A recap of the major changes impacting corporations and closely held firms. The Tax Cuts & Jobs Act changed the tax picture for business owners.Whether your company is incorporated or held closely, you must recognize how the recent adjustments to the Internal Revenue Code can potentially affect you and your workers. How have things changed for C corps?The top corporate tax rate has fallen. C corps now pay a flat 21% tax. For most C corps, this is a big win; for the smallest C corps, it may be a loss.1 If your C corp or LLC brings in $50,000 or less in 2018, you will receive no tax relief – your firm will pay a 21% corporate income tax as opposed to the 15% corporate income tax it would have
What should you know? What should your executor know? When people think about estate planning, they may think in terms of personal property, real estate, and investments. Digital assets might seem like a lesser concern, perhaps no concern at all. But it is something that many are now considering.1 Your digital assets should not disappear into a void when you die.You can direct that they be transferred, preserved, or destroyed per your instructions. Your digital assets may include information on your phone and computer, content that you uploaded to Facebook, Instagram, or other websites, your intellectual/creative stake in certain digital property, and records stemming from online communicati
A practical financial checklist for the future. When our parents retired, living to 75 amounted to a nice long life, and Social Security was often supplemented by a pension. The Social Security Administration estimates that today’s average 65-year-old female will live to age 86.6. Given these projections, it appears that a retirement of 20 years or longer might be in your future.1,2 Are you prepared for a 20-year retirement?How about a 30- or 40-year retirement? Don’t laugh; it could happen. The SSA projects that about 25% of today’s 65-year-olds will live past 90, with approximately 10% living to be older than 95.2 How do you begin?How do you draw retirement income off what you’ve saved – h
As you approach retirement, it may be time to pay more attention to investment risk. If you are an experienced investor, you have probably fine-tuned your portfolio through the years in response to market cycles or in pursuit of a better return. As you approach or enter retirement, is another adjustment necessary? Some investors may think they can approach retirement without looking at their portfolios. Their investment allocations may be little changed from what they were 10 or 15 years ago. Because of that inattention (and this long bull market), their invested assets may be exposed to more risk than they would like. Rebalancing your portfolio with your time horizon in mind is only practic