News About IRS And Tax

Monday, 5 November 2018

An Overview of 2018 Tax Reform Changes [Infographic]

On December 22, 2017 the new tax reform law was passed, which will affect the taxes of most taxpayers beginning with their 2018 (the ones filed in 2019). If you’re wondering how you’re affected, don’t worry, we have your back...

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source https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/tax-reform/overview-of-2018-tax-reform-changes-infographic-41908/

The Latest In Financial Advisor #FinTech (November 2018)

Welcome to the November 2018 issue of the Latest News in Financial Advisor #FinTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors and wealth management!

This month’s edition kicks off with the big news that Fidelity has rolled out a new open architecture marketplace aptly called Integration XChange, in what is both a major shift for the RIA custodian towards a more open architecture, a substantial potential threat to TD Ameritrade’s marketplace differentiator, a huge new opportunity for FinTech upstarts to have a second go-to-market channel for RIAs besides Veo, and a creative way to feed Fidelity’s new Consolidated Data initiative.

From there, the latest highlights also include a number of interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

Riskalyze rolls out a new “GPA” scoring system to evaluate how efficiently a prospect’s (or advisor’s) portfolio allocation maximizes its return potential for a given level of risk tolerance.
eMoney Advisor launches a new Foundational Planning module that takes a bizarre step into MoneyGuidePro’s past, just as FiServ launches a new Financial Advice Management module that also bear eerie similarities to the MGP interface
Edmond Walters re-emerges after a 3-year hiatus with digital marketing platform AdvisorStream to potentially continue what he started with eMoney’s Advisor Branded Marketing
AdvicePay announces new integrations with both TD Ameritrade’s Veo, and Orion, to more easily facilitate fee-for-service billing of financial planning and retainer fees alongside an advisor’s AUM fees

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month’s column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including Vestmark’s acquisition of Adhesion and the rollout of Orion Enterprise, YCharts’ new Model Portfolio tracking and analysis tools, Redtail’s new AI system for advisors and what it might someday do, Hearsay’s CRM overlay system to make it easier for advisors to manage tasks and workflows directly from their smartphone, SigFig’s new CoPilot solution to replace more back- and middle-office functions for human advisors, and the rollout of CapGainValet’s 2018 estimates of end-of-year mutual fund distributions for advisors.

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular new “Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map” as well!

I hope you’re continuing to find this new column on financial advisor technology to be helpful! Please share your comments at the end and let me know what you think!

*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to TechNews@kitces.com!

Saturday, 3 November 2018

Daylight Savings Time is Ending: Save Money with These Energy Tax Tips

As the days draw shorter and Daylight Savings Time draws to an end, we're reminded that the end of the year is almost here. You've probably already turned on the heat for the first time this winter and it's time to start thinking about energy bills. There are a number of energy-saving ways to improve your home’s tax efficiency. Here are two of the tax breaks available for 2016.

source https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/tax-deductions-and-credits-2/home/daylight-savings-time-is-ending-save-money-with-these-energy-tax-tips-15573/

Friday, 2 November 2018

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Nov 3-4)

Enjoy the current installment of “weekend reading for financial planners” – this week’s edition kicks off with the announcement that Schwab is launching a new “Center of Excellence” that is intended to push forward internal innovation, including ways to better support “smaller” advisors with $25M to $100M of AUM that still form the bulk (70%+) of advisor assets but tend to get the least support due to their small individual size, in what may signal a broader shift of RIA custodians to put more resources to “downmarket” advisors in addition to competing for the small subset of the largest firms.

From there, we have a number of articles looking at broad industry trends, from an interesting look at the 50-year anniversary of a number of major independent broker-dealers (who all formed in 1968 as insurance company subsidiaries after a major court case and regulatory ruling required them to do so to continue offering early-stage variable annuities), to a discussion about the rising trend of private equity firms investing into broker-dealers, why perhaps it’s time to shift our current industry disclosure approach to providing more standardized data that third-party sites can better package for consumers (instead of regulators trying to design the ‘optimal’ disclosure), a discussion of how direct-to-consumer “Insurtech” providers are trying to disrupt life insurance companies the way online discount brokers disrupted the traditional stockbroker, and an interesting “call to action” to RIA custodians about what they need to improve to better support younger/newer advisory firms.

From there, we have a number of tax planning articles as well, including: pending guidance from the IRS that will affirm that meals do remain deductible even though entertainment expenses aren’t deductible anymore (even if the meal itself is tied to an entertainment event); how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is shifting the focus of estate planning away from estate taxes and towards income tax planning and asset protection instead; and what to watch out for if clients want to do a “temporary loan” to themselves using the IRA 60-day rollover rules.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of connecting better with others: the first delves into the research about how we actually form close friendships, and what it takes to speed the process of finding and establishing close friends; the second offers up some useful tips on how to better write persuasive emails that connect (and are less likely to be misunderstood); and the last explores the research on what it takes to be perceived as more charming, which as it turns out has little to do with being perceived as more competent and instead is driven almost entirely by being perceived as more “warm”, which means trying to be more welcoming to the other person who may be equally nervous about being perceived as charming themselves!

