End of Year Planning

A Discussion with Kevin Brown of RBTK & John Wheeler of Akili Capital

Kevin Brown: We’re coming up on the end of the year, and of course, that’s exciting with the holidays and all the things around that and family, but it’s also a time that is really a necessary time to consider some issues around planning, tax planning, year end planning. And today I have John Wheeler joining me, and John is with Akili Capital. John works with a lot of high net worth individuals and I’ll let him share a little bit more about who he works with, but John, with that, tell us a little bit what you’re seeing with your clients and things that may be concerning them as we come into the end of the year.

John Wheeler: Great. Thanks, Kevin. There are a number of things that we look at for year-end. First of all, to the clients we work with high net worth clients, usually closely held family businesses or heavy real estate investors. As you approach year-end, there’s always the issue of tax planning. What are things that could be done this year, 2021, to be better prepared for when taxes come due next year? And so from a collaborative standpoint, we can uncover some of these issues, but I’m not a tax expert, I’m not a CPA. And so it’s great to be able to look to someone like Kevin and the folks at RBTK who are experts in those areas, and we know we’ve got a trusted advisor with them that when we bring them into that relationship, they’re going to do everything they can to help us serve the client in the best way for the client.

And that’s probably the most important thing to me because the relationships that I have with my clients are long term. We work on a lot of multi-generational transfers of business and wealth, which also has tax implications. And so in that case, Kevin and I may identify that while there’s some good tax strategy we can employ, there may be a need to bring in good estate planning attorneys that help us with trusts and asset protection and other things that, again, both Kevin and I understand, but neither one of us are qualified to establish or draft those trusts. So we have some estate attorneys that we would then bring into that process that we know, again, can be highly trusted and are going to do the best thing for the client. So there’s a couple of things that year end that we’re always interested in looking at, and that’s why I appreciate having someone like Kevin that I know I can contact quickly. He can help me get to the source of the right answer rapidly and the client’s going to be well served.

Kevin Brown: And that’s a very important issue as we’re coming into this year end, especially on estate tax. There is going to be a lot of change effective January 1st. It’s still up in the air exactly what that’s going to look like, but it’s very important for any client, but especially those with some significant assets and wealth to really consider estate planning and look to help mitigate those estate taxes, as well as doing some other tax planning that could help an income tax related to its estate planning.
But the key thing we always work on with our clients is not just throwing the latest estate planning ideas at them, but to really sit down with our clients and understand their goals and objectives around their estate – how they want to transfer that wealth, how they may want to gift that wealth, whatever it may be, but really identify their goals and objectives, then work back into the correct plan. And as John mentioned, we’re not attorneys. So we don’t write up the estate plans, but we’re heavily involved in the process of design and implementation of it with those attorneys.

So if you have some of those specific needs, now we’re down to a month and a half between now and the end of the year, feel free to reach out to us at RBTK. We’re here to help.