their phone camera for about 30 seconds, and the app reads their vital signs. Heart rate. Breathing. Blood pressure. Stress level. Anytime, anywhere.

Then there's an employee assistance program. That covers a lot of real life. Stress. Anxiety. Grief. Marriage and family worries. Money worries. It includes counseling sessions each year for each family member, and a legal consult with an attorney when something comes up. Plus help finding childcare and eldercare.

There's a full-year addiction recovery program, with hundreds of videos, goal setting, and a personal action plan. There's couples therapy. There are programs on nutrition, on mental health, and on building healthy habits, with videos and tracking right in an app.

There's a text-based health program. Your employee picks the areas they care about, and they get tips and reminders built just for them.

There's prescription help. Lower copays, with zero dollar copay options on generics and preferred brands. Mail order. Tools to find the lowest price pharmacy. Refill reminders.

And every employee gets their own health portal, set up around their own goals.

Here's something else that matters. Spouses and dependents are included on the care side. So this reaches the whole household, not just the person on your payroll. When owners hear that, the conversation changes. Because a healthier family at home is a less stressed employee at work.

On top of the care, there's a second layer. Supplemental benefits.

Part of the tax savings pays for extra coverage. What products? That's up to the employer. Sometimes accident coverage, which pays cash when someone gets hurt. Sometimes critical illness, which pays a lump sum if someone is diagnosed with something serious, like a heart attack or a stroke. Maybe a cancer policy, to help with treatment and travel costs. It just depends.

These are meant to add to what you have, not replace it. If you already offer some of this, it stays. Same medical plan, same card, same doctors.

So what does that add up to? In a common example, each employee picks up about $1,400 a year in benefits. And many of them see a little more take-home pay too, often $40 to $80 more per paycheck. Your numbers will be your own. Pay, state, and pay schedule all change it. That's why we run a mock payroll first.

Now, why do I keep saying the care is the point? Because the tax code only works here if the benefits count as real medical care. That's Section 213(d). A gym membership doesn't count. A gift card doesn't count. Taking your steps for a reward doesn't count. Doctor visits, counseling, screenings, and prescriptions do.

That's one of the big lines between the right way and the wrong way. The programs that got people in trouble sold the tax savings with nothing real behind it. Here, the care is written into its own plan document, and the payback runs through its own SIMRP plan, not the cafeteria plan. Those documents are reviewed by CPAs and ERISA attorneys.

And there's one rule for your employees. They have to actually use the program at least once a year. No claims needed. Just real use. A video visit, a counseling session, a scan. That's it.

This isn't a paper program. It's care your people can use tonight.

If you want to see what this looks like for your business, the details are on our website, tenpointfinancialgroup.com.

That's it for this episode of Before You Sign. I'm your host, Anthony Buck. Remember, learn it first, then decide. We'll see you next time.

Welcome, welcome everybody, to Before You Sign. I'm your host, Anthony Buck, with Ten Point Financial Group. This is the show where business owners learn how it really works, before they sign anything. Let's get into it.

Here's the part nobody explains well. The money goes out before taxes and comes back after taxes. That one move is the whole engine.

Most owners hear "lower payroll taxes" and picture something tricky. A loophole. Money hidden somewhere. It's not that. It's a path. And once you see the path, it makes sense. So today, no big math. Just where the money goes, one step at a time.

Start with your health insurance. When your employee pays for their medical plan through payroll, it comes out before taxes. That's normal. It's been that way for years. It's done under Section 125 of the tax code. People call it a cafeteria plan.

Here's what that does. The gross wages are still the same. The amount that's considered taxable is less. And less taxable pay means less tax.

This program uses that same door.

Step one. Each employee who joins pays a monthly premium for a preventative care program. That premium comes out of the paycheck before taxes, just like their health insurance.

Step two. Because it came out before taxes, their taxable pay goes down. So the taxes on that check go down. Federal tax. State tax, in most states. And Social Security and Medicare, which you'll hear called FICA.

Step three. The plan pays the premium back to the employee, in the same paycheck. That payback comes after taxes. And because of how the plan is set up, that payback is generally not taxed.

So think about it like this. The money leaves before tax. It comes back after tax. And in between, the tax bill on that check got smaller.

Now here's a question I get a lot. If the premium comes out and goes right back in, why does any of this work?

Fair question. It works because of who pays, and how the payback is made.

