Business-Owner Planning

Family-management LLC structures so you can pay your kids meaningful W-2 wages, tax-efficiently. Roth-401(k) ownership designs that move real wealth into accounts that never see another tax bill. Retirement plans tuned to the owner: cash-balance and defined-benefit overlays, not the off-the-shelf 401(k). Exit planning built years ahead: installment sales, QSBS exclusions, charitable strategies. And buy-sell and key-person coverage placed in-house when it's needed.

You almost certainly have a business CPA, a personal advisor, and an attorney, and almost certainly, they've never been in the same conversation. We sit at that intersection. We map the business balance sheet and the personal one together, find the moves that actually change your outcome, and coordinate the execution across the whole team so nothing falls through the seams.

Pay your kids the right way: a family-management LLC taxed as a sole proprietorship sidesteps the payroll-tax trap and turns roughly $15,000 per child into a deduction for you and tax-free income for them. Design the plan around the owner: a cash-balance layer can shelter far more than a standard 401(k). Own it in a Roth: structured correctly, growth on the shares compounds tax-free for good. None of these are loopholes; all of them are documented, and all of them have to be done correctly.

The most valuable exit strategies need runway. QSBS exclusions, installment-sale structuring, charitable lead trusts: start five to ten years before you sell and the difference is measured in seven figures; start six months out and most of the door has already closed. If an exit is anywhere on your horizon, the planning starts now, not at the closing table.

S-corp and LLC owners with profits north of $250K and a tax bill that reflects it. Owners five to ten years from an exit who want the planning to start while it still moves the needle. Partners in growing firms who suspect their personal advisor isn't thinking about the business side at all, because they usually aren't.