YOU WORK HARD FOR YOUR MONEY, WE HELP YOU KEEP MORE OF IT
Most of us assume that housing, transportation, and health care consumes the majority of our income. However, the truth might surprise you. Your biggest expense can actually be taxes.
When it comes to growing and preserving wealth, tax planning is crucial. It’s not just about how much you make or save, but how much you actually keep after taxes.
To make strategic tax planning decisions you need a proactive partner who understands your goals, how your tax bracket will change over time, and how to implement strategies to mitigate your lifetime tax bill. Even if you currently use a CPA, they may not be incorporating a multi-year perspective and maximizing opportunities.
Specifically in retirement, so many decisions are tied to your income and tax bracket. There is a unique complexity between sourcing spending needs, Social Security benefit timing, Medicare premiums impacted by IRMAA, and future required minimum distributions from retirement accounts. We help simplify the relationship between these categories and customize a proactive and efficient plan to implement.
Together, we will strategically and intentionally seek opportunities to reduce your tax bill today and in the future. You have worked too hard to earn your money, we just want to help you keep more of it by bringing strategies to the table that you may not have considered.
WHO TAX PLANNING IS A GOOD FIT FOR
Effective tax planning can help you achieve your long-term financial goals faster and potentially increase your cash flow today. Our goal is to incorporate a proactive perspective to minimize your tax liabilities, maximize your deductions, and avoid unpleasant surprises.
YOU PLAN TO RETIRE IN THE NEXT DECADE
As you approach the end of your working years, the distribution stage tends to be more complicated than the accumulation phase. Based on your goals and financial plan, certain strategies will make sense during your final years of work and likely transition to different tax planning priorities in early retirement.
We can help you put a plan in place, forecast Required Minimum Distributions, determine the Social Security benefit strategy that aligns with your plan, and feel confident that your next phase of life is set up for success.
YOU ARE RETIRED
It’s time to start to transition your investment accounts into your monthly income.
We will help you understand how your income, expenses, health insurance costs, and tax bracket will change throughout retirement. This trajectory will determine which tax-efficiency strategies make the most sense for you to implement proactively during these years.
YOU ARE A HIGH INCOME EARNER
You have done a great job generating income. Now your objective is to find ways to keep it.
We help you explore ways to reduce income taxes, maximize workplace benefits, leverage charitable contributions, and project how your tax liability will change in the future.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
DO I NEED A FINANICAL ADVISOR AND AN ACCOUNTANT FOR TAX SERVICES?
Many of our clients have both. Accountants are licensed to provide tax advice and help prepare your annual tax return. An advisor develops comprehensive financial plans, helps with portfolio management, risk management, retirement income strategies, estate planning, charitable giving strategies, and more.
Taxes play an important part in all of these areas, so advisors and accountants often work together. We focus heavily on guiding you to be proactive and intentional with opportunities to reduce your lifetime tax bill. A lot of our recommendations will be based on a multi-year perspective, while some accountants tend to just focus on the calendar year. This is a value we bring to every client relationship.
SHOULD I RELY ON MY ACCOUNTANT FOR STRATEGIES TO REDUCE MY TAXES?
From our experience, most CPAs typically don’t proactively recommend tax planning strategies. You often need to direct the CPA to explore these specific opportunities.
For example, most people reach out to their CPA after the calendar year has ended and by that point, many opportunities may be gone. This is one of the reasons we started Level Wealth Management. There is so much value on the tax planning side if you’re proactive. These strategic tax plans can potentially expedite the timeline for your goals or expand upon what is possible in your financial plan.
CAN YOU HELP ME DETERMINE WHICH INVESTMENTS TO SELL AND CONVERT TO CASH FLOW?
Yes, we create and implement a customized optimal withdrawal strategy. Before selling any investments, we first need to understand what the tax impact will be. Our goal is to maintain a target asset allocation and efficiently create your desired cash flow while minimizing the tax impact. It is a balancing act tailored to your unique financial goals.
HAVE MORE QUESTIONS?
We are here and happy to help! You can learn more about Level Wealth Management tax planning by scheduling a quick call with us here.
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Other Services
FINANCIAL PLANNING
We create a custom plan for every client that is continuously updated.
You’ll have meetings throughout the year to discuss your goals and life events making sure your plan is always tailored to your priorities and helping you make smart decisions.
INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT
The finance industry tends to make investing more complicated than it needs to be. That complexity typically leads to high fees, below-average performance, and a lack of transparency.
Our evidence-based investment philosophy helps clients harness the power of the market through low cost, globally diversified portfolios.