How to Optimize Fixed Annuity Tax Deferral
Annuities are popular tools for retirement income planning. While stigmas exist around some annuity products (for good reason), recent research shows how fixed annuities can [...]
Foreign Dividend Withholding Tax Refunds: A Practical Walkthrough
The world of withholding tax recovery on foreign dividends and interest is woven with intricacies, challenges, and a general lack of transparency. This is mainly [...]
Boutique ETF Issuers Finally Get a Break!
Lingchi is the Chinese term for the form of torture we know as “death by 1000 cuts” that was reportedly used from 900 CE until [...]
Equity Compensation Planning in a TCJA World
Employee equity & stock options are a major part of the modern compensation plan. That's certainly the case for my financial planning clients. Unfortunately, a [...]
Compound Your Knowledge Ep. 13: Opp. Zone Investments, Hiring Losers, & Short Selling w/Insider Buying
In this week's video, we examine three articles. The first article, written by Adam Tkaczuk, covers a method to make an opportunity zone (equity) investment behave [...]
Structuring Lower Risk Opportunity Zone Investments
The tax benefits of the new Opportunity Zone program are potentially phenomenal. However, when you dig into the details of the program you quickly realize [...]
Tax-Managed Factor Strategies
Tax-Managed Factor Strategies Lisa R. Goldberg , Pete Hand , and Taotao CaiFinancial Analysts JournalA version of this paper can be found hereWant to read our [...]
Buyer Beware: The Reality of Tax-Loss Harvesting Benefits
Executive Summary Tax loss harvesting is widely promoted, but we think the benefits are generally misunderstood and often overstated.[ref]a recent paper highlighted by Wes on [...]
1042 QRP: How to Finance a Seller Note
Employee Stock Ownership Plans (“ESOP”) create unique opportunities for business owners and their employee-participants to build wealth through their companies. To foster broader adoption of [...]
Is Active Alpha Enough to Cover Taxes?
Each time S&P Dow Jones Indices publishes its latest Active Versus Passive Scorecard, the persistent failure of the vast majority of actively managed funds to [...]
Want to Minimize Capital Gains Taxes? Check Out Our Guide to Opportunity Zone Investments
If you have a large "low-basis stock problem," or an "embedded capital gain problem," the Opportunity Zone (OZ) program could possibly be the single largest [...]
Illustrating the Value of Retirement Accounts
What do most people consider to be the biggest benefit of retirement accounts? Many investors and advisors will say, "tax deferral." But a recent article (pdf [...]
Quantifying the Value of Retirement Accounts
Many people talk about the tax benefits of retirement accounts. However, few attempt to quantify and estimate the actual benefits. To make matters worse, when [...]
The Tax Efficiency of Long-Short Strategies
Conventional wisdom can be defined as ideas that are so accepted that they go unquestioned. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom is often wrong. Two great examples are [...]
ESOP Attorney — How to Hire One and Why It Matters
The sequential process by which ESOP advisory teams are assembled by business owners requires that they get it right–from the start. An ESOP attorney is the linchpin in that process. Here is what you need to know.
529 Plan Distribution Flowchart
I recently had a conversation with a client who had a big fat 529 plan and was planning to take a distribution from it to [...]
How To Sell A Business Tax Efficiently via Structured Installment Sales
When an owner sells their business, the IRS and state taxing authorities will be there to take as much of it as they lawfully can. This one tax bill can be the single largest tax payment an owner will ever make and may represent over a third of their entire net worth. Furthermore, it comes after years of paying income/payroll taxes, working harder, and generally taking more risks than non-business owners. And when an owner wants to retire, the process is significantly more complicated than an employee who simply has to give a few weeks’ notice and maybe rollover a 401K. That’s because a business owner’s life’s savings is locked up in the value of their business. In fact, selling their business IS their retirement plan. So, accessing that wealth at the best possible price, in a way that is tax and cost efficient, is critical to their retirement. In this article, we introduce a unique service offering that can significantly reduce the impact of taxes and increase the price when selling a business. We’ve designed it to be used by business owners and their financial advisors (Wealth Managers, CFP’s, M&A Advisors, CPAs, etc.). If you are a business owner, or operate on behalf of business owners, read on.
1042 Exchange: Navigating Between a Rock and a Hard Place
This particular Greek dilemma is what came to mind when I first encountered an ESOP. I observed that business owners who sold shares to an ESOP seemed, like Odysseus, to find themselves between a rock and a hard place. They could elect to pursue a 1042 exchange and bypass the Scylla of capital gains taxes, but in doing so they had to roll their sale proceeds into qualified replacement property. That path would likely lead to the Charybdis of Floating Rate Notes. These special ESOP bonds are the predominant 1042 exchange asset in the marketplace, a fact that belies their relative shortcomings as an investment asset. Just how unattractive floating rate notes are, and why they became the default 1042 rollover strategy among financial advisors, is the subject of this article. However, unlike Odysseus, business owners seeking to implement 1042 exchanges have more affordable and transparent paths to navigate between a rock and a hard place.
1042 QRP: Weighing the High Cost of Floating Rate Notes
This cost-benefit analysis of floating rate notes as a 1042 QRP asset class will open your eyes to their high costs, ongoing fees and sub-optimal attributes
How to Reduce Taxes through Negotiation
Since this is my first post, I'll make a quick introduction before getting to the content: I love science and learning. In college, I majored in [...]