“In the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” –Ben Franklin

It’s that time of year again. With only two days left of 2008 it’s time to turn our thoughts to doing our taxes once more; and unless you’re an accountant, there’s probably a certain amount of grumbling and procrastination involved in this activity. But with a little bit of organization, preparing your taxes doesn’t have to be a painful or grueling activity. Wells Fargo has a wonderful, comprehensive online Tax Preparation Checklist that will help immensely before you sit down with Turbo Tax or meet with your accountant.

One of the things on this list is your 1098 form, which lists your mortgage interest paid. As long as you’re thinking about your mortgage, this is a good time to confirm that your home is held in the name of your trust (if you have one). Even if you are certain you transferred your home into the name of your trust when you first bought it (or when you first created the trust), it is not unusual for a refinancing to change that.  We suggest that you check to verify that your home and other real estate is still titled in the name of your trust.

As an estate planning firm, we would also like to remind you that April 15 is not just a deadline for your own personal taxes. If you’ve had a death in the family in the past year, various tax returns may also need to be filed for the decedent. If you are or were the executor of an estate in 2008 and have questions about filing tax returns, you should check with your tax advisor for help.  An early meeting with you tax advisor can take some of the fear out of the April 15 deadline.

If you have made gifts in excess of $12,000 per recipient during 2008, or added a child or parent on title to your real poperty, you should also bring that to your tax advisor’s attention.  You made need to file an informational Gift Tax Return.

It used to be that people stayed at one company—one job—for their whole lives. Employers were benevolent, and almost part of the family; took care of families, once upon a time, offering health care coverage, life insurance, retirement packages… all this and an annual company picnic to boot!

As we all know, the world is a different place now. Very few people stay at one company longer than a decade, and not even that long if you’re under the age of 30. There is, however, one exception to this… if you’re self-employed.

As an estate planning firm, we meet with a good number of self-employed clients and small-business owners, and one of the most important things we can convey to these clients is how very, very important it is to have an effective estate plan. As S. du Plessis states in her article Estate Planning for the Self Employed: A Helpful Guide, “I am so responsible in other areas of my life, I feel compelled to be responsible about my death too. Plus, I hate to fail, and those who fail to plan. . . fail. So in fairness to my husband and children and because I own a business (which complicates my estate), it’s time to come up with an estate plan.”

Du Plessis is absolutely correct that failure to plan—especially for small business owners—can have disastrous consequences for both their families and their businesses. When you are so responsible in all other areas of your life, why let the ball drop in this one area? Especially when it’s your family who will end up suffering?

Small business owners spend so much of their time taking care of other people, we think it’s time that someone helped take care of them. Our office can help preserve the legacy you’ve worked so hard to build—for both your family and your business.

There are only eleven days left in 2008. If you had plans for this year—things you were absolutely going to get done before 2009—you are quickly running out of time to do them. This doesn’t only include your 2008 picks from the 1000 Places to See Before You Die, this includes smaller things, more prosaic things, like tax write-offs or charitable deductions.

The New Year is generally a time for people to look to the year ahead and make their plan of action, but before you do that, you must review the year that is coming to a close. What were your goals for this year? Did you achieve any of them—or all of them? Especially important is to review all of your expenditures, both business and personal, to ensure that you’ve taken advantage of any opportunities for tax relief. Once you know you’ve put yourself in the very best position possible to close out 2008, then it is never too soon to start planning for 2009.

And the nice part is that should you choose to create or update your estate plan before the end of the year, and if your plan helps you protect income-producing property, you may be able to deduct a portion of the cost of planning your estate from your 2008 taxable income.

Don’t let 2008 slip away!

With the holidays approaching and the economy in crisis, we’re all trying to cut back financially, especially on what we think of as non-essential items. And one of the areas in which people are cutting back, according to this article by Leslie Wimmer, is the area of estate planning. Some people are cutting back by holding off on updates to their existing plans, some by waiting to plan at all, and some people are cutting back by creating their own wills and other legal documents using online legal software.

The thing you just can’t get around when you use an online service is that, as Wimmer quotes in her article, “There’s nobody to answer specific questions, and that’s what a lawyer does.  You might have all kinds of issues that, to you, don’t seem notable but to an attorney who practices in this area they might require special attention in your estate plan.”

The problem with using online software is that a website doesn’t explain how estate laws vary in different states.  Neither can it address your specific needs—especially if you aren’t even aware that you may have specific needs! And worst of all, in some states these software-created documents may not even be legal,  due to laws stating that only a licensed attorney can create a will for another person.

Choose your estate planning representation wisely.  After all,  your estate planning documents are designed to protect your family when you can no longer be there to protect them yourself.

The economy is reeling, stocks are plummeting, and most people want nothing more than to take their money, hide it under a mattress, and avoid any kind of financial or estate planning. Giving money away is just about the last thing on most people’s minds right now. But those with financial wisdom and experience (namely the Wall Street Journal) know that this is actually the perfect time to reassess your estate plan and to transfer wealth to your children or grandchildren with minimum (or no) inheritance tax.

Why would you want to give money away when times are so tough? Perhaps you’re like Dr. Tom Pedrick and his wife, who took advantage of depressed stock to transfer investment profits to their heirs through trusts, a move that was hugely advantageous once share prices rebounded. Or perhaps you feel strongly about helping family members whose finances may not have fared as well as your own, as Roger Dunham did. Or yet another possibility is that you’d like to invest in stock or property while prices are low, but worry about the tax implications when your investment appreciates in value.

If you aren’t ready to jump into new property or the stock market during these uncertain times, you may want to “consider how much you can accomplish with a pen and checkbook”, Anne Tergesen writes in her article, including paying “tuition and medical expenses for your grandchildren with no tax consequences.”

Whether you’d like to walk on the wild side of investing or play it safe by reducing the size of your taxable estate, there is no better time to get your estate in order than right now.