Tax Strategies: A Key Component in Your Clients’ Wealth Plan

Using comprehensive tax reduction strategies as a leading weapon in sustaining family wealth always makes sense, but never more than this year. In an investment climate in which there is very little certainty, it pays to look for winners we can count on: tax-efficient investments, for example.

Canada, like most of the rest of the world, is in the midst of significant economic change and dramatic demographic shifts that affect the way advisors and their clients think about their investment strategies. Further, for those with significant tax-sheltered deposits in their RRSPs and RRIFS, the taxes due on withdrawal of those funds are rising.

This RRSP season, it’s important to weigh tax savings you might receive today against the taxes that will be payable in the future. That means a more thorough financial planning interview now, in which both tax and financial advisors work with clients to get the best immediate, medium and long-term after-tax results from their investment activities.

What’s required is a renewed investment strategy for each investor in the family. There are different reasons, for example, for investing in an RRSP, depending on your age and income and whether or not you wish to maximize the new Child Tax Benefits coming soon.  The RRSP will also provide tax-deferred access for homebuyers and lifelong learners.

In short, a process geared to preserving, growing and transitioning family wealth efficiently to the next generation, while maximizing income and tax benefits along the way, is more critical today than ever.  The markets may be uncertain, but tax savings deliver in the double-digits (depending on your marginal tax rate) and that makes tax efficiencies within any investment strategy more important than ever.

Knowledge Bureau’s Tax Strategies for Financial Advisors course includes up-to-the minutetax changes, through access to EverGreen Explanatory Notes—a comprehensive 800-topic tax library that takes the guesswork out of tax changes, so advisors can focus on strategy and process.   For example, EverGreen Explanatory Notes include updates ranging from  recent UCCB enhancements—and how they and the Family Tax Cut will be rolled over into the new Liberal vision of family tax support—to the most recent Federal Budget changes, coming soon on March 22.

This is a must-have resource in your practice as you immediately implement new knowledge in your work with your clients.  You also receive instructor support as a student with Knowledge Bureau, at no extra charge.

This course also answers an important question: Which investment is best, RRSP, TFSA, or a variety of non-registered investment options, and which comes first in planning? And there are also lots of changes to consider on this front: from revised TFSA contribution limits, to changes to the Capital Gains Deduction.

Tax is a trigger for affluent families, but it also has a huge effect on families saving for both education and retirement in an increasingly expensive and complex world. This knowledge separates the average advisor from the top in their field and enhances value propositions. Your clients seek credible, trusted, and expert solutions to their investment strategies and expect to work with professionals who can increase often meagre returns from a volatile marketplace with tax efficiency.

Comprehensive real-life case studies appear throughout the course for individual profiles. Students will be given tools and asked to demonstrate how to build an overall vision for retirement, how to collect information on key milestones, assess current and ongoing income, plan for a variety of sources of income, plan for spouses retiring at different times and in different ways, structure a tax-efficient layered income plan and use available resources to help build additional wealth over time.

The Tax Strategies for Financial Advisors course is a component of the Distinguished Financial Advisor^TM – Tax Services Specialist designation and may be used as an important optional course in any of the MFA designation programs.

For more information about the Tax Strategies for Financial Advisors course, click here.

What Our Students Say:

“If you have your own practice, this course is a must. My understanding has greatly improved,” said student Vincent C.

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