A Challenge for New Clients: How to Choose a Trusted Advisor

If you’re in business for yourself, you have a unique opportunity to build wealth in an asset class that others don’t have: equity in a business enterprise that some day may be sold for millions of dollars. In addition, that business can spin off income for family members that can provide significant tax advantages, done well. Understanding how to realize on this asset requires the help of a trusted financial advisory team. Who should be on that team and how do you find them? This is a challenge your next new business clients may wrestle with. Here are some tips on how you can open discussions to help them:

Surprise: there is nothing magical that happens when you enter retirement to suddenly make you immune to the trials and tribulations of everyday life. The sooner you acknowledge this, the closer you are to “Mastering Your Retirement.”

Death is one certainty in life that most of us prefer not to think about. But if you recognize that exploring your clients' tax strategies to avoid tax erosion at death will increase the legacy passed on to family and community, specialize in this hot topic by enroling in Final Returns on Death of a Taxpayer.

Find the luck of the Irish with our EverGreen St. Paddy's Day special! Buy a 3-month EverGreen Explanatory Notes subscription ($199) and receive a FREE 3-month Calculators subscription ($249 value!). The luck runs out March 17!

Join Knowledge Bureau, sponsor of Winn$tock 2014, in helping to raise $100,000 in support of The Movement Centre of Manitoba.

Knowledge Bureau’s February Poll asked tax practitioners whether CRA should implement the Registration of Tax Preparers Program (RTPP) to track and address recurring errors in professional tax preparation without setting minimum knowledge standards for both auditors and professionals. 

Last week, Statistics Canada released the results of the Survey of Financial Security – conducted between September and November 2012 – and the news is good: the 2012 median net worth among family units has increased 44.5 per cent since 2005 to $243,800, and almost 80 per cent from 1999 – just 13 years ago.