With the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act slated to sunset at the end of next year, tax planning today looks suspiciously similar to what it was at the end of 2010, when the Bush tax cuts neared their scheduled expiry. “What I learned back then, and I’m still applying it now, is being very careful to leave flexibility in year-end tax decisions,” says Jim Holtzman, CEO of Legend Financial Advisors in Pittsburgh.

And with good reason. After all, much of the Bush-era legislation ultimately stayed intact beyond 2010.

Adding to this year’s planning haziness is the presidential election. Its outcome will undoubtedly affect the tax code’s future, which means the tax move you make today could paint your client into a corner if the law lands in a place that’s different from what you assumed. “Whatever strategy you implemented could hurt the client,” Holtzman warns.

So when you’re discussing strategy with your clients, you should show them the projections under both existing rules and the regime that could be in place if the 2017 law sunsets, advises Sharif Muhammad, a partner at JMG CPAs LLC in Somerville, N.J. “It helps the client see how the landscape changes if tax rules change,” he says.

Andrew Christakos takes the same approach. “We can’t predict the future, so we have to work with the data that we have right now,” he tells clients. “Then we work with the client to decide what is best for them,” says Christakos, a CPA and wealth advisor at Christakos Financial in Cranford, N.J.

If the current law expires and tax rates revert to their pre-2017 act levels, many clients would pay a heftier rate. Some clients are thus taking advantage of today’s potentially lower rates by speeding up distributions from traditional retirement accounts, including inherited IRAs, and using the funds to pursue capital gains in taxable accounts, according to advisors.

Siren Song
The specter of higher tax rates has made Roth conversions more attractive, both this year and next year, according to Christopher Fundora, director of retirement planning at Traphagen CPAs & Wealth Advisors in Oradell, N.J. The rate a client pays on a conversion now could be less than the rate they’d pay if the funds stay in a traditional retirement account and are withdrawn later. In addition, thanks to final Internal Revenue Service regulations issued in July, “a conversion can have significant estate planning benefits because children inheriting a Roth IRA can allow it to grow tax-free for 10 years,” Fundora says.

But be careful. The income from a Roth conversion can also trigger state or local taxes. You might want to look for property tax exemptions, which are often at the city/county level. Or perhaps you want your client to wait if they’re already planning to move to a state with no income tax, such as Florida, Texas or Wyoming. “Maybe you wait until they’ve established residency there and then do the conversion to save state taxes,” Fundora says.

You’ll also want to look into whether a conversion would affect the client’s future Medicare premiums. People with higher incomes pay more in premiums through the income-related monthly adjustment amount, or IRMAA, and the taxable income created by a Roth conversion could trigger those higher amounts.

Other Potential Changes
The demise of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would chop your client’s standard deduction to roughly half of the 2024 levels, which are $29,200 on a joint return and $14,600 for single filers. Yet the law change would also make it easier to itemize. So pushing deduction-generating events to 2026 could prove savvy.

Take, for example, a client with a donor-advised fund who won’t benefit from itemizing in 2024. According to Steven Warren, a senior manager at Schechter Dokken Kanter CPAs in Minneapolis, clients donating to charities from these funds this year won’t generate deductions, but can’t use them anyway. However, if the law changes, Warren says, the standard deduction would go down. “After the change’s effective date would be a good time to either replenish the donor-advised fund or give directly to charities. They’d get a charitable deduction [then] and may be better able to take advantage of itemizing.”

The potential sunset of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act leaves estate taxes up in the air, too. The end of the law would mean the estate tax exemption falls about 50% from $13.61 million per person this year. Vice President Kamala Harris supports taking it lower, to $3.5 million, as well as raising the tax rate to 55% or higher, depending on the estate’s size.

But we’ve seen this movie before. The Bush tax acts’ expiration would have reduced the estate tax exemption, and some clients made gifts in anticipation of that possibility—only to find they parted with funds they needed for themselves.

Nevertheless, clients who would be affected by a smaller estate tax exemption should be preparing now, says Warren. “I encourage them to sit down with their estate planning attorney who really specializes in this. And if they don’t have one, I encourage them to get one.”

Don’t Overlook Estimated Taxes
Anyone with significant interest income probably should have been making quarterly tax payments this year. “And some people aren’t withholding from their Social Security the way they should. It’s like a foreign concept,” says Jeremy Keil, with Keil Financial Partners in New Berlin, Wis. He thinks that’s partly because taxpayers must proactively request withholding from their federal benefits, either by calling the Social Security Administration or submitting Form W-4V.

Advisors should urge their existing and prospective clients to remedy payment deficiencies as soon as possible, preferably with additional withholding from their Social Security, paycheck or pension payments for the rest of the year, or by withholding tax from a late-year retirement plan distribution. These will be treated as if they have been paid evenly throughout the year and help taxpayers make up for shortfalls in earlier quarters, Keil says. “That will help reduce penalties.”