Tax Rates Are Headed Up. Here's What I'm Doing About It.
I've spent 33 years helping people retire with confidence, and in that time I've watched a lot of things shift. Markets go up and markets go down. Tax laws change. Interest rates move. But what I'm watching right now feels different from the normal noise. The federal government's debt and deficits have put us on a trajectory that I believe will rewrite the retirement planning conversation entirely, and the clients who start preparing today will be in a completely different position from those who wait until the headlines force their hand.
Here's what I see coming. The math on federal spending simply doesn't work at current tax rates. I've been telling clients for the last several years to plan as if tomorrow's tax rates could be double what they're paying today. That's not fear-mongering. It's reading the numbers honestly and letting the conclusion land where it has to. When I present to CPAs, doctors, and dentists on what I call Disinheriting the Tax Man, I watch the room go quiet when that idea hits. Most people have spent their entire working lives putting money into tax-deferred accounts, trusting that they'd pay less tax in retirement. That assumption is now the most dangerous one in the room.
The shift I've lived through in my own work over the last few years is a move away from accumulation planning and toward what I'd call tax-architecture. It's not enough to ask "How much do you have?" The better question is "How much of that will you actually keep?" We're coordinating tactical withdrawals from retirement accounts with Social Security timing and pension income, and in a surprising number of cases, we're building plans that land clients in the 0% tax bracket. Not through loopholes. Through the black letter law of the tax code, used exactly as Congress intended it to be used.
Most people have been conditioned to fear the IRS, and I understand why. Early in my career, after years as a minister and then as a CFP starting in 2000, I saw how that fear kept people from ever questioning their tax bill. What I've learned, and what I teach, is this: the tax code doesn't just tell you when you have to pay. It also tells you clearly and specifically how to save. The IRS respects those who use the code correctly. I've seen it play out for client after client. Respect the agency, use the law, and it works in your favor.
One concrete change I've made in how we work is a sharper focus on IRMAA penalties on Medicare and taxation of Social Security benefits. These two issues blindside people who did everything right during their working years. A retiree who worked hard, saved diligently, and built a real nest egg can easily find themselves paying hundreds of dollars more per month in Medicare premiums simply because of how they're drawing income. The sequencing of withdrawals matters enormously. So does the account type. We're restructuring portfolios earlier in the process, in some cases years before retirement, specifically to manage this exposure.
For business owners, the opportunity right now is striking. I work with owners who are carrying large profits in their businesses and have no idea that legal, well-established strategies exist to remove a meaningful portion of that income completely free of tax. When that light comes on in someone's mind, the conversation changes. We built WealthCare Corporation, which was named to the Inc. 5000 in 2025, on exactly this kind of integrated thinking, where tax strategy, investment management, and retirement design aren't three separate conversations but one coordinated plan.
The clients who will come through the next decade well aren't necessarily the ones with the most money. They're the ones who stopped assuming that what worked in the past will keep working. If you want to understand how we approach building a tax-efficient retirement plan from the ground up, the story behind WealthCare explains the philosophy, and you're always welcome to start a conversation directly. What's changing in this field is moving fast. The plans we build today need to be built for the tax environment we're heading into, not the one we're leaving behind.