I’ve noticed there are two types of people who like tax season. The first one is the accountants and the second group is tax attorneys. For everyone else, this may be one of the more dreaded times of the year. Yet even the accountants and tax attorneys are relieved when tax season is finally over and they can come up for air after all the stress and long hours surrounding this time of year.
But there is a potential bright spot and opportunity that looms out there this time of year if you can take advantage of it. Since you have to get all of your financial information sorted out and digest it in the way the IRS requires, there is something else you can do with all this effort that can also pay off for you today and in the future. Use it to meet with your Estate attorney and update your Estate Plan. There is a great deal of “linkage” between your financial situation and your estate. Now is a great time to kill two birds with one stone and get the most leverage from all your hard work. As Forbes points out, this is a great time to get more out of tax season, "Make A Better Plan This Tax Season."
When you think about the similarities and opportunities to leverage your work, there are many. When doing your taxes, you are looking at many of the same accounts you would utilize when creating your estate plan. Once you have captured all this information, you just need to gather information about all of your other assets that may not have been part of your tax preparation and assemble those at the same time.
Once you have the updated financial and asset information, now you can do a review of your wishes and desires to make sure they are still on track with what you wanted when the last plan was updated. Now you can make sure your plan is doing what you want it to do and your loved ones are getting what you intended them to get when you put your plan together. All this takes much less time when you have all your updated information in front of you to review with your attorney.
To complete the update of your estate plan, you need to contact your estate planning attorney (or find a reputable and trusted one) to complete any updates to your plan. Now you will have not only the latest updates to your estate but an update to your desires and wishes for those that will benefit from all your hard work. It’s definitely worth the effort to leverage all your hard work during this time of year and get the most from your tax planning efforts.