Greg Lambourne, Esq Senior Planning Consultant Nancy Van Lanen, CTFA, EA Estate & Trust Tax Partner Updated with 2025 exemption and exclusion amounts. Every taxpayer in the United States is subject to certain transfer taxes for gifting away wealth during their life or at their death. However, each taxpayer is granted a “lifetime exemption amount” so they can make limited tax-free gifts. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act increased this lifetime exemption amount to an unprecedented $13.99 million for 2025, but this large exemption amount will expire and be reduced by half at the end of 2025.
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Archives for Newsletter and Updates
The Future of Businesses Under the New Tax Laws of President Trump in 2025
As President Donald Trump begins his second term in 2025, the business landscape in the United States is poised for further shifts under new tax policies. Trump’s first term was marked by significant tax cuts and pro-business reforms, particularly through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017. As Trump returns to office, his administration is expected to continue advocating for tax policies that prioritize business growth, deregulation, and corporate profitability. This article explores what businesses—ranging from small startups to large multinational corporations—can expect under the tax laws in the Trump administration’s 2025 agenda. Corporate Tax Rate: Continuation of
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Full-Time and Intern New Hires Join WFY in January
This month, WFY welcomed a group of full-time and intern new hires to our tax department. We are thrilled to have these new hires join our team coming into the new year. Olga Stebakov In January, Olga Stebakov joined WFY as our newest Tax Director. Olga graduated from UCLA with a degree in Business Economics/Accounting and received her Masters in Business Taxation from USC. She spent the past 20 years servicing high-net-worth households, generally working with their family offices, focusing on trusts and flow-through entities, real-estate and other various closely held businesses. Most of Olga’s other time is spent keeping up
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WFY Announces Ryan Working and Thomas Kim as New Tax Partners
Wright Ford Young & Co. (WFY) is pleased to announce Ryan Working and Thomas Kim as our newest Tax Partners. The firm practices a full spectrum of accounting services for closely held companies and family business owners, including audit, tax, estates and trusts, and business consulting. Ryan Working joined WFY after college in 2004. Ryan manages a wide variety of tax compliance clients, advising clients with tax issues and strategies, and the lead on all tax services for tax-exempt organizations. His range of expertise includes tax compliance and planning services for a wide variety of closely-held and family-owned corporate businesses
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WFY Welcomes Three New Hires in December
In December, WFY welcomed three new hires to our WFY team. Vrinda Jagad and Hannah Nguyen joined our tax department, and EJ Herron joined our IT department. We are excited to have these new hires join our team. Vrinda Jagad In the middle of December, Vrinda Jagad joined WFY’s tax department as our International Tax Manager. Vrinda received her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and received her Master’s degree in Accounting from UC Irvine. She has been in the accounting industry, specifically in international tax, for 4 years. In her spare time, Vrinda loves traveling and cooking. Hannah Nguyen Hannah
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Strategic Charitable Giving Methods to Maximize Tax Savings
Ryan Working, CPA, MST Tax Partner When thinking about charitable giving there are many options and opportunities in addition to donating cash to your favorite charity. Highlighted here are just a few alternative strategies that may be worth looking into. Donation of Highly Appreciated Stock: The donation of highly appreciated stock allows for the avoidance of having to recognize the capital gain from the sale of the stock, yet you can still receive a charitable deduction at the fair market value of the stock. In order for this to work the stock needs to be donated directly to a
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Have You Considered a Backdoor Roth IRA Conversion?
Traditional IRAs are a well-known, tax-deferred retirement saving vehicle. But they come with a major downside: You’re taxed on withdrawals. Roth IRAs eliminate this downside. You can take federal-income-tax-free qualified withdrawals, but the trade-off is that contributions to Roth accounts don’t reduce your current-year taxable income. If you want to jump on the Roth IRA bandwagon, there are two ways to get money into a Roth account. First, you can make annual contributions. However, there are limitations on annual contributions, which leave many high earners in the cold. (See “Can You Make Annual Roth IRA Contributions for 2024 and 2025
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WISEPlace Chooses Byron Culp as Spotlight of the Month
This month, WISEPlace chose our Director of Business Development, Byron Culp, as their Board of Directors Spotlight. Byron has been a WISEPlace Board Member since May 2022 and dedicates his time to create awareness of women struggling with homelessness throughout the community. Byron is s passionate about initiatives focusing on children, cancer, hunger and homelessness. He also serves of the Board of Deacons at Second Baptist Church of Santa Ana and is the Chairman of the Benevolence Committee. WISEPlace is an organization that dedicates its efforts to ending homelessness for unaccompanied women through housing solutions and empowering wrap-around services that
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New Partnership Tax Basis Reporting Requirement for 2024
Albert Yang, CPA Tax Director The IRS recently released draft Form 7217, Partner’s Report of Property Distributed by a Partnership, and related draft instructions. The purpose of Form 7217 is to report all distribution of property that a partner receives from a partnership. A partner receiving a distribution of property from a partnership in a non-liquidating or liquidating distribution will use the form to report the basis of the distributed property. Type of distribution where Form 7217 IS required: Distribution of property subject to section 732. Types of distributions where Form 7217 IS NOT required: Distributions of money (or
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Corporate Transparency Act’s New Requirement for All Businesses
Greg Lambourne, Esq. Jason Gonzalez United States citizens should be aware the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) requires virtually all business entities registered in the 50 states to submit detailed written disclosure of their owners and powerholders to the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). These new “Beneficial Ownership Information Reports” (BOI Reports) for entities created before 2024 need to be filed by the end of the year when the Act enforcement begins. The BOE Reports require the names, addresses, and driver’s licenses or passports of all individuals that directly or indirectly own 25% or more of the company’s
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