In short, what we do isn’t easy, and to be honest, I haven’t seen it done elsewhere. The closest tax strategy I’ve seen is when tax strategists will pool together funds from multiple clients, buy art, get an appraiser to give it an inflated value, and then donate it on their clients’ behalf.

The reason I don’t do this is (1) it doesn’t really benefit society, (2) it’s more likely to result in audits and valuation challenges

To make this work, we need to work with vendors of very specific types of products & goods to ensure compliance and maximum results for our clients

We’ll work with your client to review their past few years of tax returns to see the trend in their income & taxes, and help them understand how much they can save both in the present year and future if they work with us.

We’ll explain to them the strategies we have available to their unique situation, and help them take full advantage of them.

With our flagship strategy, we’ll provide them a partnership return with their portion of the deduction being 5x what they contributed.

This will be on Form 1065 / K-1, with Form 8283 for the qualified appraisal

They can then file this with their taxes or have us file them for a small fee.

For our combination strategy, we’ll also provide them all the financial information as it relates to the LLC we form on their behalf and if they’d like, be the ones to file their taxes for them.

No – everything we do is fully legal. We’ve had legal counsel scrutinize everything to make sure our setup is above-board and I believe that our successful audits from the IRS show this.

That plus, I enjoy keeping my licenses to work in this space and I trust my team members feel likewise.

First off – it’s impressive that your CPA offers tax planning services at all. Most are just focused on compliance. But where many CPAs will fall short is that they aren’t invested in bringing the absolute highest amount of tax savings for you.

If you look at the other alternatives that high-income earners, especially those on W-2s, have to mitigate their taxes, there aren’t that many. You have the option of rental real estate deductions (which have variable returns and involve a lot of work / management), investments into opportunity zones (which will have variable returns and long periods of illiquidity), forming a business or restructuring income (which isn’t practical for many), or moving to a state with lower taxes (again - impractical).

On top of this, CPAs generally won’t work with you to implement these strategies. They’ll just teach you how to claim it. Our firm offers distinct tax strategies that don’t involve the impracticalities of the above, walks our clients through the entire process, and performs all of the implementation on their behalf. And to help facilitate these strategies for a large number of clients, a lot of searching, vetting, and negotiating happens behind the scenes.

We’ve performed this strategy over 5,000 times across 8 years at this point and have had 3 audits at the individual level and 3 at the umbrella investment/donation company level.

Of the 3 audits at the individual level, we suspect the reason they were audited was due to randomness or other parts of their tax return (ie: it wasn’t related to our strategy and we weren’t the ones to file their taxes) but all three passed with the IRS allowing the full amount of deductions they claimed.

Of the 3 audits at the company level, we suspect these are from standard random checks and have been successful / wrapping up in that direction

We have legal counsel on staff should audits occur for our clients and they’re paid for by our team.

In general, tax law is slow to change. There’s no part of this that’s illegal as of now and it’s not a listed transaction (or similar to any of them) that the IRS considers fraudulent

We don’t anticipate this opportunity to go away any time soon

If anything, we’ve been finding more vendors to work with over the years that meet the IRS guidelines on what would be a qualifying donation

These strategies have been in place for over 50+ years and we anticipate they’ll stay around for a while

Since we’re working with products and services that are being sold on the open market, the value of these goods and services are well established. In every case we’ve seen, the qualified appraiser assigned an appraisal amount equal or extremely close (ie: within 1%) to the standard valuation.

This is unlike investing into art or other alternatives where the valuation is hard (if not subjective) in determination. Of all the parts investigated in the past, the IRS has never questioned the valuation of the goods.

They’re mission-driven

Their goal is simply to put their solutions into the hands of as many people as possible.

They still come out ahead financially

We like to work with tech companies because once the R&D for something is complete, the cost to replicate that solution for the next customer is usually very small. So even at an 80% discount, many of these companies are coming out with a profit still.

An alternative method for them to benefit financially is when they make money on the backend after they build a relationship with the recipients of these donations and demonstrate value

They want the positive PR / awareness around their brand

They want their company to be known and seen as a positive force for society. Who wouldn’t want that?

Wearable tech to help vision-impaired people “see”

We partnered with a tech company that did the research and development to produce a wearable that combines AI with a camera. The goal of this device is to help people who are blind or vision-impaired to navigate the physical world more effectively & carefully by having an intelligent assistive device that they can communicate with

We then took these wearables and donated them to 501(c)(3)’s who would be able to distribute these for free

Our clients’ contributions helped put life-changing tech into the hands of many people

AI software to help fight crime

We partnered with a software company that created an AI-based algorithm that scans the internet for anything that may be related to criminal investigations.

We then took this software and donated it towards detective groups (who are generally resource-constrained in nature & don’t have the resources to pursue every investigation with equal effort)

Our clients’ contributions helped find evidence & bring about justice to many cases where the defense would have otherwise gotten away with their crimes.