Adding tax planning to an RIA means adding a forward-looking service that reviews a client's current position, identifies strategies that reduce future liability, quantifies the savings, and drives the strategies to implementation.
It does not mean filing returns. And it doesn’t mean signing as a paid preparer either. Three practical lines separate the two, and they hold up in front of a compliance officer:
Before launching a separate tax-planning service, have your CCO or compliance counsel review whether your Form ADV Part 2A, client agreement, and other disclosures need to be updated to describe the service and its fees. Also check whether your errors-and-omissions carrier treats tax planning as a covered advisory activity. Many policies distinguish between planning and return preparation, so it is worth confirming coverage in writing.
Advisors get stuck here more than anywhere else, and the stall costs revenue. What changes when tax planning becomes a formal service is the level of specificity and responsibility. A written plan can make the analysis easier to review and coordinate with the client's tax professional.
The important boundary is not simply “planning versus filing.” Advisors should work within their credentials and competence, avoid guaranteeing tax results, and coordinate technical positions that will ultimately affect a return with the professional responsible for preparing or reviewing that return.
What exists is a spectrum, and most RIAs already operate on it. Telling a client their bonus in December pushes them into a higher bracket is tax advice. So is recommending a tax-loss harvest. So is asking whether they've maxed the HSA.
What changes when tax planning becomes a formal service is the specificity and the documentation, which is a good thing. A written plan that names a strategy, cites the code section, shows the calculation, and lists the implementation steps is more defensible than an offhand remark in a review meeting.
Where advisors should stop: taking a filing position, promising a result on a return that has not been prepared, and telling a client to disregard their accountant's judgment on a technical question. Those belong to the person who signs the return.
That still leaves RIAs substantial room to identify planning opportunities, model scenarios, and coordinate recommendations with the client's tax professional.
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The raw material for tax planning is already in your files. The 1040, the K-1s, the Schedule E, the brokerage 1099s, the ADV-required client profile you built at onboarding.
Working that material by hand is where most RIAs quit. Reading a return line by line against a mental checklist of strategies takes too long even if you’re quick and know what you are hunting for, and no advisor holds a full strategy library in their head.
Software closes that gap in a specific way. Inside TaxPlanIQ, an advisor uploads the client's 1040 (bulk upload handles up to 100 returns at once), the software auto-redacts personally identifying information at upload, and jAIne, the AI assistant, surfaces recommendations from a library of 130+ strategies ranked by projected savings for that client.
The advisor reviews it, cuts what does not fit the client's situation or risk tolerance, and keeps what does.The easy way to remember the difference is that a return scanner reads a PDF and hands back a summary of what already happened, while the planning layer answers a forward-looking question: what should this client do differently next year.
Finding a strategy and selling a strategy are different jobs, and the second one is where RIAs have a structural advantage over most accounting firms. You already run quarterly meetings. You already present. You already have the trust.
What you need is the deliverable.
TaxPlanIQ produces a white-labeled planning report under your firm's logo. Each strategy carries the projected savings, the implementation steps, and supporting authority. Most firms build a complete plan in under 30 minutes once they know the workflow.
Projections adds scenario modeling on top with entity comparisons, Roth conversion sizing, IRMAA and Social Security taxability checks, and what-if scenarios side by side.
A client who sees a $38,000 projected savings number next to a $6,000 planning fee does not argue often about the fee. They ask when you start.
You do not have to become the client's accountant to offer tax planning. Many RIAs partner with an accountant who can help turn the recommendations in the plan into action and make sure the completed strategies are properly reflected on the client's tax return.
Your role is to identify the planning opportunities, build the plan, show the client the projected savings, and lead the planning conversation. Then you can hand the accountant an organized plan that includes the selected strategies, calculations, supporting authority, and implementation steps.
Instead of the client trying to explain a tax idea they heard somewhere, the accountant gets a clear roadmap of what is being recommended and why.
That keeps the roles simple:
If the client does not already have an accountant who works this way, an RIA can build a relationship with an accountant who serves as the firm's tax implementation partner, which is highly recommended.
You can find potential partners here.
And for strategies that require additional specialists, such as cost segregation or other advanced implementation work, TaxPlanIQ provides access to preferred implementation partners so the advisor does not have to build that expertise in-house. The goal is not to turn an RIA into a CPA, but to give the advisor a way to lead a more valuable tax-planning relationship while still bringing in the right professionals to help the client actually realize the savings.
Do not bundle this into your AUM fee. Tax planning is a separate deliverable with separate work, and pricing it separately creates a revenue line that has nothing to do with market performance.
TaxPlanIQ suggests a fee using the ROI Method, built on the CURB framework: Complexity, Urgency, Risk, Benefits and burden. The fee is a fixed, value-based amount set up front. It is never a percentage of savings the client actually realizes. Contingent fee arrangements are restricted under Circular 230, and the up-front fixed fee keeps you clear of the issue entirely.
A structure that works for firms adding the service:
Start with your top ten clients by income, not by AUM. Different list. The client with $900,000 of Schedule C income and $400,000 under management is a better first tax planning client than the retiree with $4 million in a rollover IRA and no earned income.
Four questions that separate the categories:
Get the Financial Advisor's Guide to Adding Tax Planning to Your Practice WITHOUT Getting Your EA or CPA here