Who Handles What Between Your CPA, Attorney, and Advisor

Coordination is a schedule and a set of boundaries. Chapter 1 made the case for why it matters; this chapter is the schedule. Read the annual cadence and the January checklist — you can run both without hiring anyone.

Most confusion about boundaries comes from one misunderstanding: people assume each advisor is optimizing their whole financial life within their specialty. They are not. Each is accountable for one deliverable, and knowing which tells you what will never get attention unless you ask.

The last row gets underrated. Everything upstream depends on the books being current — a tax projection built on a ledger last reconciled in March is a guess wearing a spreadsheet. For business owners the highest-value fix is often bookkeeping, not strategy.

Nobody in that table is accountable for a decision that was never made, and the failures in this book are failures to decide — the conversion never modeled, the beneficiary form never updated, the buy-sell never funded. Omissions belong to nobody’s deliverable, so they need a named owner and a date.

Being specific here is a form of respect, and the fastest way to tell whether an advisor has thought about their own competence.

What we will take a position on

• Allocation, liquidity tiering, and whether a particular investment fits the balance sheet in front of us.
• Whether an alternative investment is appropriate given your liquidity, your concentration, and your actual eligibility.
• The withdrawal sequence, and what a given order is likely to cost or save across years — as an analysis for your CPA to confirm.
• Whether your estate documents are consistent with how your assets are titled and designated, and where they are not.
• Whether an exposure on your balance sheet is uncovered, and what the consequence of that gap would be.
• The order and the timing of a set of moves across a calendar year.

What we will not

• Whether a specific deduction or position is supportable on your return. That is your CPA’s judgment and their signature.
• Whether a trust provision achieves your intent, or how a document will be read under your state’s law. That is your attorney’s.
• The tax result of a transaction stated as a conclusion rather than as an analysis to be confirmed.
• How much insurance you should carry, as opposed to which exposures are uncovered and what they would cost you.

What we do own is that the question reaches the right person and comes back with an answer — the assurance that it does not die in an inbox because everyone assumed someone else had it.

An advisor willing to tell you the tax result of a complicated transaction is either coordinating with your CPA or guessing, and from the outside those look identical until the return is filed. An advisor who says nothing about tax is useless where the money is. The workable position: do the analysis, show the assumptions, route the conclusion to the person who signs.

You want a tax projection before year end, not a tax return afterward. After December 31 the set of available moves is nearly empty — a handful of contributions and elections survive into the new year, everything else is already recorded.

1. 1

   First quarter — get current and file

   Tax documents arrive. Update the balance sheet: new accounts, closed accounts, changes in title, anything gifted or acquired. Send the CPA the packet below, and expect the K-1s to trail — plan for an extension rather than being surprised.

2. 2

   Second quarter — mid-year check

   Estimated payments, and for business owners the decisions needing most of a year: compensation structure, retirement plan design, entity elections, and whether this year looks different from the last. Also the natural point for an insurance and beneficiary review.

3. 3

   Third quarter — the projection conversation

   Build a projection of this year’s income with the CPA, plus a rough view of next year. This meeting determines whether the year gets optimized or merely reported; the fourth quarter is execution against it.

4. 4

   Fourth quarter — execute against deadlines

   Loss harvesting, Roth conversion sizing, charitable gifts including appreciated assets, retirement plan funding, and anything else with a December 31 deadline. Leave room — appreciated securities and donor-advised fund gifts settle slower than expected, and December 31 does not negotiate.

5. 5

   Continuously — the trigger list

   The cadence handles the predictable. The estate review triggers below handle the rest, and they do not wait for a quarter to end.

The fourth quarter is where the work is visible; the third quarter is where the value is created. A planning conversation held in November is late — there is room to harvest and convert, but structural moves involving an entity election, a charitable vehicle, or a coordinated sale need months. Move the conversation earlier rather than adding another meeting.

These are the events that should generate a call to your attorney — not eventually, but reasonably soon after they happen.

