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Tax Planning

Will I pay more tax in retirement than I did earning it?

Tax planning is not tax filing. Filing records what already happened; planning changes what happens next. We read your actual return into Holistiplan and model your bracket year by year to find the windows where a decision — a conversion, a realized gain, a charitable gift — costs materially less.

It’s said that only two things are certain in life: death and taxes. And while there’s not much you can do to avoid the former, with prudent planning and foresight, there’s a lot you can do to minimize the latter.

Our tax planning philosophy is not centered around tax avoidance, but on helping you structure your finances so you and your family aren’t overburdened by an undue tax liability.

We do the tax work — Holistiplan is where you see it

Most tax advice you will be given is generic, because most of it is written without anyone having looked at your return. We read your actual filed 1040 into Holistiplan, so the starting point is the numbers the IRS already has rather than an assumption about someone in your situation.

What comes out is specific and dated. How much room is left in your bracket this year. What the next dollar of income genuinely costs once it drags Social Security into taxable income. How close you are to the next Medicare surcharge threshold, and which side of it a conversion would leave you on. Those are answers with a deadline attached, because most of the levers stop working on December 31.

We do not prepare returns and we are not trying to replace your CPA. They file it; we read it. Working from the same document is what stops the planning and the filing from quietly contradicting each other.

Why tax planning matters

Consider this: if you managed to shave just $250 from your tax bill each year through prudent tax planning, and invested it at a 5% annual rate of return, you could have over $15,250 waiting for you by the time you retire in 30 years.

Delayed tax planning is tantamount to leaving potentially savable dollars of your hard-earned money on the tax table for others to benefit from. The longer you defer, the more you end up owing — money that could have been invested and compounded instead.

What we can do for you

  1. Pre-tax or post-tax

    How you invest, and in what type of vehicle, can make a significant difference to the tax you pay. We work through the advantages and disadvantages of each route for your situation.

  2. The type of income, not just the amount

    Dividends, interest, annuity payments, capital gains, inheritances, employer and government benefits are all potential retirement income — and each carries different tax implications.

  3. Protecting future net wealth

    Left unplanned, net wealth can be diminished by benefit claw-backs and by erosion of the estate through substantial taxes.

  4. A tax-aware inheritance

    A good tax plan means future generations don’t carry the burden of taxes on the legacy you leave them — but that requires structures put in place now, not later.

What this covers

  • Partnership with tax professionals
  • Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
  • Capital Gain/Loss Information
  • Charitable Gift Planning

What the tax work looks like

Your actual return, read and projected forward.

We read your filed 1040 into Holistiplan rather than starting from a generic assumption about someone in your situation. These are the views we build from it — and every one of them is about a decision with a deadline, because most tax levers stop working on December 31.

  • How much room is left in your bracket

    • Income already committed
    • Room left in the bracket

    Each bar is a year. The filled part is income you already have; the rest is room before the next bracket starts. At 66 there is a great deal of it. By 74, required distributions have taken almost all of it — and that room never comes back.

  • What the next dollar actually costs

    • True marginal rate
    • Stated bracket

    Your bracket says 22%. In the band where each extra dollar also drags Social Security into taxable income, the real cost of that dollar reaches 40.7%. The two lines are usually identical in working life and come apart in retirement, which is exactly where decisions get made.

  • How close you are to a Medicare surcharge

    IRMAA is a staircase, not a slope. Crossing a threshold by a single dollar applies the whole step for the year, and because it works on a two-year lookback the bill arrives two years after the income that caused it. What matters is the distance to the next riser.

  • Read from your return, not estimated

    Taxable income, from your 1040
    $148,200
    Room left in the 22% bracket
    $53,800
    Distance to the next IRMAA step
    $9,400
    Capital loss carryforward available
    $12,600

    We read your filed 1040 into the tool directly, so the starting figures are the ones the IRS already has rather than a generic assumption about someone in your situation. Every number above is read off the return; none of them is a guess.

The figures above are illustrations of the views Holistiplan produces, drawn with sample numbers. They are not a projection, a recommendation, or a representation of any client’s results, and they do not reproduce Holistiplan’s software. Your own Holistiplan views are built from your accounts and your assumptions.

Tax Planning

Questions we get asked

  • Preparation records what already happened and is largely a compliance exercise. Planning changes what happens next — deciding when income is recognized, which account it comes from, and which year a decision lands in. By the time a return is being prepared, most of the opportunity has passed.

Who this usually matters most for

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