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Business Services - Business Planning Group

Business Services

Customized Financial Solutions for Businesses

Business Planning Group works with owners and executives, as well as their legal and CPA teams, to help our clients understand the potential rewards that are available by taking a proactive approach to financial planning. Our services provide IRS compliant solutions that minimize the impact of income and estate taxes on your lifetime earnings. We create customized programs that help our business clients:

  • Implement executive benefits
  • Recruit, retain and reward key employees
  • Mitigate taxes
  • Understanding your business valuation
  • Handle business risk
  • Build personal wealth
  • Increase EBITDA
  • Sell or transition a business
  • Create tax-free retirement income
We work with and train CPA’s

Business Planning Group is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of Continuing Professional Education (CPE) on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. Boards of Accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be submitted to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors through its website: www.nasbaregistry.org.

Let’s get the conversation started about a customized business solution!

Executive Wealth Builder® Plans

Executive Wealth Builder® plans are executive benefits that are combined and customized to meet the goals of you and your company. As a successful owner or executive, you’ve probably spent years hiring and training key employees and building your valued team. In today’s ultra-competitive market, the loss of a key team member could be devastating to your future plans. As can be expected, your top performers look to you to understand and recognize their value to your organization. Rewarding your joint successes with a lucrative executive benefit is your way of saying, ”you’re on my team!” Executive wealth builder plans are an arrangement between you and your key employee(s), where the company agrees to pay the key employee a specified benefit, at a specific time (often at retirement) in exchange for the employee’s commitment to staty with the firm. Sometimes referred to as “golden handcuffs” or “non-qualified plans”, these plans are generally exempt from employee retirement income security act (ERISA) and Department of Labor (DOL) discrimination rules and top heavy testing to which qualified plans are subject.

Executive wealth builder plans include:

  • leveraged premium plans

  • tax conversion plans
  • section 162 executive bonus and double bonus plans

  • split dollar plans

  • buy-sell purchase agreement plans

  • key person insurance

  • deferred compensation plans / SERP

  • key person insurance

While most qualified plans have contribution limitations that make it difficult to ensure an adequate retirement income, non-qualified, “executive benefit” plans can remedy this condition for owners, executives, and your most valued employees.

Qualified Plans

Qualified plans provide essential retirement benefits for employers and employees and can also provide death and disability benefits. Qualified plans can give employers a critical edge in recruiting new and retaining existing key employees. Qualified plans allow employers a significant tax deduction for contributions made to the plan and provide tax advantages to owners, key executives and employees by utilizing pre-tax plan contributions rather than after-tax dollars.

Qualified plans must satisfy the Internal Revenue Code in both form and operation. The provisions in your plan document must satisfy the requirements of the IRS code and those plan provisions must be followed in order to be compliant. Plans that meet these Internal Revenue Code requirements are “qualified” for special tax advantages, including income tax deductibility for employer contributions. Additionally, the qualifying contributions are not immediately taxable to employees (except for Roth IRA and Roth 401k Plans). All of the funds within compliant qualified plans accumulate on a tax-deferred basis. These plans help employers and employees leverage their retirement savings.

Qualified plans include:

  • defined contribution plans including profit sharing and pension plans
  • defined benefit plans and 412(e)(3) plans
  • IRA plans
  • 401(k) and 401(k) safe harbor plans

Leveraged Premium Plans

Leveraged premium plans enable clients to leverage existing assets in order to fund a life insurance policy. With a leveraged premium plan, the client (or the clients’ trust or organization) takes out a collateralized loan from a lender in order to pay the premiums on a life insurance policy. Since the funds for the leveraged premium plan are loaned, they are not taxed or reported as earnings. Because leveraged plans utilize outside funds, they can significantly reduce client liquidity needs. The insured owns the policy and will be responsible for repayment of the borrowed amount and interest until the loan principal is repaid to the lender, usually through a policy cash value withdrawal. Insurance policy cash values and other assets are used for collateral against the loan until it is retired. Leveraged premium plans have many benefits; here are a few of those:

  • leveraged premium plans reduce liquidity needs; helpful if your assets are not readily convertible to cash or, are committed to other expenses.
  • leveraged premium plans allow the current assets of the client to be employed into investments with returns that are higher than the cost of borrowing.
  • leveraged premium plans assist clients in building significant tax-free retirement income while only paying the interest on the borrowed premiums.
  • leveraged premium policy funds can be used for:
    • retirement income planning
    • pre-funding of a corporate buyout
    • estate liquidity
    • estate maximization
    • corporate liquidation value replacement
    • corporate benefit planning
    • estate tax replacement
    • legacy planning

Tax Conversion Plans

You’ve worked and saved your entire life, creating a significant retirement fund for you and your family. Now, as retirement approaches, you may realize that these funds will be significantly eroded by the continued impact of taxation during retirement. Taxes will be levied on qualified plan required distributions, earnings in retirement, estate taxes after death and finally, income taxes on distribution to the heirs of your estate.

