What we do Tax Planning
By April, the number is already decided.
Almost everything that drives your tax bill was settled in the months before the return was ever prepared. The useful work happens while the outcome can still move, and then it is handed to your CPA so the return matches the plan.
What this covers
- Withdrawal sequencing
- Conversion analysis
- Gain and loss timing
- Charitable strategy
- Owner compensation
- CPA coordination
When does tax planning actually change what you owe?
Before December 31. Nearly every lever that moves a tax bill, including Roth conversions, the timing of income and distributions, retirement plan contributions and charitable gifts, has to be pulled inside the tax year itself. Baldwin Financial, a fee-only fiduciary adviser in Oklahoma City, does that work during the year and hands it to your CPA, who prepares the return.
Source: IRS, Retirement Plans
Where the leverage is
We do not prepare returns. We change what goes on them.
Baldwin Financial does not practice law and does not prepare tax returns. What we do is help you make the decisions during the year that determine what ends up on the return.
Which account a withdrawal comes from. Whether a conversion this year beats a conversion in three. When a gain is taken and against what. How an owner is paid, and through which entity. Those are planning decisions with tax consequences, and they belong on a calendar rather than in a scramble.
The work
What that means, specifically.
Withdrawal sequencing
Across taxable, tax-deferred and Roth accounts, planned ahead rather than improvised.
Conversion analysis
Modeled across several years instead of decided in December.
Gain and loss timing
Including concentrated positions, and which year is the right one to unwind them.
Charitable strategy
Bunching, donor-advised funds and appreciated stock, where they fit.
Owner compensation
Entity structure and retirement plan choice, looked at together rather than apart.
CPA coordination
Direct, so your CPA has the plan in hand before the season starts.
In practice
The year, on a calendar we watch.
Every window that matters has a date attached to it. We work backwards from those dates, which is the difference between making a decision and discovering that the chance to make one has passed.
An illustration of the planning year. Dates are general federal deadlines, not advice about your situation, and they can change. Confirm anything that matters with your CPA.
The cadence
When the tax work happens.
Spring
Last year’s return, read forward
Your filed return is the best single document about your situation. We read it for what it says about next year rather than filing it away.
Midyear
Income projected, estimates checked
A projection in June is what makes October useful. It also stops the surprise that arrives with the fourth quarter estimate.
Fall
The conversion window
Between October and the end of December there is a real, dated window to move income between years. It closes, and there is no version of this work that can be done in April instead.
December
Harvesting, gifting, and the handoff
Losses, gains, charitable timing and gifts all get finished, then everything goes to your CPA in an organized form, ahead of the season.
Who we serve
Tax planning that knows what you do for a living.
A surgeon’s tax year, an executive’s and a business owner’s have almost nothing in common. Most of the people who hire us are medical professionals, executives and attorneys, or entrepreneurs who own the business, and the work is tuned to each.
Physicians, dentists and orthodontists
Clinical income is taxed before it ever reaches you, and the practice itself is both your income and your largest asset. Buy-ins, owner compensation, the retirement plan, the eventual transition: each one is a practice decision with a tax bill attached, and each one only moves in the right year.
A practice is both your income and your largest asset. The planning has to treat it as both at once.
Where the work concentrates
- Practice buy-in and buy-out analysis
- Owner compensation design
- Retirement plan design for the practice
- Roth conversion windows
- Sale and transition timing
Corporate executives, partners and attorneys
Options, RSUs, deferred compensation, partner draws: most of what you earn arrives on somebody else’s schedule, in forms that are easy to mis-time and expensive to unwind. The few levers you do control only work in the right year, and most of them close on a date.
A partner or an executive rarely has a deduction problem. They have a timing problem, and timing is exactly what planning is for.
Where the work concentrates
- Equity and bonus timing
- Deferred compensation elections
- Concentrated stock diversification
- Partner draw and distribution planning
- Donor-advised fund strategy
Entrepreneurs and small business owners
If you own the business, your income is not a number you receive. It is a number you choose. Salary against distributions, which entity absorbs what, whether this is the year to sell. Every one of those is a business decision with a tax bill attached.
The year a company sells is the most expensive year of most owners’ lives, and it is decided long before the sale closes.
Where the work concentrates
- Business exit planning
- Entity and compensation scenarios
- Owner withdrawal sequencing
- Retirement plan design
- Charitable timing
Questions we get
Asked often enough to answer here.
Do you replace our CPA?
No, and we would not want to. Your CPA carries your filing history and the judgment behind every position on your return, which is work we are neither licensed nor trying to do. Think of it as a village: everyone advising you is good at their piece, and what is usually missing is anybody making sure the pieces talk. Our job is to make sure the plan reaches your CPA in January, organized, so the two halves agree.
Can you file our return?
No. Baldwin Financial does not prepare or file tax returns. If you need a CPA we are happy to make introductions, and we work alongside whoever you choose.
We own a business. Does that change things?
More than anything else on this page. Entity choice, owner compensation, retirement plan design and the eventual sale all interact, and they are usually advised on separately by people who never speak to each other. Holding them together is where most of the value is.
Is an AI deciding things about our taxes?
No. The software reads documents, models years forward and surfaces what looks worth examining. That is where its job ends. A person reads every one of those findings, throws most of them out, and decides what actually applies to you. The platforms do not provide tax advice, and we would not hand you something we had not worked through ourselves.
Where does our financial information go?
The platforms we use hold zero-data-retention agreements with their model providers, so your information is not kept by them and is not used to train any model. Custody of the accounts themselves stays with Altruist Financial, LLC, an unaffiliated qualified custodian and a member of FINRA and SIPC.
Is any of this a guarantee we pay less?
No. Nothing here is a guarantee of any outcome, and tax law changes. What we can promise is that the decisions get made while they are still decisions.
Hazel and Altruist Financial, LLC are unaffiliated with Baldwin Financial, LLC, and naming them is not an endorsement or a testimonial. Neither Altruist nor Hazel provides tax advice, and the platform’s output is informational; a person reviews any analysis before it reaches a client. Baldwin Financial, LLC does not prepare or file tax returns and does not provide legal advice. Strategies named on this page are examples of what the planning work can surface, not recommendations, and whether any of them suits you depends on facts we would need to review. Nothing on this page is a guarantee of any tax outcome.
Keep going
The other three.
We do not offer these separately. They are four views of the same set of decisions.
An invitation
One conversation is usually enough
to know whether this is worth continuing.
A complimentary conversation, by video, phone, or in person in downtown Oklahoma City, whenever suits you. Nothing to prepare and nothing to bring. Come as you are; leave knowing more than you arrived with.
What the conversation looks like
- 01
You talk. What you own, what you owe, who depends on you, and whatever is coming up that you have not solved yet.
- 02
We tell you what we see. The two or three things we would look at first, and why those and not the rest.
- 03
You decide, on your own time. If we are not the right fit, we will say so and point you toward someone who is.
Or reach us directly
- Phone
- (405) 266-7856
- Serving
- Oklahoma City, Edmond, Nichols Hills, and clients who have moved away