The employee is the one paying the premium. The tax code says that when an employee pays for health coverage, and a plan pays them back for real medical care, that payback is generally not counted as income. That's Section 104(a)(3).

The care has to be real medical care. That's Section 213(d), the IRS list of what counts. Doctor visits, counseling, screenings. If the care doesn't count, none of the rest matters.

And this is the big one. The payback can't go back through the cafeteria plan. It has to go through its own written plan. That's the self-insured medical reimbursement plan, the SIMRP. That's where the name comes from. A lot of the bad programs skipped that step. They ran the payback right back through the cafeteria plan, and that doesn't hold up. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. The right way is written into plan documents reviewed by CPAs and ERISA attorneys.

So where does the savings go? It does two jobs.

First, the savings is what pays for the program. Second, what's left over goes to the employee as a benefit allotment. That's money for extra coverage, like accident or critical illness. In the high-tax states, you see a bigger allotment.

Now your side, as the owner. You pay a matching share of Social Security and Medicare on every check. That's 7.65 percent of taxable pay. When your employee's taxable pay goes down, your 7.65 percent is figured on a smaller number. For every pre-tax dollar on the employee's paycheck, that's a dollar you don't pay payroll taxes on. In a common example, that comes to about $600 per employee per year back to the business. And it can show up on each payroll once it's live. It's not a refund you wait on all year.

Your numbers won't match anyone else's. Pay, schedule, and state all change the math. That's why we run a mock payroll on your real roster before anything goes live.

So here's the whole path, one more time. Premium out before taxes. Taxable pay goes down. Taxes go down, for them and for you. The plan pays it back after taxes, through its own plan document. The savings pays for the program and adds benefits.

If you want to see what this looks like for your business, the details are on our website, tenpointfinancialgroup.com.

That's it for this episode of Before You Sign. I'm your host, Anthony Buck. Remember, learn it first, then decide. We'll see you next time.

Welcome, welcome everybody, to Before You Sign. I'm your host, Anthony Buck, with Ten Point Financial Group. This is the show where business owners learn how it really works, before they sign anything. Let's get into it.

There's a way to give your team real health care tools and have it paid for by taxes you're already paying. Most business owners have never had it explained to them. So today, let's fix that.

When benefit costs go up, most owners think they only have two moves. They eat the cost, or they pass it to the team. Both hurt. Your margin shrinks, or your best people start looking around. But there's a third door. And it's been part of the tax code for years.

We call it ProfitGuard Plus. Here's the short answer. It's a preventative care program for your employees, and it's paid for by tax savings.

Let me say that one more time, because that sentence is the whole idea. A preventative care program, paid for by tax savings.

Most benefits cost you money. You add one, and your costs go up. This one is built a different way. It lowers the payroll taxes on each paycheck. For every pre-tax dollar on an employee's paycheck, that's a dollar you don't pay payroll taxes on. And that savings is what pays for the program.

I like to think of it as three legs on a stool.

The first leg is the care. It's a preventative care management plan. That means health tools your people can use from their phone. Virtual doctor visits. Help with long-term health problems. Mental health support. It looks at the whole person, not just a sick visit.

The second leg is the money side. It lowers payroll taxes for you and for your employees. In a common example, that's about $600 per employee per year back to the business. And that's money you can put right back into what you're building.

The third leg is a better benefits package for your team. In that same example, each employee picks up about $1,400 a year in added benefits. All in, that's about $2,000 to $2,500 of value per employee, per year. And most of them see a little more take-home pay too. That helps you hire good people and keep them.

Now, why three legs? Because if you take one away, the stool falls over. A program that's only about the tax savings is the kind that gets people in trouble. The care has to be real. It has to be something your people can actually use.

Let me tell you what this is not.

It's not health insurance. It doesn't replace your medical plan. It sits right on top of it. Your people keep the coverage they have today. Same card, same doctors.

It's also not new, and it's not a gray area. There's a right way to do this and a wrong way to do it. The right way is in black and white. It's written into plan documents, the same way your health insurance has one. Those documents are reviewed by CPAs and ERISA attorneys. And they follow long-standing parts of the tax code, like Section 125, Section 105, and Section 213(d). We're citing the literal tax code, not a sales sheet.

And this isn't a do-it-yourself deal. It's not something you download from a template, or ask a chatbot how to set up. It needs a professional who has done it many times.

