Working With Business Owners & High Wealth Individuals
The professionals at CTW have extensive experience providing tax services for business owners and high wealth individuals. We can help you with a number of aspects of your fiscal life, including planning your estate, meeting your education funding objectives, diversifying your assets, planning for retirement, etc. Learn more below.
Estate Planning
CTW tax professionals consider many factors in developing estate plans for our clients. There are five major components to our estate planning services that allow us to ensure assets transfer to the intended heirs.
This includes:
- Understanding complex estate planning structures designed to eliminate estate & gift taxes and provide asset protection
- Understanding client dispositive objectives and recommending alternate estate planning transactions to reduce the taxable portion of a client's estate
- Considering the need to protect assets from liabilities and exposures that could arise from the client’s operation of a business
- Considering the availability of the date-of-death step-up for assets that might not be retained by the heirs following the passing of our clients
- Periodically revisiting clients’ estate plans to ensure that the desired result will be achieved.
Income Tax Planning
Whether you are a business owner or a high net worth individual, CTW tax professionals will proactively advise you on the reduction of the income tax drag on your earnings stream.
We work with privately-held businesses and equity owners, as well as high wealth individuals, to eliminate and defer taxes on:
- Any operating income
- Compensation and dividends withdrawn from the business
- The sale of the business.
- Passive investments, including real estate investments and non-controlling business interests
We work with clients to develop strategies such as:
- Utilizing suspended losses, deductions and carryovers
- Minimizing taxes on individual retirement accounts
- Focusing on securing tax benefits for investment management costs
Income, Estate, & Gift Tax Compliance
Your most frequent contact with tax matters often surrounds the filing of tax returns and the remission of quarterly tax payments. Your team at CTW will dive into your financial affairs on a quarterly basis. This lets us provide you with up-to-date guidance on the magnitude and timing of your tax obligations. Because the tax planning process ends with the filing of returns, we strive to finish income, and gift tax returns well in advance of due dates so that we can review the returns together.
Estate and gift compliance does not end with the filing of returns. Many estate plans involve the creation of trusts which must be properly maintained to be effective. CTW professionals perform fiduciary accounting for such trusts, prepare income tax filings for such trusts, and assist trustees with the management of such trusts.
Charitable Giving
CTW tax professionals help charitably-minded individuals establish and maintain a variety of charitable vehicles which provide income and/or estate & gift tax benefits.
These charitable vehicles include:
- Charitable remainder trusts
- Pooled-income funds
- Charitable lead trusts
- Donor-advised funds
- Private foundations
- Publicly supported charities
- Integrated auxiliaries of charities
These charitable giving strategies should be considered by charitably-inclined individuals with highly appreciated assets or high exposure to estate taxes.