Mastering Compliant-Friendly Tax Planning: Webinar Recap
About this session:
The session discussed mastering compliance-friendly tax planning strategies for advisors and firms, focusing on tax compliance and planning.
Insights Surfaced:
- Advisors should be intentional about tax planning, as it impacts their clients’ taxes.
- Proactively communicating with compliance departments and partnering with tax professionals can help in staying compliant and providing better service to clients.
- Requesting and reviewing clients’ tax returns is essential for effective tax planning.
Meet the Speakers
Steven Jarvis
Steven aims to bridge the gap between tax professionals, financial advisors, and their mutual clients to help reduce most people’s largest expense in retirement: taxes! With over 10 years of experience from top accounting firms and by partnering with some of the most successful financial advisors in the industry, Steven is uniquely positioned to help financial advisors deliver massive value to their clients AND stay between the lines on compliance. With his valuable skill of distilling endless pages of IRS tax code and case law into easy to explain–easier to implement–actionable items that financial advisors can use with their clients today!
Chris Field:
Chris brings more than a decade of experience connecting good people to good products. He finds few things as satisfying as creating true win/wins for all parties. His primary role will be to ensure more advisors know how Holistiplan can help their business and their clients. In addition to his work at Holistiplan, Chris leads a global charity doing humanitarian work, speaks across the country, and teaches a business class at Texas A&M.
Max Rothely:
Max brings his expertise in the Nitrogen platform, which provides innovative tools and features to assist advisors growing their firm. He will give us an inside look into Nitrogen, with a particular focus on the new tax drag feature that can be used to win over more clients.
Watch the Entire Webinar
Takeaways
Takeaway 1: The importance of being intentional and proactive about tax planning
In this webinar, the experts emphasized the need for financial advisors to be intentional and proactive when it comes to tax planning for their clients. Instead of just waiting for tax season and reacting to tax liabilities, advisors should be looking for ways to optimize tax strategies and planning opportunities throughout the year.
Steven Jarvis highlighted the importance of being proactive with compliance departments and communicating the value of tax planning to clients, while Chris Field discussed the utilization of fintech tools like Holistic plan to optimize tax strategies. Max Rothley also emphasized the importance of consistent practice and staying up-to-date with tax changes and regulations.
“Being proactive with the compliance is huge,” said Jarvis. “The next thing is to partner where you can. One of the best ways to make sure that you’re doing the best service for your clients as possible and watching yourself on the compliance side is that; when you are talking about taxes or you’re making recommendations that you always include some kind of caveat of – Hey, let’s discuss this with your tax preparer.”
Takeaway 2: Leveraging technology to improve tax planning strategies
The webinar also covered the importance of leveraging technology and fintech tools to help financial advisors optimize tax planning strategies for their clients. Chris Field explained how Holistic plan can assist advisors in staying proactive and efficient when it comes to tax planning.
“Instead of standing on the beach kind of waiting to see what happens, they’ll have the courage and the tools they need to grab a surfboard and to come ride that wave with us,” said Field. “Taxes touch every part of my clients finances. I really need to make sure I’m paying attention to this.”
Max Rothley also provided an overview of how the Nitrogen platform can be used to analyze tax drag and optimize tax-efficient investment strategies for clients. “We want to help you drive referral champions – Tax drag is another lever you can use to win-over clients.” said Rothley.
Takeaway 3: Building relationships with clients and tax professionals
Another key takeaway from the webinar was the importance of building relationships with both clients and tax professionals. Financial advisors should work closely with their clients’ tax preparers and ensure that they are collaborating effectively to provide the best possible tax planning services.
Steven Jarvis recommended that financial advisors communicate proactively with their clients’ CPAs and other tax professionals to ensure that their tax planning strategies are being executed and reported correctly. “By partnering together, we can make sure that the client gets the best outcome possible,” he said.
Chris Field also emphasized the importance of working together as a team with other professionals to provide value to clients when it comes to tax planning. He even shared a scenario where an advisor using Holistiplan was able to identify a discrepancy. “The CPA is like, my bad. I messed that up. That’s my mistake. And right there, they filed an amendment. The client saved several thousand dollars in taxes. They’re going to remember that,” said Field. “The advisor wasn’t trying to catch the CPA. It wasn’t a gotcha. It wasn’t a ‘throw them under the bus’ moment. It was, ‘Hey, we’re working together. We’re all trying to do the best thing for the client.'”
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