So who should care about this?

If you run a business with W-2 employees, you pay payroll taxes on every check. Social Security and Medicare. That money leaves your business every single pay period. Most owners think there's nothing they can do about it. This is one of the few places where you can lower it the right way, and give your team something real at the same time.

Your numbers won't look exactly like anyone else's. Pay, headcount, and state taxes all change the math. That's why we never guess. We run your real numbers before anything moves.

If you want to see what this looks like for your business, the details are on our website, tenpointfinancialgroup.com.

That's it for this episode of Before You Sign. I'm your host, Anthony Buck. Remember, learn it first, then decide. We'll see you next time.

Last episode, we talked about the owner's side of this, the payroll tax math. And if you missed that one, the short version is there's a part of the tax code that lets a business save real money on payroll taxes without cutting anyone's coverage. But every owner I explain this to asks the same question next. Okay, what's the catch for my people? What does my team actually get out of this? That's the right question. So today, the employee side, plain English, no pitch.

Here's what an employee hears when a benefits change gets announced. Something's being taken away. Maybe the plan is changing. Maybe my paycheck is about to shrink. That worry is fair, because that's how most benefits changes go. This one is different, and I wanna walk through exactly why. Three things happen for an employee on a plan like this.

Thing one, their paycheck. Part of their pay runs through a pre-tax plan before payroll taxes are figured. Because that piece isn't taxed like regular wages, the math offsets itself. Take-home pay stays about the same. And in many setups, it actually comes out a little ahead. Often somewhere around $40 to $80 more per paycheck. Not life-changing money, but it's moving in the right direction, not the wrong one.

Thing two, they get benefits they didn't have before. Preventive care, wellness visits, health coaching, screenings, that kind of thing, at no cost to them. This is the part people don't expect. It's not a discount card and it's not a replacement plan. It's an added layer of care that's built into how the plan works.

Thing three, and this is the one to say out loud in the break room. Nobody touches their health insurance. They keep the exact major medical plan they have today. Same card, same doctors, same coverage. This plan sits on top of what they have. If someone tells you a plan like this replaces your insurance, that's a different product and a red flag.

Now, if you're thinking, wait, the employee comes out ahead, the employer saves money and nobody loses coverage, where's the money coming from? A fair question. The answer is it comes from taxes that were leaving the building anyway. When pay runs through a qualified pre-tax plan, the wages that payroll tax gets charged on go down. That's the pool the whole thing is funded from. It's the same reason a 401(k) works the way it does. The tax code rewards certain kinds of plans on purpose, because Congress wants employers helping with health costs.

The catch, because there's always one, is that it only works if it's run exactly to the rules. Written plan document, qualified expenses only, real administration. Done sloppy, it's a problem. Done right, it's been clean for years. That's the whole next episode, by the way: how to tell the real thing from the junk.

So if you're an owner and you've been holding back because you didn't wanna rock the boat with your team, this is the boat-steadying version. Their pay holds, their coverage holds, and they gain a benefit. The way to know what it looks like for your business is to run your actual numbers: your headcount, your payroll. If this was helpful, the full writeup is on our site and the link is below. Take care of your team. It's the best investment you've got.

Welcome, welcome everybody to Before You Sign. This is your host Anthony Buck. This is our pilot podcast. So welcome everybody. Basically the goals of these podcasts are just to educate people and basically provide them with the information and the clarity as to what we do here in the financial services business, so that they can make the best decision for themselves moving forward.

So we'll be launching a series of different episodes that kind of focus on different topics, things that we focus on in the industry in terms of insurance and dollars and business tax strategy. So kind of a jack-of-all-trades here, but I wanted to welcome everybody to the show. If I do sound nervous, it's my first one, so I do apologize.

Today we're gonna be focusing on what we like to call our ProfitGuard Plus. This is a business tax strategy that helps lower payroll taxes, that basically anybody can qualify for as long as you have W-2 payroll and as long as you meet a couple of very minimal essential requirements, like offering health benefits and having employees that work full-time.

So one of the questions we like to ask is: can a small business lower payroll taxes and help employees keep their health coverage at the same time? The answer is yes. But in 2026, small business health premiums rose about 11%, and the average employer now spends over $17,000 per employee on coverage. On top of that, the enhanced ACA subsidies that helped many workers afford their own plans expired at the end of 2025, so employees are feeling that squeeze too.

