Plan
For Your
Succession

WARNING: Passing Your Business to a Family Member or Associate Can Be a Risky Proposition.

7 out of 10 family owned businesses will not survive the transfer of the business from one generation to another. Lack of planning and discomfort discussing topics such as aging, death, and financial affairs will more often than not result in loss of a business due to estate taxes, family discord, or some combination thereof.

If you want to assure that the business you worked so hard to build will be there to support future generations, you must clarify your plans for succession and finalize, as well as legalize your priorities.

Get professional advice for dealing with these key issues and more…

  • What will happen to your business? Do you wish to keep it in the family, sell it to a third party or pass it on in some other manner? We can help you weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each of your options, as well as help you determine how the business can best provide for you as you enter your retirement years.
  • If you are not running the business, who is? Ownership of the business and management of the business are often two distinctly separate entities. How will your retirement or death affect the day-to-day decision making of how the business is run? Will your children take active roles in the running the business, or will they exist as owners only? Clarifying your expectations in legal terms and making these decisions in advance will help ease the transition of ownership, as well as management, without further risk of detriment to the business as a whole.
  • How can you minimize the tax burden upon transfer? When businesses transfer ownership, taxes are a reality regardless of the relationship between the parties. Review your options with an expert in the field in order to make the decisions that will best support your family members and the business.

Remember that inherited assets, such as family businesses, are often the cause of tremendous emotional strain and stress for individual family members. It is best to address any actions that might be seen as fair or unfair ahead of time, so that family members know what to expect and why you are making the decisions that you are making.

They may not realize, for instance, that the tax implications of inheriting a business might be more burden than they could financially handle or that decisions involving management vs. ownership have been taken into account.

Contact us about our Succession Planning Services to determine the value of your business, before restructuring your business, to review the tax consequences and tax projections of your actions, and to help you plan for retirement.

4 Year End Tax Strategies for East Los Angeles Businesses

Before I dive into some year end tax strategies East Los Angelesbusiness owners can and should be making, I want to address some rumors and misinformation about the SALT workarounds that are available to some of our clients (though not all). Essentially, 22 states (as...

Chris Gelfuso’s “Help Us to Remember” Holiday Prayer

It's Monday the 20th, as I put this together, and many of our East Los Angeles clients and friends are gearing up for a very different kind of holiday week. I'm very aware that while the holidays are a time of joy for many, they are just as often a time of pain for a...

How Your East Los Angeles Business Can Fight Inflation

Whether you like it or not, you’ve most likely found yourself in a fight against inflation. Somebody hikes prices on your supplier and suddenly your supplier has no choice but to increase the price on you. Then you have no choice but to raise the price on your...

Year-End Business Tax Strategy for East Los Angeles SMB Owners

There are many of our clients for whom this time of year is like their version of the Super Bowl. Some East Los Angeles businesses are earning 30-50% (or more) of their yearly revenue in this one month. Others ... well, this is a normal month -- except of course for...

The Infrastructure Act and Your East Los Angeles Business

Blink, and we're already into December. Which also means… 2022 is right around the corner. Are you ready? The reason I put this so starkly is that you and I have less than 30 days left to make a tangible difference on your taxes (business or personal). For your...

Chris Gelfuso’s Thoughts on Being Thankful in Difficulty

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” I think we can agree that Charles Dickens’s famous lines ring true when looking back at 2020 and 2021 (though “best” might seem like a stretch). With employees shifting their worlds to make room for new...

East Los Angeles Business Owners: Beware the Sales Tax Nexus

If your East Los Angeles business sells a lot online, then we’re coming into the most wonderful time of the year. And this year, your customers will probably shop your website (and elsewhere online) EARLY in order to bypass all those supply-chain snafus. Cha-ching for...

Uplevel Business Services’s Rundown of the 5 Basic Business Entity Types

The shape of your business affects your future and when I'm talking about the "shape," I of course am referring to your East Los Angeles business entity type. Did you know that you CAN change that after the fact? Depending on which entity you are switching to, the...

How East Los Angeles Businesses Can Build a Quality Prospect List

How’s your client/customer list faring these days? If you’re like every other business around you, you’ve got some churn happening. People move, change jobs, experience a shift in financial circumstances … the list goes on. Even in predictable economic times (remember...

Employee Retention Strategies for Proactive East Los Angeles Bosses

Your employees are happy, right? They’re never going to leave you ... right? They’re not looking for another East Los Angeles job ... uh ... right? You know what the answers are: Maybe, wrong, and I sure hope not. Sooner or later, the advantage will swing back to you,...