Your CPA Isn't Failing You. Your Tax Strategy Might Be.
You’re paying too much because tax preparation and tax strategy are two different jobs, and most people only have one of them covered.
The Job Nobody Is Doing
Your CPA is not the problem. Filing accurately based on the decisions you’ve already made is exactly the job, and most CPAs do it well. What’s missing for most high earners isn’t better tax preparation. It’s someone whose job is to get ahead of the decisions that determine the bill before those decisions are locked in.
By the time you’re signing your return, most of what determines your number is already fixed. The window to act has already closed.
What That Gap Actually Looks Like
You have equity compensation and no plan around it
RSUs vest on a schedule. Every vesting event is a taxable income event, recognized at ordinary rates, in whatever year it falls, whether that's a high-income year or not. If nobody is looking at that schedule in advance, building a strategy around it, and asking whether there are ways to offset that income in the same year, the default answer is: withhold automatically and hope for the best. Year after year, the cumulative impact of that approach is significant.
Your business structure hasn't kept up with your revenue
An S-corp that made sense at $600K in revenue looks different at $2M. There are compensation strategies, retirement plan structures, and entity considerations that your current setup may not be optimized for. Your CPA knows this. But unless someone is proactively raising it and connecting it to your personal financial picture, it stays on the to-do list indefinitely.
Your deferred compensation doesn't have a distribution strategy
If you're sitting on a meaningful amount of deferred compensation, when and how it gets paid out, which years, in what amounts, layered on top of what other income, determines the tax treatment of money you've already earned. Once the election window closes, it closes. This is a decision that rewards planning and punishes inaction.
How We Approach This Differently
Tax strategy at Freedom Path Wealth is a year-round conversation built into how we plan, not a Q1 scramble and not a standalone engagement. We work alongside your CPA, not around them, coordinating your investment decisions, compensation structure, equity events, and estate goals so that every decision is made with its tax consequences in mind.
When your financial advisor and your CPA are working from the same plan, decisions compound in your favor. When they’re not, you end up cleaning up problems that didn’t have to exist.
The Best Time to Work on This Year's Tax Bill Is Not April
Most of the opportunity lives in decisions made before the year ends, sometimes before it starts. If you’re ready to be more intentional about what you keep, the conversation starts with your full picture.