One of the less heralded aspects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was the change in how you calculate the “Tax for Certain Children Who Have Unearned Income”, otherwise known as the Kiddie Tax. This alternative tax calculation was put in place back in 1986 in an effort to prevent wealthy taxpayers from shifting investment assets to their children, where the investment income would be subject to a lower tax rate. This calculation is just one of the many reasons why preparing tax returns for children can often be more complicated and time consuming than you’d think!

I recently had the opportunity to organize and moderate a session at the AICPA Personal Financial Planning conference that discussed the best planning ideas being implemented by financial planners right now. This conference and specifically this session brings together some of the best minds in the financial planning community. Below is a list of the top planning ideas we discussed during the session and some things you should be thinking about in your own planning:

The second quarter of 2019 ended about the same way it started, with positive returns across the financial markets. Let’s recap what happened, what we learned and where we go from here.

I recently attended the American Institute of CPA’s’ (AICPA) annual mega conference ENGAGE, which is a consolidation of several different technical conferences. My focus is always on the Advanced Personal Financial Planning track, but with sessions on Advanced Estate Planning and Tax Strategies for High-Income Individuals, there is an incredible amount of high quality content crammed into just a few days. Much of that content is technical in nature and more suited to practitioners, but I had a number of takeaways to share

Given the sharp political divide in our country right now, it's rare to see legislation that enjoys widespread bipartisan support. Yet in May, the House voted on a bill that would make substantial changes to our retirement system, and it received near unanimous support. The SECURE (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement) Act of 2019 passed in the House of Representatives in a 417-3 vote, but the bill has stalled in the Senate as legislators debate some of the key provisions.

In recent years, we have had the opportunity to travel to some amazing parts of the world. From the Seregenti in Tanzania, the Bocas del Toro Islands in Panama, and the Lofoten Islands in Arctic Norway, there seems to be a direct correlation between the level of difficulty to get to a destination and the perspective that destination provides. We recently spent a week in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, one of those places that takes a lot of travel to get to, but which affords an incredible perspective on life once you are there.