What we do Tax Planning
By April, the number is already decided.
Almost everything that drives your tax bill was settled in the months before the return was ever prepared. The useful work happens while the outcome can still move, and then it is handed to your CPA so the return matches the plan.
What this covers
- Withdrawal sequencing
- Conversion analysis
- Gain and loss timing
- Charitable strategy
- Owner compensation
- CPA coordination
When does tax planning actually change what you owe?
Before December 31. Nearly every lever that moves a tax bill, including Roth conversions, the timing of income and distributions, retirement plan contributions and charitable gifts, has to be pulled inside the tax year itself. Baldwin Financial does that work during the year and hands it to your CPA, who prepares the return.
Source: IRS, Retirement Plans
Written and reviewed by Jeremy D. Baldwin, Founder and Private Wealth Adviser, Baldwin Financial, LLC · CRD #324725 · Reviewed August 2026
Where the leverage is
We do not prepare returns. We change what goes on them.
Baldwin Financial does not practice law and does not prepare tax returns, and we are careful about that line. What we do is help you make the decisions during the year that determine what ends up on the return.
Which account a withdrawal comes from. Whether a conversion this year beats a conversion in three. When a gain is taken and against what. How an owner is paid, and through which entity. Those are planning decisions with tax consequences, and they belong on a calendar rather than in a scramble.
The work
What that means, specifically.
Withdrawal sequencing
Across taxable, tax-deferred and Roth accounts, planned ahead rather than improvised.
Conversion analysis
Modeled across several years instead of decided in December.
Gain and loss timing
Including concentrated positions, and which year is the right one to unwind them.
Charitable strategy
Bunching, donor-advised funds and appreciated stock, where they genuinely fit.
Owner compensation
Entity structure and retirement plan choice, looked at together rather than apart.
CPA coordination
Direct, so your CPA is working from the plan instead of discovering it in April.
In practice
The year, on a calendar we watch.
Every window that matters has a date attached to it. We work backwards from those dates, which is the difference between making a decision and discovering that the chance to make one has passed.
An illustration of the planning year. Dates are general federal deadlines, not advice about your situation, and they can change. Confirm anything that matters with your CPA.
The cadence
When the tax work happens.
Spring
Last year’s return, read forward
Your filed return is the best single document about your situation. We read it for what it says about next year rather than filing it away.
Midyear
Income projected, estimates checked
A projection in June is what makes October useful. It also stops the surprise that arrives with the fourth quarter estimate.
Fall
The conversion window
Between October and the end of December there is a real, dated window to move income between years. It closes, and there is no version of this work that can be done in April instead.
December
Harvesting, gifting, and the handoff
Losses, gains, charitable timing and gifts all get finished, then everything goes to your CPA in an organized form so nothing has to be reconstructed later.
The engine
A second set of eyes that never tires, and never gets the last word.
The tax work behind this page runs on Hazel, built by Altruist Financial, LLC, the same firm that custodies our clients’ accounts. Its tax planning agent reads the documents a situation actually turns on, models them forward, and surfaces what is worth a conversation.
What it produces is analysis, not advice. Nothing reaches you until a person has worked through it, argued with it, and decided to stand behind it. The machine is very good at noticing. Deciding is still our job.
Entrepreneurs and small business owners
If you own the business, your income is not a number you receive. It is a number you choose. Salary against distributions, which entity absorbs what, whether this is the year to sell. Every one of those is a business decision with a tax bill attached.
What the agent surfaces for them
- Business exit planning
- Income change planning
- Owner withdrawal sequencing
- Entity and compensation scenarios
- Charitable timing
The year a company sells is the most expensive year of most owners’ lives, and it is decided long before the sale closes. Modeling it across several years, well before the sale closes, is where that money is either kept or lost.
Physicians, dentists, attorneys and executives
You earn a great deal, most of it is taxed before it ever reaches your account, and you have very few ways to change that. The few you do have only work in the right year, and most of them close on a date.
What the agent surfaces for them
- Income change planning
- Roth conversion windows
- Donor-advised fund strategy
- Equity and bonus scenarios
- Withdrawal strategies
A surgeon, a partner or an executive rarely has a deduction problem. They have a timing problem, and timing is exactly what modeling is for.
Families building something meant to outlast them
These are decisions that compound for thirty years. Most families make them one filing season at a time, and the cost of getting the order wrong does not show up for a decade.
What the agent surfaces for them
- Multi-year conversion sequencing
- Withdrawal order across accounts
- Charitable and gifting strategy
- Life event planning
- Cross-border situations
What your family eventually receives is shaped by decisions you make decades before they receive it. Those deserve to be modeled across a lifetime, not one filing season at a time.
What it reads
- 1040s
- W-2s and paystubs
- 1099s
- Account statements
- Notes from your own meetings
What it produces
- A written plan
- Scenarios you can move in real time
- A letter your CPA can act on
Where your data goes
Altruist holds zero-data-retention agreements with the model providers behind Hazel. Your information is not kept by them and is not used to train anything.
Hazel and Altruist Financial, LLC are unaffiliated with Baldwin Financial, LLC, and naming them is not an endorsement or a testimonial. Neither Altruist nor Hazel provides tax advice, and the platform’s output is informational. Baldwin Financial, LLC does not prepare or file tax returns and does not provide legal advice. Strategies listed are examples of what the analysis can surface, not recommendations, and whether any of them suits you depends on facts we would need to review. Nothing here is a guarantee of any tax outcome.
Questions we get
Asked often enough to answer here.
Do you replace our CPA?
No, and we would not want to. Your CPA does the compliance work and knows things about your filing history that matter. Our job is to make sure they receive a plan in January rather than a pile of surprises in April.
Can you file our return?
No. Baldwin Financial does not prepare or file tax returns. If you need a preparer we are happy to make introductions, and we work alongside whoever you choose.
We own a business. Does that change things?
More than anything else on this page. Entity choice, owner compensation, retirement plan design and the eventual sale all interact, and they are usually advised on separately by people who never speak to each other. Holding them together is where most of the value is.
Is an AI deciding things about our taxes?
No. The agent reads documents, models years forward and surfaces what looks worth examining. That is where its job ends. A person reads every one of those findings, throws most of them out, and decides what actually applies to you. Neither Altruist nor Hazel provides tax advice, and we would not hand you something we had not worked through ourselves.
Where does our financial information go?
Altruist holds zero-data-retention agreements with the model providers behind Hazel, so your information is not kept by them and is not used to train any model. Custody of the accounts themselves stays with Altruist Financial, LLC, an unaffiliated qualified custodian and a member of FINRA and SIPC.
Is any of this a guarantee we pay less?
No. Nothing here is a guarantee of any outcome, and tax law changes. What we can promise is that the decisions get made while they are still decisions.
Keep going
The other three.
We do not offer these separately. They are four views of the same set of decisions, which is the whole reason they sit in one relationship.
An invitation
One conversation is usually enough
to know whether this is worth continuing.
Thirty minutes, by video, phone, or in person in downtown Oklahoma City. Nothing to prepare and nothing to bring.
What the thirty minutes look like
- 01
You talk. What you own, what you owe, who depends on you, and whatever is coming up that you have not solved yet.
- 02
We tell you what we see. The two or three things we would look at first, and why those and not the rest.
- 03
You decide, on your own time. If we are not the right fit, we will say so and point you toward someone who is.
Or reach us directly
- Phone
- (405) 266-7856
- Serving
- Oklahoma City, Edmond, and clients who have moved away