Tax Planning
Federal tax law begins with the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), which consists of an increasingly complicated set of rules, containing many traps for the unwary. Careful tax planning helps you navigate through those rules by using them to your advantage, instead of the alternative.
What is involved in tax planning?
Tax planning is the proactive process of developing strategies to help you minimize and/or defer the payment of income taxes. This is done primarily by taking advantage of specific tax-law provisions and efficiently utilizing all available tax deductions and credits.
That’s where we come in…
Our tax planning process begins with a review of your most recent tax returns, which are then used to prepare preliminary projections covering the ensuing 1-3 years. We then carefully consider each line item to determine the strategies that will successfully minimize your overall income tax obligation – while keeping in mind the costs of implementation.
We work to develop a beneficial tax strategy that is effective and dynamic, and caters to the specific needs of each individual. We then offer our recommended approach and provide a comprehensible action plan in a simplified bullet-point format. This development process may change from year-to-year in order to accommodate any shifts in your personal finances.
Customized action plan…
Tax strategies are tailor-made to each individual’s unique financial circumstances and can include:
- Accelerating or deferring the payment of certain expenses.
- Contributing to a regular or Roth IRA.
- Hiring your children to assist with your business activities.
- Bunching of itemized deductions in certain years.
- Donating non-cash items to charity (such as clothing, furniture, appliances, etc.).
- Aggregating otherwise passive activities to achieve Real Estate Professional status.
- Directing the timing of when specific securities are sold to lock in losses to offset gains.
- Donating appreciated investment securities to charities in lieu of giving cash.
- Electing to distribute employer securities from your profit share accounts (instead of rolling such into an IRA) to benefit from the “net unrealized appreciation” rules.
- And more!
Our policy…
We place great emphasis on maintaining open communication with you. This ensures that the strategies available to you can be identified in a prospective manner and implemented on an opportune timeline.
How to get started…
Please contact Jack Cunningham of Cunningham & Associates to set up a meeting to discuss your income tax planning needs and our income tax planning service… 248-952-1502 (ext. 224) or jack@cunninghamonline.com.