The best tax plan asks not only how much a client could save, but what they would have to give up to save it.
Advisors don’t lack tax planning opportunities. There are plenty of them. What I saw missing in tax-aware investing were two things: access to powerful, newer strategies that demand sophisticated implementation, and real coordination between tax strategy, investment management and the rest of a client’s financial life.
We knew the traditional tools for managing concentrated stock and embedded capital gains, but we were often reluctant to recommend them because the tradeoffs diminished,…
