- What is Tax Planning?
- Why is Tax Planning Important?
- Who is Tax Planning for?
- What Kind of Opportunities Might be Identified?
- What Do We Need From You?
What is Tax Planning?
Tax planning refers to our review of your tax return to identify potential planning opportunities—both now and in the future—to keep your lifetime tax liability as low as possible. This is different than tax preparation (usually done by your CPA, EA, or an online service like TurboTax), which is focused on keeping you compliant with what the government thinks you owe each year.
Why is Tax Planning Important?
Taxes touch every part of your financial life. Your tax return is a financial fingerprint; it’s completely unique to you and complete with valuable clues and information, all of which are buried in dozens of pages and hundreds of numbers. Understanding your return equips us to have more valuable and actionable conversations with you. Additionally, we can demystify the world of income taxes and help you understand this important piece of your financial picture.
Who is Tax Planning for?
Everyone! Regardless of income sources or filing status, nearly anyone who pays income taxes can benefit from having a professional review of their tax return to identify relevant planning opportunities. At worst, we’ll review your return and conclude you are currently maximizing every available tax-saving opportunity. That’s great “peace of mind” news. Alternatively, and more frequently, we’ll identify a handful of tax-saving opportunities, both in the current year and in future years.
What Kind of Opportunities Might be Identified?
We will evaluate a number of opportunities during tax planning, including topics like the most tax-efficient retirement vehicles, charitable giving strategies, realizing capital gains, Roth IRA conversions, tax credit eligibility, and more. We can run projections to see how potential changes (e.g., filing status, dependents, the sale of a business, stock option exercises, etc.) may impact your upcoming tax liability.
What Do We Need From You?
An electronic PDF copy of your most recent tax return, including all schedules. That’s it. Only sent to us using encryption or we can provide a secured link, we will take it from there.
I’M INTERESTED, LET’S GET STARTED
A tax planning strategy is an action that a business or an individual can take to lower their tax burden. There are many different types of tax strategies. Some take advantage of tax deductions to lower taxable income, some use tax credits to reduce tax liability, and others (such as entity and compensation optimization) change one of the many factors that affect taxation.
“In America, there are two tax systems: one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both are legal.”
-Judge Learned Hand
Tax Planning Resources:
