Whether to choose a 529 or a Roth IRA to fund education expenses
This article discusses options available to clients to help pay for their children's or grandchildren’s education.
Tax Planning
Tax planning following the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
This column discusses advising clients on the implications for choice-of-entity decisions, charitable giving strategies, and estate, retirement, and higher education planning.
Counterintuitive tax planning: Increasing taxable scholarship income to reduce taxes
This article discusses the potential benefit of choosing to include scholarships or grants in income.
Current U.S. tax incentives for higher education expenses
This article examines the requirements and limitations taxpayers face when seeking benefits of significant education-related income tax provisions.
Budgeting for realized gains
Disciplined planning for realizing gains lessens the potential for unanticipated taxes or ugly year-end surprises.
A new tax-efficient approach to protecting unrealized gains
A stock protection fund may be helpful to some investors.
Lump-Sum Distributions of Employer Stock Present Opportunities
When a qualified retirement plan account holds employer stock, a retirement plan participant could save thousands of dollars with proper planning.
Tax Planning Opportunities for Tax Attributes and the Decedent’s Final Tax Return
Careful and thoughtful advanced planning can result in substantial tax savings.
Deciding Whether to Roll Over to a Roth IRA
Deciding whether it makes sense to trigger the resulting tax liability depends on several factors.
Tax Planning for High-Net-Worth Individuals Immigrating to the United States
Foreign high-net-worth individuals immigrating to the United States should seek advice to minimize exposure to the U.S. income, gift, and estate tax system.
Roth IRA Planning
The opportunity to get more assets into Roth vehicles via various means has evolved over the last several years.
Capitalizing on the Lower Dividend Tax Rate
Identifying qualified dividends and helping taxpayers meet the requirements for qualified dividend status are valuable client services.
An Overview of Tax Practice Issues That Arise Under Statement on Standards in Personal Financial Planning Services
This column discusses some of the issues that might arise for tax practitioners in light of Statement on Standards in Personal Financial Planning Services.
Are Your Clients Benefiting From Tax-Aware Investment Management?
Without a tax professional’s being actively involved in planning, the benefits of tax-aware management are unlikely to be achieved.
Tax Strategies for the Long Horizon
New taxes and higher rates have dramatically increased the complexity of planning for many taxpayers; however, long-standing techniques for managing income and deductions and taking best advantage of tax-favored vehicles for retirement saving still hold sway.
Help for Self-Employed Clients Who Owe Taxes They Cannot Pay
In tax practice, CPAs occasionally encounter self-employed clients who have difficulty keeping up with their quarterly estimated tax payments. The problem of making adequate estimated tax payments is particularly difficult for the self-employed because they generally do not have taxes withheld and remitted to the government, as do most employees with wages reported on Form W-2.
Retroactive Tax Planning After Windsor
Married same-sex couples must now file their federal income tax returns as either married filing jointly or separately, but they have a choice whether to amend their federal income tax returns for open years during which they were legally married.
Immediate Year-End Planning Opportunity for Existing CRTs
The immediate planning opportunity for CRTs is to harvest short-term and long-term capital losses. Here is how it works and what changed from earlier years.
New Brackets, Net Investment Income Tax Expand Scope of Tax Planning
Virtually every financial decision for higher-income taxpayers now needs to be analyzed through the lens of the regular income tax, the alternative minimum tax, the net investment income tax, and new additional brackets.
Sea-Change: Planning for Same-Sex Married Couples and the DOMA Decision
This column provides practitioners with an overview of the impact of the recent decision striking down a key provision in the Defense of Marriage Act ; a preliminary checklist of areas to be addressed with same-sex clients; and a discussion of the issues involved.
