If you own the company, your largest retirement decision is a tax decision.

Owners have options employees don't — larger deductible contributions, different ways to hold risk, and a business that has to become a retirement somehow. Most of those options are only worth discussing alongside the tax return.

“My tax bill is the biggest expense I have.”

If your profits are consistently high and you're past what a 401(k) allows, there are qualified plan structures that permit substantially larger deductible contributions. They aren't right for everyone — they require consistent funding, an actuary, and a plan administrator — but for the right owner the annual deduction is significant. The first question is whether your income is stable enough to commit.

“If my partner died, I'd be in business with their spouse.”

A buy-sell agreement without funding behind it is a document describing money nobody has. We look at whether the agreement says what you think it says, how the business is valued in it, and where the purchase money would actually come from.

“One person leaving would take the business down with them.”

Sometimes that person is an employee. Often it's you. Either way the exposure is real and rarely written down anywhere. There are straightforward ways to cover the gap while a replacement is found.

“I want to keep my best people without giving away equity.”

Selective benefit arrangements let you reward specific people rather than everyone on payroll, with terms that reward them for staying. The tax treatment varies considerably depending on how it's structured, which is exactly why it should be designed with the return in view.

“I want to hand this over and actually retire.”

Whether the buyer is family, a partner, or an outsider, succession is a years-long sequence, not an event. The earlier the tax consequences are mapped, the more of the sale price you keep.

We read the return first

Most of these conversations start with two years of returns and a look at the entity structure. That isn't a formality — it changes which of the options above are even available to you, and in what order they should happen.

Where a plan requires an actuary or third-party administrator, we coordinate with those professionals rather than working around them. Where a strategy depends on an assumption about future tax law, we'll say so plainly instead of building a projection on it.

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