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 ESOPs, Congress instituted a number of attractive tax advantages benefitting [...]
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 outperform is highlighted. The evidence on this failure led Charles [...]
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 tax break you’ll ever see. With the right investment, the [...]
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 version) I wrote highlighted that the real value of retirement [...]
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 topic is addressed, many of the discussions rely on [...]
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 that millions of people once believed the conventional wisdom that [...]
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.
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 pay for his child’s first college tuition payment. We both [...]
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.
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.
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
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 physics and, upon completion, felt I had earned a four-year [...]
The ETF structure is often regarded as being "tax-efficient." However, many investors -- even sophisticated professionals -- often blow off the benefits of the ETF wrapper as "marginal." However, the reality is that the tax-efficiency [...]
Everyone knows there is no such thing as a free lunch, but in investing you often have to pay for a lot more than just lunch, and the lunch you get may not be what [...]
Paying taxes is my least favorite topic. Figuring out how to not pay taxes is my favorite topic. Before I continue, if you want to read a detailed study on the subject, see the following: https://www.vanguard.com/pdf/icrpr.pdf [...]