Retirement Planning

Advanced Tax Strategies

Individuals and families with significant assets, typically exceeding $10 million or expecting to exceed $10 million in the future, often require advanced tax and estate planning. High and ultra-high net worth families have unique circumstances that may deserve in-depth effort and planning.

Oftentimes, the strategy implemented depends on how complex you want your life to be. We prefer simple over complex, but your situation will dictate the discussion, strategy and recommendations.

Simple strategies for tax reduction do not necessarily require advanced legal documents such as multiple trusts of various types and/or a family limited partnership. Tax reduction can be accomplished by thoughtful investment and asset placement, distribution, forward planning and ongoing advice.

For more sophisticated planning, we tap into our network of professionals — attorneys and CPAs — to bring to bear the specialized expertise and tools that may be needed for more advanced planning.

As senior planning expert, Oak Harvest founder Troy Sharpe, CFP®, leads the advanced tax planning discussions in conjunction with your advisor and investment strategists. Throughout his years of planning experience, he has gained a wealth of information that he puts at your disposal to meet your needs. You may have heard Troy discussing some of these advanced strategies on his radio show, The Retirement Income Show, heard Saturdays on KTRH 740, over the past eight years.

We have found that many times, one of the biggest mistakes high and ultra-high net worth families make is using their existing attorney, CPA or advisor for these types of advanced planning conversations. Familiarity is often the reason for such a selection, but, unfortunately, less than optimal planning may be the result.

Your business attorney or CPA may not be the most qualified or experienced to implement customized, advanced solutions for your needs. Planning for the high and ultra-high net worth families in the estate and tax planning arena requires particular skills and knowledge.

This doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with your current professionals, it just means we want the best of the best for our clients when it comes to this type of planning. We believe that families have to exercise proper due diligence in making decisions of this import.

We believe families should have someone that focuses on the specific structure that may need attention as their primary function. This allows for a deep understanding of the complex legalities and tax issues that may arise through customized planning.

These types of specialized attorneys usually aren’t the ones you hire for employment law, business formation or your basic wills and trusts. The mistake many families may make in this arena is going to those existing professionals and asking for a trust or a plan without consulting a skillful financial planner first.

We’ve seen many cases where families with liquid assets or businesses valued in excess of $10 million and their entire estate and asset protection plan revolves around a Revocable Living Trust, which we do not believe is optimal.  We have also seen cases where a Family Limited Partnership or specific type of trust structure was created but never followed through with.

This is why working with a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) professional may be important for your particular situation. In our practice, your CFP® pro is like the quarterback of the team, guiding and coordinating other professionals in a strategy fit to your needs. As a CFP®, our founder Troy Sharpe has dedicated his career to helping high net worth families with more sophisticated strategies designed to protect assets, reduce taxes and streamline processes.

Situations calling for income and estate tax reduction may require different structures than asset protection. Transferring assets to your kids and grandkids could be done a multitude of ways based on your vision and needs — it may all depend on your situation. Different strategies are available, and we can help explore your options along with the pros and cons of each before meeting with the appropriate attorney or CPAs.

We believe on-going communication is essential to successfully completing an advanced tax strategy. And we are confident that not only can we ascertain what strategies can be most effective and discuss the pros and cons from an independent standpoint, we can guide you to the appropriate attorney or CPA that is a fit for your unique situation as required.