Enjoy the “light” reading!

10 Easy End of Year Tax Tips to Increase Your Tax Refund

The article below is up to date based on the latest tax laws. It is accurate for your 2018 taxes, which you will file by the April 2019 deadline. Learn more about tax reform here. It’s hard to believe that we...

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source https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/tax-planning-2/10-easy-end-of-year-tax-tips-to-increase-your-tax-refund-20523/

Thursday, 1 November 2018

The TurboTax Guide to Marketplace Open Enrollment

The article below is up to date based on the latest tax laws. It is accurate for your 2018 taxes, which you will file by the April 2019 deadline. Learn more about tax reform here. Marketplace Open Enrollment for 2018 health...

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source https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/health-care/the-turbotax-guide-to-marketplace-open-enrollment-20386/

(When) Will CFP Certification Ever Become A Licensing Requirement Like The CPA?

Historically, the competency standards to become a “financial advisor” have been very low. After all, technically in order for someone to hold themselves out as offering “comprehensive financial advice” and get paid for it, all they really need to do is pass a 3-hour regulatory exam that takes just a week or few of preparation. In the meantime, though, salespeople who are “only” licensed to sell insurance or investment products and technically can’t be paid for their advice itself can also still publicly call themselves financial advisors as well. Which is why it’s so difficult for consumers to tell which is which, and for comprehensive financial planners themselves to differentiate their services from the army of other “advisors” out there who say they do the same thing… even though they don’t, and can’t actually be paid for it in the first place. That challenge, in turn, has led many to wonder if there’s a path for regulators to enact (and enforce) rules requiring anyone who says they provide comprehensive financial advice to actually be trained and educated to do so, and whether it might make sense to someday require a minimum standard like CFP certification as a licensing requirement to provide financial advice.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we discuss how the CFP marks are not a license to practice now, the differences between the CFP certification and a bona fide license like the CPA, possible avenues to transition the CFP certification from a trademark into an actual license, a few of the many hurdles such a potential transition would encounter… and why it still might be a worthy goal to pursue anyway.

It’s important to understand that, unlike a CPA license – which is granted by a state certifying body and grants accountants legal authority to perform certain tasks (e.g., attesting an audit) that they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise – the CFP certification does not fall under any state or federal regulatory body, and instead is a trademark that the CFP Board allows advisors to use if and only if they agree to honor the Board’s Terms and Conditions (which happen to include following the Four E’s of the CFP education, exam, experience, and ethics requirements). But that also means that financial advisors aren’t required to obtain CFP certification, or any substantive education or experience, in order to hold out as providing (and get paid for) financial advice, and instead need only to pass some very basic licensing exams.

In the past, this wasn’t a big deal, as the industry was focused primarily on selling investment and insurance products in the first place, for which financial planning was an effective sales strategy. However, in a world where products are increasingly accessible through technology itself, the value that advisors must bring to the table has less and less to do with financial products that are sold, and more and more to do with the quality of advice itself. Yet without the proper education, examination, experience, and ethics requirements that could be prescribed (and then overseen) by a regulatory body, financial advisors aren’t being held to the sort of standards common to professionals in other industries where the advice provided often makes such a significant impact on clients’ lives (and where the depth of expertise of the professional makes it difficult for consumers to vet who is “good” or “bad” in advance).

Unfortunately, the pathway towards turning the CFP certification into a required license to provide financial advice is difficult, as it must fall under the purview of either state or Federal regulators, and both have their own unique challenges. State regulation is often easier to implement – at least something – but rarely ends out being uniform, in a world where advisors are increasingly likely to work with clients across state lines. Federal regulation allows for uniformity across all 50 states, but can be difficult to prevail against concentrated industry lobbying forces, and ironically existing regulators themselves may not want to see their existing regulatory purview entrenched upon!

Nonetheless, the transition to higher competency standards for financial advisors might become inevitable, given the accelerating rate of adoption of the CFP certification itself amongst advisors. Because at some point, the CFP marks will become so ubiquitous that it will be “easy” for the industry to demand that anyone getting paid for providing financial advice should be required to have CFP certification to do so… simply because most advisors already will have it at that point (and the majority will then require the rest to conform).

Ultimately, though, the key point is simply to recognize that CFP certification is not a license today, and realistically can’t become one while it’s still only held by a minority (about 30%) of all financial advisors. But ironically, the best path to enshrining a minimum competency standard like CFP certification into licensing regulation may simply be to support its continued and ever-broadening adoption – which appears poised to accelerate further as it becomes a “mainstream” certification – because at the point most advisors have voluntarily adopted the standard anyway, it’s not a big leap to make it official… and set a formal competency standard akin to other recognized and true professions!