Your financial affairs are closely linked with your business creating unique planning needs. Financial planning for your business is essential to the long-term viability of your company, and similar attention should be given to your personal financial plan. Our team can take you through an integrated process that will address the considerations of both.

Exit and succession planning is the process of gaining freedom from your business. Whether your intention is to transfer your business to your children, sell it to key employees, sell to a competitor, or just wind it down, having a plan in advance improves your opportunity for success. When the business owner fails to plan, even the most successful business can become a liability to the owner or to his or her heirs. Our business exit and succession planning process is tailored to your situation and goals. We can help you to:

• Evaluate and advise on various possible exit strategies such as:

– Sale to current partners

– Keep the business in the family

– Sale to outside buyer

– Sale to key employee(s)

– Sale to an ESOP

• Prepare for possibilities such as the death, disability, divorce, bankruptcy termination or retirement of any of the owners
• Protect against involuntary transfers of stock to creditors or other undesired shareholders
• Identify strategies to mitigate tax consequences of a sale of the company
• Lead family or shareholder discussions to address sensitive issues related to succession
• Help establish appropriate corporate policies as the number of owners expands
• Design programs to admit new partners or allow senior partners to retire
• Explore options for financing a transition to successors who may not have substantial resources
• Develop plans to transfer the owners’ knowledge, wisdom and relationship to successors
• Design customized tax-efficient solutions to retain and incentivize key employees
• Construct a communication plan to stakeholders such as employees, customers, vendors and lenders

Our team takes a tax aware approach when working with you on business planning in order to minimize the impact of common tax issues enabling you to maximize resources available toward achieving your most important goals.  

Some of the more common considerations may include: 

• Are you using the best structure for your entity? Are you a sole proprietor, S Corp, LLC, Partnership, C Corp? As your business and income evolve, the best structure for your business may change. This should be reviewed every few years or more often if your business landscape is rapidly shifting. 
• Are you taking advantage of your business retirement plan?  Business owners should be aware if funding a retirement plan can potentially improve their tax situation. 
• Will you be transitioning your business in the near future? Pre transaction strategies for your liquidity event is an important part of the process. 
• Are you optimizing opportunities for tax efficient portfolios and charitable giving? 

Integrating your tax planning with your overall financial strategy can help business owners be the best steward of your resources.

If you’re like most business owners, your primary goals are to make a profit and grow. Achieving these goals requires the right people who are talented, knowledgeable executives whose expertise you can’t do without. Attracting, motivating and retaining these people often requires a competitive compensation package that goes beyond just a salary and bonus. Salary and bonuses have a short-lived impact on long-term job satisfaction and loyalty to the company. A well-designed compensation package for your executives will:

• Give your business a competitive advantage in attracting, retaining, and motivating key executives
• Allow your business to single out and reward talented executives
• Permit your business to tailor the benefits to the needs of each executive
• Cut costs and prevent unwanted and unnecessary benefits
• Enable your business to adjust benefits to meet future needs

We can help you design an executive compensation program that encourages top executives to remain with the company.

Benefit Planning is increasingly important in recruiting and retaining employees. Our Executive Benefit Consulting Services will help you design a benefit package that meets the needs of your company and your key people. We can help you with: 

• Initial Assessment of Current Plans
• Statement of Current Goals and Plan Objectives
• Plan Design and Future Benefit Modeling
• Implementation

Managing benefits for employee retention involves strategic actions to remain competitive in today’s ever changing employment landscape.

The loss of a business owner can be potentially devastating, and the effect may be even greater if their financial affairs are closely linked to their business. An owner’s unexpected death could result in the liquidation of the company just to pay the owner’s executor fund expenses.

All these possibilities can cause firms to be concerned about the risk of business continuation in the event of a premature death or long-term disability of key executives or owners.

TFG’s knowledgeable professionals will analyze your business to prepare for various types of losses. TFG will work with business owners to develop and implement a strategy that is designed to protect the financial objectives of the owner, key executives and at the same time protect their business.

Guard your business from potential devastation by preparing for the loss of key players and meet future challenges before they arise.