Tax Planning — Minimize Taxes Legally

Preparing a return in April is "cleaning up after the party." Tax planning is "throwing the right party" beforehand. Most people pay more tax than they need to because they don't use the available tools: • Retirement contributions — Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, Solo 401k, SEP-IRA. They lower your AGI right now or provide tax-free growth. • Tax-loss harvesting — we sell losing investments before year-end to offset gains. You can deduct up to $3K from ordinary income beyond your gains. • Income timing — when you have a choice of when to receive income (S-Corp distributions, consulting payments), we optimize which tax bracket it falls into. • Entity structure — choosing between a Sole Prop, LLC, S-Corp, and C-Corp can save $10K+/year for high earners. • Charitable giving strategies — donor-advised funds, qualified charitable distributions (QCD), donating appreciated stock instead of cash. • Section 199A QBI deduction — a 20% deduction for pass-through business income (applied by default, but it needs to be structured correctly). • Healthcare strategies — HSA contributions and the self-employed health insurance deduction. I work with clients not only during tax season but year-round — quarterly planning sessions, mid-year reviews, year-end strategy. The result is consistently lower taxes with no legal risk.