Good to Know

Good to Know If your doctor emailed a 35% discount coupon to your inbox, would you take the free money?  Your clients that are under-utilizing Flexible Spending Arrangements to pay medical and child-care costs may be throwing away free money. How? Contributions to the Flexible Spending Arrangements discussed herein are not subject to income, Social…

Good to Know The “red flag” expression comes to us courtesy of its first use in 1602 to signal the preparation for war. An IRS audit, while not a declaration of war against a taxpayer, can certainly put an unprepared client in the cross hairs of an unpleasant tax conflict. Before unfurling the red flags,…

Good to Know The Section 199A deduction, popularly referred to as the 20% Qualified Business Income deduction, was enacted to reduce the disparity in income tax rates between C Corporations and “pass-through businesses.” There is no entity level income tax in pass-through businesses – business gains and losses “pass through” to the business owner’s personal…

Good to Know In the cosmic order of U.S. tax law, expenses associated with tax-free income are frequently not deductible.  In the case of Payroll Protection Program loans, the IRS went one step further to rule that expenses paid with the proceeds of PPP loan debt were not deductible if the loan was merely expected…

Good to Know President Trump signed the COVID-19 and Tax Extenders Bill into law on December 27, 2020. This blog will focus upon the following key provisions: Pandemic Relief CARES Act Extensions and Pandemic Provisions Tax Provisions Disaster Tax Relief Tax Extenders Pandemic Relief The bill provides a refundable tax credit in the amount of…

Good to Know- Elections matter. They matter for a number of reasons, many of which are far more profound than financial effects and, as such, are out of any financial professional’s control. However, the financial advisor or financial planner may help prepare a client for potential tax changes in 2021. If, as a result of…

Good to Know We look to a highly respected source – The National Law Review1 – to help clarify confusion over ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investing issues in employer-sponsored retirement plans. Specially, we focus upon The National Law Review’s commentary on these issues: An overview of the final rule, Key requirements of the final rule,…

Good to Know We discussed Social Security claiming age coaching opportunities for savvy Financial Advisors in our last blog. Now we will provide added insights into six key factors that should influence the claiming age decision. A lifetime of careful retirement planning can be undermined with the wrong Social Security claiming age choice. Yet a…

In an AARP survey taken of individuals aged 44 through 75, more than three of every five surveyed would choose death over running out of money in retirement. Helping a client maximize their Social Security Retirement benefit can begin addressing this deep-seated fear. Coaching Opportunity What if you, the Financial Adviser, could make your clients…

Panic selling is painfully real. As but one example, S&P 500 investors lost almost 60% from 2007 to 2009 in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage default crisis. The chart to the right illustrates the breath-taking plunge of the S&P 500 from almost 1600 to 650 in less than 18 months. Here’s a sobering observation…