For Business Owners — CACIV Consulting and Tax

The Pattern We See

You’re paying two professionals to do half the job each.

Most owner-operators we meet for the first time are already working with two people: a CPA who files the returns, and a financial advisor who manages the personal accounts. The CPA is competent. The advisor is reasonable. And the household is still leaving five or six figures of tax savings on the table every year.

It’s not anyone’s fault — it’s a structural gap. The CPA isn’t paid to plan; they’re paid to file. The advisor isn’t paid to think about your S-corp or your retirement plan structure; they’re paid to manage assets. The work that lives between the two of them — entity, comp, benefits architecture, exit planning, multi-year coordination — falls in a crack that nobody owns.

That’s the work CACIV exists to do.

We don’t replace your CPA. We don’t replace your advisor. We do the work neither of them is doing — and we make sure all three roles point in the same direction.

The Work, In Detail

Six areas of practice. Each one reviewed annually, because the right answer changes as the business changes.

Entity & compensation design

The single biggest annual lever on an owner’s tax bill. S-corp vs. LLC vs. C-corp. Reasonable comp methodology. Payroll vs. distribution mix. Owner draws and basis tracking. The structure that worked when you started the business is almost certainly not the structure that works at your current profit profile — we review it every year, against current law, current profit, and current plan.

Benefits design & analysis

Retirement plan structure (SEP, Solo 401(k), Safe Harbor, Cash Balance, defined benefit overlays). Health insurance and HSA strategy. Accountable plan reimbursements. Section 125 cafeteria plans. Group benefits when there are employees. Executive bonus and split-dollar design when there aren’t. The optimal mix shifts every time profit, payroll, or family composition changes — and most owners are working with a plan that was right three growth stages ago.

Multi-year tax strategy

Roth conversion windows. Asset location across taxable, tax-deferred, and Roth. Charitable timing and bunching. Capital expenditure sequencing. Tax-loss coordination. Income smoothing across years. The decisions that show up on next year’s return because we made them this year. Quarterly meetings, not annual ones — because most of the work has to happen before December 31st, not in March.

Business exit & transition planning

The single highest-stakes tax decision an owner ever makes — and the one where two-professional coordination matters most. Entity restructuring ahead of a sale. Installment sale design. QSBS qualification windows. Family transition through gifting, IDGTs, and grantor trusts. Charitable structures (CRT, CLT, donor-advised funds). State residency planning ahead of a liquidity event. ESOP feasibility when it fits. Started 3–5 years before transition, not 3 months — because the highest-impact decisions can’t be made in the last quarter.

Tax preparation

Federal, state, and entity returns for our consulting clients. Annual filing is the back-end output of the strategy we built earlier in the year. We don’t take prep-only engagements — because filing without strategy is exactly the problem we exist to solve. If you need a tax preparer without strategy, we’re happy to recommend one.

Investment advisory

Offered when the tax strategy requires coordinated control of the underlying accounts — Roth conversion sequencing across years, asset location across account types, retirement plan investment policy, tax-loss harvesting at scale. Tax-led, not investment-led. We don’t take advisory engagements outside of a tax consulting relationship, because the entire reason we’d manage accounts is to make the tax strategy executable.

This is for owners who:

→ Generate $200K to $1M+ in annual profit
→ Have a CPA who files but doesn’t plan
→ Suspect they’re overpaying but can’t prove it
→ Want a partner who thinks 3–5 years out, not 3 months
→ Are starting to think about exit or transition

This is not for owners who:

× Want the cheapest possible tax preparation
× Are looking for aggressive shelters or schemes
× Need someone to call once a year in March
× Want to switch CPAs and skip the strategic work
× Are under $200K profit (we’re probably not yet the right call)

How We Work

A relationship, not a transaction.

We’re selective. Engagements are annual retainers, not hourly. The work compounds over years — not because we say so, but because that’s how tax strategy actually produces results.

Step 01

Discovery

30-minute call. We look at where you are, what you’re doing, and whether the work fits. Free. No pressure. If we’re not the right call, we’ll tell you.

Step 02

Diagnostic

Paid analysis of your current setup — entity, comp, benefits, prior returns, projections. Output is a written plan with specific recommendations and modeled savings. Even if you don’t engage further, you keep the analysis.

Step 03

Engagement

Annual tax advisory retainer. Quarterly strategy meetings. Implementation support. Return prep included. This is the work. Renewed annually so we can both opt out if the fit changes.

Common Questions

What owners ask before they engage.

No. We frequently work alongside the existing CPA — we do the strategic work, they continue filing returns if you want them to. For most consulting clients we eventually take over the filing as well because it’s simpler to have one team executing the plan that built it, but it’s not a requirement.

Tax advisory retainers typically range from $7,500 to $25,000 annually depending on entity complexity, profit profile, and the scope of work. Implementation fees are separate when entity changes, plan rollouts, or transactions are involved. Investment advisory fees, when applicable, are a percentage of assets under management. Every engagement is quoted after the diagnostic — never before — because pricing tied to actual scope is the only way to make the math honest.

Two ways. First, the diagnostic produces a modeled savings figure before you ever sign — so we both know what we’re aiming for. Second, the annual review compares the realized tax outcome against both the baseline (what you would have paid before engagement) and the model (what we projected). If the work isn’t producing, the renewal conversation is short.

That’s where most of the actual work happens. Quarterly meetings to review where you are, what’s changed, what decisions need to be made before year-end. Mid-year projections in July. Q3 strategy session in September or October. Pre-December final-position planning. April is for filing — the strategy was built months earlier.

We don’t do bookkeeping directly, but we work closely with the bookkeeper or controller you already have — and if you don’t have one, we’ll recommend bookkeeping partners we trust. Clean books are a prerequisite for the strategic work; messy books make the work twice as expensive and half as effective. Getting the books right is often the first thing we address in a new engagement.

Then the work matters more, not less. Most owners come to us with an exit timeline of 3–5 years and discover that the highest-impact decisions have to be made before the buyer ever walks in the door — entity restructuring, QSBS qualification, basis planning, residency, charitable structures. An exit consultation can be a stand-alone engagement, but it almost always produces more value as part of an ongoing relationship.

Schedule a Discovery Call

30 minutes. No pitch. A real conversation about whether this fits.

You’ll come away with a clearer picture of what tax consulting actually is, whether your situation calls for it, and whether we’re the right firm to do it. If we’re not, we’ll point you in the right direction.

For: Business owners with $200K–$1M in annual profit.
Format: 30 minutes by video or phone.
Cost: Free. No prep required.
Next: Pick a time on the calendar →

The tax strategy your business actually requires — and isn’t getting.