You have worked hard to accrue personal wealth or to build your business. However, while doing so, the benefit of smart tax and asset planning may not have been a priority on your ‘to-do’ list.
Effective tax and estate planning is critical to preserving the value of your assets or business. Trying to plan without the assistance of a tax or estate professional can lead to serious legal trouble, especially if you make a wrong decision about your tax strategy.
Do not spend any of your valuable time worrying about how taxes will affect your assets or your business. Contact Business Estate & Tax Attorneys, P.C., today to speak with one of our tax and asset planning attorneys about your legal rights and options to shelter your assets from unnecessary taxes in order to protect you and your family.
Personal Tax and Asset Planning
Our knowledgeable tax and asset planning attorneys can help you protect your and your family’s assets and wealth with the use of a variety of transactional tools including:
- Estate Plans – Most people focus their estate planning efforts on simply ensuring that their loved ones are protected. However, this unilateral focus often overlooks ways to minimize the tax burdens on assets and wealth after death. Strategic tax planning should be an important part of your estate plan to reduce the amount of taxes your loved ones will need to pay following your death. Thoughtful tax planning will allow your family to enjoy a greater share of the wealth your hard work created.
- Trusts – An effective trust can be used to help avoid the significant tax burdens that may arise following the death of a loved one who leaves a sizeable estate. A well-crafted trust instrument can allow you to pass your assets to your family with minimal legal effort and tax liability exposure. However, trusts must be carefully drafted and structured. An effective trust should achieve your asset and tax planning goals without jeopardizing your legal rights and interests.
- Charitable Giving – Charitable giving allows you to support those causes that are important to you. Charitable giving can also offer you certain tax advantages. Our tax and estate attorneys understand various strategies, such as utilizing charitable trusts or charitable remainder trusts, that will allow you to support your favorite charities even as you protect your wealth. Well planned trusts can allow you to enjoy your assets and wealth during your lifetime while also providing charitable gifts and taking advantage of tax benefits after your passing.
- Large Financial Transactions – Without careful planning, large transactions can have significant tax consequences. We can help you structure these transactions in a way that will allow you to minimize your tax exposure.
- Real Estate Transactions – Real estate transactions can carry significant tax consequences in the absence of effective tax planning even if you are simply transferring real estate to a trust or a family member. Let us help you structure these transactions in such a way as to preserve the value of your property by minimizing your tax burdens.
Business Tax and Asset Planning
At Business Estate & Tax Attorneys, P.C., our tax planning lawyers can ensure that your business has implemented wise and effective tax strategies to reduce tax liabilities while also maintaining compliance with tax codes at every stage in the life of your business, including:
- Starting a Business – Business tax planning should begin at the time you start your business. Choosing and structuring your entity type can have significant ramifications on your business’s tax exposure.
- Capital Investments – Your business can reduce tax burden by making strategic capital investments. Those investments can not only save taxes but they can ensure that your business has the resources it needs to thrive and grow in the future.
- Liquidating Assets – If your business is holding onto unproductive inventory or equipment, your business may be costing itself significant sums of money. Liquidating assets can help reduce your business’s costs, provide added income and/or allow you to take advantage of tax write-offs or reductions of tax liabilities through charitable giving.
- Mergers – Merging two businesses requires extensive tax planning to avoid significant tax burdens that can arise from the transaction. Without effective planning, the newly merged businesses may never realize the financial benefits that the merger was envisioned to provide.
- Acquisitions – Careful tax planning and structuring of an acquisition can help reduce tax liabilities for both the acquiring company and for the owners of the company being purchased.
- Foreign Operations – When your company is operating in multiple national jurisdictions, you may be able to take advantage of specific national tax and business laws to realize significant savings.
How an California Tax and Asset Planning Attorney Can Help
If you have questions about how personal or business transactions might affect your tax burdens or the value of your assets, a tax and asset planning lawyer can help you by:
- Becoming familiar with you and your business before issues arise, especially for high-net-worth individuals or individuals with both personal and business assets that need to be considered.
- Monitoring developments and changes to laws and regulations to provide you with the most recent business and tax guidance, interpretations and up-to-date planning strategies.
- Developing strategic tax plans that help you preserve the value of your assets and your business, in the present and in the future.
- Walking you through the various planning strategies available to you including trusts and other estate planning tools, charitable giving and business entity structuring.
Schedule a consultation with a Business Estate & Tax Attorneys, P.C., tax and asset planning lawyer in San Francisco & Orinda today to learn more about your legal rights and options to achieve the best possible results for you and your business.