Plain-language explainers on the structures, rates, and code sections that drive planning decisions, written by the people who implement them.
OBBBA set the federal estate exemption at $15M per person. Treating that as a reason to wait is a misreading of both the politics and the math.
2026-07-07QSBSA $15M cap, a $75M asset threshold, and a tiered holding period. The 2025 changes quietly rewrote the venture tax playbook.
2026-07-07Ordinary IncomeSection 6418 turned clean-energy credits into a traded market. The return is the discount; the risk is recapture and paperwork.
2026-07-07Capital GainsA CRUT is not a free lunch. It is a trade: deferral and a deduction in exchange for a genuine charitable remainder. Here is how to evaluate it honestly.
2026-07-07Planning FrameworksHalf of tax planning is just deferral. Whether that is worth anything depends on your reinvestment rate, your horizon, and what rate you pay at the end.
2026-07-07Capital GainsSell, exchange, contribute, or borrow. Each route prices risk, liquidity, and tax differently, and the right answer depends on which constraint binds you.
2026-07-07Portfolio StrategyLoss harvesting adds real value in the right circumstances. It also mostly defers tax rather than eliminating it, and the benefit decays on a schedule.
2026-07-07Estate & GiftA gift spends exemption dollar for dollar. A GRAT spends nearly none. The choice between them turns on how scarce your exemption is and how convex the asset.
2026-07-07EducationA plain-language guide to how CRTs work: the two types, the payout rules, the deduction, and the sequence from funding to remainder.
2026-07-07EducationThe tests stock has to pass to qualify under Section 1202: entity type, original issuance, the asset test, the business test, and the holding period.
2026-07-07EducationThe federal brackets, the net investment income tax, and the state layer that together set the real cost of a sale.
2026-07-07EducationThe 180-day window, the deferral, the basis step-up, and the 10-year exclusion, in the order they actually happen.
2026-07-07EducationHow pooling concentrated stock with other investors delivers diversification without a taxable sale, and what the seven-year commitment involves.
2026-07-07A first meeting covers your situation, the strategies that plausibly apply, and what we would need to review before recommending anything.
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