One tool that a business owner can look into is what's called ProfitGuard Plus, or a Section 125 plan paired with a reimbursement program. When this is done right, it lets employees run part of their pay through a pre-tax plan for qualified medical costs. That lowers the wages that FICA is charged on, so the employer saves about 7.65% in payroll tax on that amount, which is roughly about $600 per employee per year in a common example. The employee will take home a little bit more on their paycheck, and they'll keep their existing major medical insurance. By the way, this isn't a replacement for their health plan. It actually sits on top of it.

A lot of folks know what a Section 125 is, especially if you've got a health insurance broker or you're working with CPAs or tax strategists. They all know what this is. It's not the code itself. It's how we structure our program to work alongside Section 125, along with a slew of other IRS tax codes. And for full disclosure, we have been audited before: ERISA audited, IRS audited. Never had an issue, never had a complaint. Everything that we're doing is legit.

The business that we work with has pioneered this strategy, so our job is just to explain how it works and educate business owners on how they can lower their taxable liability and how they can offer some supplemental benefits to their employees for no additional cost. So kind of a no-brainer. What this does is sit on top of your Section 125, as I mentioned, and it only really works when it's set up with a written plan document and run to the IRS rules. That's why we have a professional that's been doing this for about a decade or longer.

If you own a business with a team and your benefit costs just jumped, it's worth a 15 minute conversation. You reach out to me or one of my associates and we'd walk you through how the program works. We do all the heavy lifting. We carry all the paperwork and the back office stuff, so it's very low lift for your HR department. We know businesses are always busy, so we want to take as much of that burden off them as possible.

If you own a small business, you've probably already felt this. The insurance renewal came in and the number went up. You're not imagining it. For 2026, premiums climbed around 11% again. And here's the thing that makes it worse: a lot of people used to lean on the marketplace and those extra subsidies that made individual health care affordable, but those enhanced subsidies expired at the end of 2025.

So we're gonna walk you through one thing that actually works. Again, this isn't a sales pitch. It's just how it works, so you can decide if it's worth the conversation. Most owners think they only have two moves when benefit costs go up: they eat the cost, or they pass it to the team. Both hurt. Your margin shrinks, or you pass it on and your best people start looking around at other job opportunities.

But there is a third door that people have never really heard about or had explained to them. It doesn't cut your coverage. It doesn't cut your employees' take-home pay. It's a part of the code that's been around for years. Most people just never set it up or have never heard of it. Again, that's Section 125 paired with a bunch of other tax codes, like 105, 106 and 1.105-11. I don't want to get into too much of the jargon. That's what we go over on our consultations.

There's one thing we want to point out, because you're gonna hear a lot of noise about these plans. It only works when it's done right. It needs a real written plan document that follows the IRS rules on what counts as a qualified medical expense. There are promoters out there who oversell these and cut corners. It's called double dipping, and the IRS has warned exactly about it. So this isn't a do-it-yourself, download-a-template deal. This isn't an ask-Claude-or-ChatGPT-how-to-set-this-up deal. You need to trust a professional to do it.

So why do I bring this up now? Because timing is the whole thing. Costs just went up, and they're gonna continue to go up year after year. Most owners are about to either eat that increase or pass it off to their employees.

So if you're an owner with a team and your benefit costs just went up, here's what I'd do. Sit down for about 15 to 30 minutes. We'd go over what it would actually look like for your business. We'd run real numbers, your headcount and your payroll, and show you what the savings would look like for you specifically. Not a guess, not anybody else's numbers, not averages. Your numbers. Our consultation doesn't cost anything. We just want to provide the information. We show you the strategy, we show you how it works, we educate you on what the program offers, and then we do all the lifting on the back end.

The only thing that you're really responsible for is getting us a census or a payroll statement. We usually work with HR or benefits for that, or if you work with a staffing company, a payroll service company or a PEO, those are great connections. We can bypass any of the lifting for you.

That's all for today. We just wanted to go over ProfitGuard Plus and open it up with a very light and brief episode. There's gonna be a lot more detail that we crack open when it comes to the specific programs, and by programs I don't just mean this. I'm talking about all of the things that we do here at Ten Point Financial Group. Thank you so much. Stay tuned, and as we get feedback and more questions coming in from our audience, we'll probably start to extend these as time goes on.