Tax Planning for High-Income Professionals
Taxes are often the single largest expense in a high-income household's financial life — and one of the few you have real control over. In Phase Wealth Management works with high-income professionals, tech employees, and business owners in San Mateo and the Bay Area to build tax strategy directly into their financial plan, rather than treating it as an afterthought every April.
In Phase Wealth Management and LPL Financial do not provide legal or tax advice. We work alongside your CPA or tax advisor to coordinate strategy.
Where We Focus
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Stock Compensation & Tax Liability
RSUs, ISOs, NQOs, and ESPP shares each carry different tax treatment. We evaluate how exercise and sale decisions affect your ordinary income, AMT exposure, and capital gains — before you make the decision, not after.
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Tax-Efficient Investing
Asset location, tax-loss harvesting, and thoughtful trading decisions can meaningfully reduce the drag taxes put on your investment returns over time.
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Retirement Distribution Planning
How and when you draw from taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free accounts in retirement can significantly change your lifetime tax bill. We plan distribution sequencing well before retirement, not after you've already started.
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Charitable & Giving Strategies
For clients who give to causes they care about, strategies like donor-advised funds or appreciated stock gifting can reduce taxable income while supporting the causes you value.
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Year-Round Tax Strategy
Tax planning isn't a once-a-year event. We review your situation throughout the year so decisions — bonuses, equity vesting, major purchases — get made with the tax picture in view, not discovered at filing time.
Our Approach
1. Start with your full financial picture.
Tax decisions don't happen in isolation. We look at your income, investments, equity compensation, and goals together to see where tax exposure is concentrated.
2. Identify strategies specific to your situation.
Generic tax tips rarely move the needle for high earners. We focus on the levers that actually apply to you — equity comp timing, account structure, distribution sequencing — based on your numbers.
3. Coordinate with your CPA.
We're not a substitute for your tax preparer — we work alongside them, so the strategy we build gets implemented correctly on your return.
4. Revisit as your situation changes.
A new job, a vesting event, a liquidity event, or a change in tax law can all shift what makes sense. We review your tax strategy regularly, not just once.
Who This Is For
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High-income professionals looking to reduce their effective tax rate
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Tech employees navigating equity compensation tax decisions
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Business owners planning around income timing and entity structure
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Pre-retirees planning tax-efficient withdrawal strategies
Frequently Asked Questions
Is tax planning the same as tax preparation?
No. Tax preparation is filing your return based on what already happened. Tax planning is making decisions throughout the year — and years in advance — to influence what that return looks like.
Can you file my taxes?
We don't prepare tax returns, but we work closely with your CPA or tax preparer to make sure planning strategies are implemented correctly.
How does tax-loss harvesting work?
It involves selling investments at a loss to offset capital gains elsewhere in your portfolio, reducing your taxable gains for the year — while staying invested in line with your overall strategy.
Want a tax strategy built around your full financial picture?