Estate & Gift Strategies
Passing on what you have built, with as little lost to taxes as possible.
Most people want the same things: take care of their family, support the causes they care about, and not hand a needless share to the government along the way. We help you put that into a clear plan, coordinating with your attorney on the legal documents and handling the tax side ourselves: gifting strategies, the step-up in basis, charitable giving structured for maximum benefit, and how your estate plan fits with your investments and your income plan. As a CPA firm and an investment advisor, we keep all of those pieces in the same room. Fee-only and flat-fee. We are not attorneys, and we work alongside your estate attorney on the legal documents.
Pennsylvania is the part people miss
The federal estate tax exemption is high enough that most families never touch it, and that is where the conversation usually stops. It should not.
Pennsylvania charges inheritance tax on what you leave, and it reaches your children. Not just distant relatives, not just non-family. Transfers to a spouse are exempt. Transfers to children and grandchildren are taxed at 4.5 percent, transfers to siblings at 12 percent, and transfers to everyone else at 15 percent.
For a house held in the same family for thirty years, that is a real number, and it is payable by people who have just lost a parent. It is worth planning around while the straightforward options are still open.
What we look at
The basis question. Property given away during your lifetime generally keeps your original cost basis. Property inherited at death generally gets stepped up to its value on that date. Gifting appreciated property to save inheritance tax can cost your children more in capital gains than it saved. This runs the wrong way more often than people expect.
Annual gifting. What you can give each year without filing, how it compounds over a decade, and when it is worth filing a return to use part of your lifetime exemption deliberately.
Beneficiary designations. Retirement accounts and life insurance pass by designation, not by will. We see wills that say one thing and beneficiary forms that say another, usually naming an ex-spouse.
Inherited retirement accounts. The rules on how fast a non-spouse beneficiary has to empty an inherited IRA have changed, and they interact with your children’s own income in the years they inherit.
Charitable giving. Appreciated securities rather than cash, donor-advised funds, and gifts from an IRA once you are old enough to make them, each of which does something different to your return.
What you get
Gifting and basis strategies that lower the tax hit. We structure transfers so more of what you built reaches your family.
Charitable giving structured for impact. Support the causes you care about in the most tax-efficient way.
Coordinated with your attorney, your portfolio, and your income plan. Every piece of your estate works together instead of in isolation.
Why a CPA firm that also manages the money
Estate planning touches the will, the tax return and the portfolio, and those three usually live with three different people who do not talk. We are not attorneys and we do not draft documents. We work alongside yours, and we are the ones who see what the plan does to the return and to the investments.
That means the strategy gets pressure-tested against your actual numbers before anyone drafts anything. If you are also thinking about the income side of retirement, our financial planning and wealth management pages cover how those fit together.
Where to start
A conversation about what you have, who you want it to go to, and what is already written down. Most people find the gap between the last two is bigger than they thought.