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Estate and Business Planning Blog
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April 9, 2013 Retirement Planning
Top 3 Reasons to Talk to a Tax Attorney Before Forming a Self-Directed IRA or IRA LLC
Introduction: The popularity of investing retirement accounts into “non-traditional” assets (e.g. real estate, private lending, and everything else you can imagine) using a self-directed IRA or an IRA-owned LLC (“checkbook control” IRA) has increased rapidly, perhaps too rapidly, since the economic meltdown in 2008. This growth has brought increased mainstream media attention, scams, and a huge amount of legal and tax non-compliance. The unfortunate reality is that most self-directed IRA account holders do not receive a sufficient amount of legal/tax education prior to investing. The reasons for this include: (1) the account holder’s normal “gatekeepers” (e.g. attorneys, accountants, financial advisors) are ei... Read More
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March 6, 2013 News & Updates
More DAPT Options, Enhanced LLCs and RLTs: WealthDocx Winter 2013 Update Released
We’ve just released the first of our 2013 semiannual updates to WealthDocx®. Below is a quick video overview from Editor-in-Chief Jason E. Havens, JD, LLM. Among other improvements, the update features a robust expansion of the domestic asset protection trust (DAPT) options in the Irrevocable Trust System to include trusts created under Alaska, Nevada, and South Dakota law. (The WealthCounsel DAPT already allowed users to create a DAPT under Delaware law.) Studies consistently conclude that Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, and South Dakota have the best DAPT laws in the United States. The domestic asset protection trust (DAPT) revision therefore facilitates greater protection of client families and enables practitioners to distinguish their services from their competitors.... Read More
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February 23, 2013 News & Updates
Make BusinessDocx Your Next Practice-Building Resource
WealthCounsel is ready to offer all-new products and resources for business planning. To meet the needs of a changing legal industry, WealthCounsel is expanding its scope of services. We’re poised to offer you, our valued members, more resources than ever before--resources you can use to take your practices to the next level. The backstory: Business planning isn’t just growing. It’s exploding. We’ve built our company based on a primary goal: To provide our members the tools and resources to equip you to create successful, profitable, and rewarding practices that enable you to change your clients’ lives for the better. That’s why we’re expanding our product line and community network to address Business Planning, an area of legal specialty that... Read More
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January 15, 2013 News & Updates, Executive Team Blog
Our vision for EstatePlanning.com
It’s important to me to make sure that we clear up some possible misunderstandings among WealthCounsel members about some of our organizational priorities, with quite a bit of conversation about EstatePlanning.com and our short- and long-term objectives about this project. Some folks who have been around a long time have even guessed that we want to take on LegalZoom directly and start providing legal services directly to the masses. Nothing could be further from the truth. As far as EstatePlanning.com goes, we had the opportunity to buy the domain and the business assets in late 2011. Thinking that there is really no better domain to have for our industry, we snatched it up. We didn’t want the opportunity to go to waste so among the principals and leadership t... Read More
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January 11, 2013 News & Updates, Executive Team Blog
Expanding The Advisors Forum
As most of our members are aware, we will be delivering a major enhancement to WealthDocx in the next few weeks, and we are excited to formally unveil BusinessDocx later this spring. These are both major initiatives that we believe will help WealthCounsel members continue to grow their practices in compelling and profitable ways—particularly in light of ATRA 2012—and many of you have expressed a lot of interest in these projects. Many Advisors Forum members have given us input on how we can make membership better, and that priority is the subject of this message. The Advisors Forum, a WealthCounsel company since 2006, connects attorneys, financial advisors, CPAs, and other like-minded professionals in ways that are designed to help them collaboratively grow th... Read More
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December 17, 2012 Practice Management
Not Enough Hours in a Day
Peggy Hoyt, JD The Law Office of Hoyt & Bryan, LLC Member of WealthCounsel This time of year is especially busy. There just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day. Yet, we each get the same allotment – twenty four hours for me, twenty four hours for you. How we use that time will predict our success and productivity. I’m often asked how I manage to do so much. Part of the answer is – I don’t do it. There’s no way one person can accomplish everything. You have to become adept at delegating those tasks that are not your unique ability to a team member who can help. I watch so many people I know struggle each day. They are trying to do everything themselves and the primary result is th... Read More
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December 13, 2012 Business Entities & Succession Planning
20 Factors To Determine Independent Contractor Status: What Business Planners Need to Know
Randy Gardner, J.D., LL.M., CPA, CFP® Director of Education, WealthCounsel An increasing number of business owners are addressing their human capital needs by hiring independent contractors. Business owners benefit by avoiding the administrative hassles of employing workers and the out-of pocket costs of payroll taxes and fringe benefits. The trend toward independent contractors will likely continue as business owners cope with the insurance mandate of President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by hiring independent contractors rather than full-time workers. Behavioral Control Factors: These factors measure whether there is a right to direct or control how the work is done. Few instructions are... Read More
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December 12, 2012 Gift & Estate Tax Planning
'Twas The Month Before ‘Cliff’-mas…
Neel Shah, Attorney at Law Shah & Associates, P.C., shared his poetic expertise with us. We hope you find it as entertaining as we did! 'Twas The Month Before ‘Cliff’-mas… 'Twas the month before the New Year and all through the country, all were in a good mood, except (that is), Trust Attorneys. It seems like we will miss all the holiday cheer, as our procrastinating clients finally plan out of fear. It will be taxed at their deaths or when they give it away, But much less for those who actually plan today. The gifts on our minds will involve Gift Tax Exemptions, instead of Barbie and Wiis and Sony PlayStations. Oh, how we wished we could drink, eat and... Read More
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December 4, 2012 Practice Management
Do You Know Where Your Business Is Coming From?
Morgan Law Group Member of WealthCounsel As business owners, we’re naturally trained to keep an eye on our financial data and profitability stats each month. But I’d venture to say that less than half of practice owners are actually monitoring their marketing stats to determine exactly how their income is coming in and where improvements can be made in the future. Why Keep Track? I’ve never been a fan of “spray and pray” marketing-- in other words, buying expensive ads or online real estate and just hoping for great results. I’ve even heard ad reps and gurus call this type of marketing “branding,” claiming that you just have to keep your name out there, regardless if the phone ever... Read More
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November 30, 2012 Business Entities & Succession Planning
Five Steps to Greater Profitability in 2013
As the year end approaches, many WealthCounsel members will be spending the last month finalizing their practice goals for 2013. Have you given thought to what you will do differently to increase your profitability in 2013? Based upon the response we are seeing to the BusinessDocx pre-release discount program, it is obvious that many members are planning to add business planning, or expand their existing business planning services, to keep more clients in house, to increase their efficiency, and to grow their profitability. BusinessDocx™ was designed to enable members to serve the full spectrum of their clients’ business planning needs. From business formation and operation, to maintenance and succession planning, the BusinessDocx drafting system works seamlessly wi... Read More