So, no, we don’t expect to turn you into a tax guru in sixty seconds. We will, however, explain some essential tax principles, to expand your understanding and help you ask smart questions.
Tax implications shape your investment strategy
We’ve been building tax-smart investment strategies and portfolios since the beginning. In the end, it’s not what you make — it’s what you keep after the government takes its cut.
For non-professionals, the tax implications of investment decisions are hard to identify. But they’re very real. To minimize capital gains, we play close attention to things like holding periods, ordinary income and qualified dividends.
Many of the investments we recommend are intended to be core, long-term holdings that don’t generate a significant tax liability. We also engage in tax-loss harvesting, which is a strategic approach to using losses to offset capital gains and their associated taxes..
Taxes are a huge part of financial planning, too
We look at everything we do clients through a tax lens. This extends beyond investing to all facets of financial planning. Whether we’re helping people preserve wealth for retirement, transfer wealth to the next generation, or execute real estate transactions, tax strategy takes center stage.
Take philanthropy, for example. There’s a tax-smart way to give away your money. Usually, writing checks is least tax-efficient. As a donor you have better options.
Tax advising is different from tax prep
Your CPA prepares your taxes for submission to the IRS. They probably also do some year-end tax planning. The tax-smart investing and planning we do falls into a separate category: tax advising.
There’s a natural synergy between us and your CPA. We dig deeply into your financials, on a year-round basis, to reduce your overall tax burden and maximize your real wealth.
When it’s time to prepare your actual tax returns, it’s part of our job to deliver all the precise financial information your CPA needs from us. When your returns are done, you send them back to us to review. Then we factor the information into your retirement and cash flow projections.
Before you talk to your CPA, tax attorney, banker or insurance agent, you can talk to us. While we will never replace those professionals in your life, our working knowledge of these disciplines can help create an integrated assessment of your financial situation, including the essential tax component.