Personal tax strategy is the year-round work of income timing, charitable structuring, RSU sequencing, and deferred comp elections that closes before December 31, not after it. Your CPA handles the filing. K&K quarterbacks the planning that gives your CPA a lower number to start from.
By the time a return is filed, the time frame to pull those levers has closed. Income recognition timing, charitable structuring, deferred comp elections, residency posture, and equity-comp sequencing are all year-round decisions. Filing is the receipt.
The pattern looks familiar at this income tier:
So a strong bonus or RSU vest blows through the safe-harbor and lands as a surprise in April.
Quietly inflate the marginal rate on the income most high earners think is "already optimized."
Not a Donor-Advised Fund or QCD strategy, so the deduction value lands well below what a stacked-year approach would have produced.
Never get reviewed, even when a remote-work move or a second home would change the answer materially.
Sits inside a personal return that was never optimized for entity-level treatment.
None of these are obscure. They're standard items in the 98% of the tax code most traditional CPAs aren't paid to plan around. We are.
Advanced tax planning is the work that happens before the calendar closes, not after. At Kotini & Kotini, the personal-tax engagement spans five categories that move real money for households at this income tier:
Modeling bonuses, RSU vests, and deferred-comp elections against marginal rate exposure so the year doesn't end with a bracket surprise.
Donor-Advised Funds, Qualified Charitable Distributions, and bunching strategies that turn ordinary annual giving into a meaningful deduction event.
Multi-year conversion plans built around expected income, future bracket forecasts, and IRMAA thresholds so conversions land in the cheapest years available.
State-level tax posture, especially for households with a second home, a remote-work option, or a planned relocation inside the next five years.
Coordinating entity treatment, retirement-plan options, and deduction strategy for income that doesn't show up on a W-2.
Each of these connects directly to the rest of your plan, which is why personal tax doesn't sit in a silo on the K&K side. It runs alongside wealth management coordination, asset protection planning, and the broader Advanced Tax Planning hub.
A traditional CPA's job is filing. The work happens after December 31, on the year that already closed. By design, that's a backward-looking exercise. There is nothing wrong with it. It's also not where the meaningful savings live.
Proactive planning starts in the first half of the year and continues through Q4, when most of the levers actually move. By the time December hits, the model has already run. The bonus is timed, the deferred-comp election is in, the DAF contribution is funded, the Roth conversion is sized, and the quarterly estimate matches the actual liability rather than last year's number plus inflation.
Then, when the return goes to your CPA, they have a clean year to file instead of a mess to reconcile. That's the point.
Your CPA stays your CPA. We don't recruit you away from the relationship that's already working, and we don't try to replace the filing seat. The CPA's job is compliance and filing. Planning is a different specialty.
Kotini & Kotini quarterbacks the planning year so your filer has the full picture before tax season starts. We hand them clean strategies they can execute against. Many of the CPAs we work with end up using what they learn from our coordination on their other clients, which is the kind of outcome that tells you the model is working.
If you don't have a CPA yet, or the one you have is open to a stronger collaboration, our vetted Virtual Family Office network includes CPAs we work with regularly across all 50 states.
The honest answer is that it depends on your income mix, entity exposure, charitable intent, and how much of the 98% of the tax code currently applies to your situation. We don't promise specific dollar outcomes, and we don't quote returns.
What we can say: most households at this income tier are quietly overpaying by tens of thousands a year, and the gap between reactive filing and proactive planning compounds the longer it runs. The Proactive Value Review at the front of the engagement walks you through the projected impact for your specific situation, alongside the full fee structure, before any decision is made. Kotini & Kotini delivers value in multiples, and you see those multiples before you commit. The Tax Savings Calculator is a useful starting point if you'd like a directional read before that conversation.
For households with a meaningful business or practice on top of the W-2, our business tax strategies page covers the entity, exit, and capital-event work that pairs with the personal side.
The SALT deduction is currently capped at $10,000 on the federal return, which neutralizes most of the deduction's value at this income tier. Workarounds exist (pass-through entity tax elections, residency planning, and bunching strategies, where they apply), and we evaluate them as part of the personal tax review.
Recent legislative changes expanded a handful of deductions for qualifying taxpayers, the new $6,000 line among them. K&K monitors tax-code changes proactively, so when a new opportunity opens, we know whether it applies to your situation and how to layer it against the existing plan rather than treating it in isolation.
The IRS can audit returns up to seven years back in cases of substantial understatement of income. Proper documentation, conservative-but-optimized positions, and a planning record that supports every claim reduce audit risk and shorten any review cycle if one happens. Proactive planning produces audit-defensible files by default.
Reactive planning is filing. A CPA looking at the year that already closed. Proactive planning is the work that happens before December 31, when timing decisions, deduction structuring, and entity elections are still open. Proactive is where the savings live. Reactive is where the receipt gets cut.
K&K clients save an average of about $54,000 in tax versus their prior-year position. Outcomes vary based on income, equity-comp exposure, business interests, and charitable intent. The Proactive Value Review presents your specific projection alongside the full fee structure before you commit.
Or call (804) 372-8307. The mutual-fit conversation walks through your tax exposure across W-2, equity comp, side income, and giving, and gives you an honest read on what proactive planning would actually look like for your household.
Important disclosure: Kotini & Kotini provides advanced tax planning. Tax filing and preparation are performed by your CPA or by CPA partners coordinated through the K&K Virtual Family Office network. K&K does not provide investment advisory or legal services directly. See our disclosures page for the full description of the coordination model and partner relationships.
