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Life insurance can be a powerful estate planning tool for nontaxable estates
For years, life insurance has played a critical role in estate planning, providing a source of liquidity to pay estate taxes and other expenses. It’s been particularly valuable for business owners, whose families might not have the liquid assets they need to pay estate taxes without selling the business. Because the federal gift and estate…
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Make fundraising a year-round commitment
If your not-for-profit focuses all of its fundraising energy on the holiday season and end of the year, it’s not misguided. After all, 26% of charitable giving to nonprofits occurs in December, according to the 2023 M+R Benchmarks Study. But that means almost three quarters of annual donations need to be obtained during the rest of…
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Did your spouse’s estate make a portability election? If not, there may still be time
Portability helps minimize federal gift and estate tax by allowing a surviving spouse to use a deceased spouse’s unused gift and estate tax exemption amount. Currently, the exemption is $12.92 million, but it’s scheduled to return to an inflation-adjusted $5 million on January 1, 2026. Unfortunately, portability isn’t automatically available; it requires the deceased spouse’s executor…
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Cost containment: An important health care benefits objective for businesses
As the Fed continues to do battle with inflation, and with fears of a recession not quite going away, companies have been keeping a close eye on the costs of their health insurance and pharmacy coverage. If you’re facing higher costs for health care benefits this year, it probably doesn’t come as a big surprise.…
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Look carefully at three critical factors of succession planning
The day-to-day demands of running a business can make it difficult to think about the future. And by “future,” we’re not necessarily talking about how your tax liability will look at year-end or how you might grow the bottom line over the next five years. We’re referring to the future in which you no longer…
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Rich Waigand Celebrates 2nd Year as a Titan 100
Congrats to Partner Rich Waigand for making the 2023 Titan 100 Roster. This is the second year that Rich has been honored to be a part of this group of leaders who are “Titans” in their own right in the St. Louis community. Check out the Titan 100 digital book below. Rich’s bio is on…
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Reviewing and adjusting your marketing strategy
As summer slips away and fall shuffles forth, business owners and their leadership teams might want to take a look at the overall marketing strategy they’ve pursued this year. How’s yours doing? It may not be entirely too late to make some adjustments to ensure your sales numbers wind up where you want them. What success…
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Every nonprofit needs a disaster plan
Almost no region of the United States has escaped some form of natural disaster or extreme weather this summer. Although wildfires, floods and unusually high temperatures have grabbed the headlines lately — for good reason — your not-for-profit also needs to be prepared for such unnatural disasters as terrorist threats and mass shootings. It’s a lot…
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Overhead allocations: Rising costs require a fresh, disciplined mindset
From utilities and interest expense to executive salaries and insurance, many overhead costs have skyrocketed over the last few years. Some companies have responded by passing along the increases to customers through higher prices of goods and services. Is this strategy right for your business? Before implementing price increases, it’s important to understand how to…
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Guaranteeing a loan to your corporation? There may be tax implications
Let’s say you decide to, or are asked to, guarantee a loan to your corporation. Before agreeing to act as a guarantor, endorser or indemnitor of a debt obligation of your closely held corporation, be aware of the possible tax implications. If your corporation defaults on the loan and you’re required to pay principal or…