• A sale or major liquidity event. The balance sheet the documents describe no longer exists. See what to do with the proceeds.
• Marriage or divorce — yours or a beneficiary’s. Both change who should receive what, and divorce leaves beneficiary designations a decree does not fix.
• A birth or adoption. Guardianship, contingent beneficiaries, and per-stirpes language all need rereading with the new person in view.
• A death. A spouse, beneficiary, executor, trustee, or agent under a power of attorney — every role needs a living, willing, capable person in it. A first spouse’s death also raises the portability filing question, which is time-limited.
• A move to another state. State law governs probate, titling, community property, and state estate or inheritance tax — a plan built correctly in one state can behave differently in another.
• A large gift or a newly funded trust. The gift may require a return, and the trust does nothing until it is funded.
• A new entity or a change in an operating agreement. Business documents can override estate documents on who may receive an interest.
• A material change in the law. Exemptions, inherited-account distribution rules, and state thresholds all move. Formula clauses written against an old figure are the thing to check.
• Someone named in a document becoming unable or unwilling to serve. People age and relationships change; the trustee you chose fifteen years ago may not be right now.

Send what you have on a fixed date rather than waiting for the last document, with a cover note listing what is outstanding — a CPA can start on a complete-except-for-two-items file and cannot start on a trickle. Keep your own copy; your advisor needs the same list for the balance sheet.

1. 1.All W-2s and 1099s, including from accounts you barely use — a forgotten small 1099 is the most common cause of a notice.
2. 2.Brokerage tax packages showing realized gains and losses, plus your record of wash sales or basis adjustments the custodian may not have.
3. 3.K-1s from every partnership, S corporation, LLC, and fund — these arrive late, for the reason below.
4. 4.Closing statements for any property bought, sold, refinanced, or exchanged, plus 1031 exchange documentation.
5. 5.Charitable giving records, with appraisals for any non-cash gift above the threshold that requires one, and substantiation letters for larger gifts.
6. 6.Documentation of retirement contributions and any conversion, including forms confirming what was converted and when.
7. 7.Records of estimated payments actually made, by date — not what was scheduled, what cleared.
8. 8.Every state you earned income in, owned property in, or received a K-1 from — each may create a filing obligation.
9. 9.A short note on anything unusual: a gift made, a trust funded, a new entity, a family loan, or a change in marital status.

Why the K-1 arrives late

A K-1 reports your share of a pass-through entity’s income, deductions, and credits — and the entity cannot tell you your share until it closes its own books and, in a fund-of-funds structure, until the entities beneath it close theirs. An investor with private fund holdings should treat an extension as normal rather than a problem. Fund structures explains the reporting chain.

An extension to file is not an extension to pay — you still need a reasonable estimate of what is owed by the original deadline, which is where the third-quarter projection does double duty. A K-1 can also create a filing obligation in a state you have never set foot in, because the underlying entity operates there. Neither is a reason to avoid these investments; both are reasons to know in advance.

One test: if you died tonight, could your spouse or your executor find everything within a week without guessing? Most households fail it, and the failure is not about organization — the person who knows where things are is the person no longer available.

A single index of every account, policy, entity, property, and document, with the institution and the professional attached to each — the index is the deliverable, not the pile. Originals of the will and any trust go to your attorney or somewhere fireproof your executor can access; a safe deposit box sealed at death solves the wrong problem. The healthcare directive, power of attorney, and letter of instruction belong where a hospital can be handed them at 2 a.m.

The digital side needs the same treatment and usually gets none: a password manager with emergency access, a record of accounts that exist only online, and an understanding that your executor needs legal authority and not just credentials — logging in as someone else is not being authorized to act for them. A fifteen-minute conversation here saves a family weeks.

None of this is sophisticated, and that is the point — the coordination argument in this book is not that the strategies are exotic, it is that ordinary things need an owner and a date. Strategic planning and client stories are the practical versions, and contact is where a first conversation starts.