Business Planning Group will assist you in creating your own tax conversion plan (TCP). Your plan will enable you to reduce and even eliminate the future impact of taxation on your retirement plans and estate. When properly constructed, your plan will:

  • reduce your overall taxation during plan creation
  • convert your assets to tax-free retirement income
  • provide you with living benefits while alive
  • provide your loved ones with an estate that has tax-free death benefits

You Can Do Something Now!

After a few years of planning and execution to create and fund your TCP, you are ready to get your tax conversion plan out of the qualified plan in which it resides. Once the funds are liberated, income tax on the current plan value must be paid in the next years taxes. In exchange, you have now converted your retirement savings to a tax-free, tax conversion plan!

Business Valuations

It may seem a counter-intuitive to get a business valuation now since you are probably not ready to sell your business. Still, knowing your business value is necessary for many major company events.  Getting knowledge about your business value gives you a head start on those major events such as debt or equity financing, justification of share values, buy/sell planning and funding, exit planning, tax reporting and even litigation.

What are the methods of understanding the value of my company?

  1. Market approach business valuation methods – Market approach estimates of the business value compare the company to recent selling prices of similar businesses.
  2. Earnings or Income approach business valuation methods – These types of valuations determine the cash flow of the company using normalized past earnings to evaluate what future earnings may be and then, evaluate those earnings through a capitalization factor (a rate of return that a purchaser would expect to make).
  3. Asset-based business valuation methods – These types of valuations can be done on a going concern or on a liquidation basis. The basic valuation methods involve understanding the business net assets (for a going concern) or net cash (in a liquidation).
  4. Enterprise Value business valuation methods – This value is the total value of the firm, all equity plus all long-term debt.
  5. A combination of business valuation methods

How to get a valuation?

In order to get a true valuation for your business, it is essential that the data entered be as correct as possible. We prefer that you provide the most recent three-years of financial data from your tax returns as well as your current company P&L and balance sheet, which will enable you to see actual trends that have developed in your business over the past several years.

Individual Disability Income

According to the Social Security Administration, nearly 1 in 4 Americans will become disabled before they retire. Most may think, “I’m careful and the chances of an accident are low,” however, accidents don’t cause most disabilities. Instead, most disabilities are caused by back injuries, cancer, heart disease and many other illnesses. That is why an individual disability insurance should be a part of an effective financial plan.

Your ability to earn an income is the foundation of the life you and your family have and hope to continue creating. Should you become disabled, there is plenty to consider without worrying about having to work in order to get paid.

The chances of suffering at least one long-term disability that lasts for 3 months or longer, before reaching age 65, is 51% if you are currently 30 years old; that drops to 34% if you are age 50. If you do become disabled and are unable to work, there is a significant risk, namely, your future lifetime earnings.

Now, while you are healthy, is the best time to discuss the importance of individual disability insurance with Business Planning Group.

This Website is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a complete description of our services or product offerings. This website is in no way a solicitation or an offer to sell securities, investment advisory services, annuities, qualified plans, non-qualified plans or insurance except, where applicable, in states where we are licensed and registered. Information throughout this site, whether statements regarding products or services, taxes, the market or other financial information, is obtained from sources which we and our suppliers believe reliable, but we do not warrant or guarantee the timeliness or accuracy of this information. Nothing in this website should be interpreted to state or imply that past results of any investment or policy are an indication of future performance. Neither we nor our information providers shall be liable for any errors or inaccuracies, regardless of cause, or the lack of timeliness, or for any delay or interruption in the transmission thereof to the user. THERE ARE NO WARRANTIES EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, AS TO ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR RESULTS OBTAINED FROM ANY INFORMATION POSTED ON THIS OR ANY "LINKED WEBSITE." "Understanding Wealth", "Executive Wealth Builder" and "Final Gift" are registered trademarks of Business Planning Group.