What if you treated tax season not as a “season” but as a year-round discipline? Integrating tax strategy into your everyday financial decision-making – whether it’s investment management, estate planning, or making a financial gift – can help position you to uncover efficiencies that potentially reduce overall tax exposure and preserve wealth.
“Tax season has the stressful reputation it does, because it’s what we’ve made it. But being proactive with tax planning throughout the year offers better control over the process,” said Don Heberle, head of the PNC Private Bank. “For those managing substantial assets, it’s essential.”
Organization is key
The foundation to being tax-ready year-round is to stay organized. While it may seem elementary, maintaining well-structured records of transactions and key documents as they occur can significantly streamline future reporting and decision-making. If you have substantial assets, you likely have an accountant or even a family office managing your financial obligations. But, knowing their systems for record-keeping and being disciplined to support them ensures alignment when critical information is needed.
Additionally, part of organization is planning regular touchpoints with your legal, tax, and financial advisors. Consistent meetings can help you stay on course to meet your broader financial goals, but also can create opportunities to evaluate tax strategies in real-time rather than retroactively.
While organization is a key to successful tax management, there are specific strategies you can consider throughout the year to better prepare for tax filing or reduce your overall tax liability.
It’s important to first consider, though, that your financial strategy should reflect the complexity and uniqueness of your personal and family wealth. Before implementing any changes to your investment portfolio, estate plan, or wealth preservation vehicles, it is essential to consult with your financial, legal and tax advisors. Their guidance ensures that every decision aligns with your long-term objectives and safeguards your legacy.
Considere la recolección de pérdidas fiscales
Tax-loss harvesting is selling assets that have declined in value, so that they realize a capital loss in order to offset a capital gain elsewhere in your portfolio – thus reducing your taxable income. Most often, the proceeds from the sale are then reinvested into a potential growth opportunity in the market.
The strategy fills a dual purpose. It reduces your taxable income while allowing you to rebalance your portfolio for the long term. While selling at a loss may seem counter-intuitive, tax-loss harvesting can be an important tool in managing investment income and controlling tax liability.
It’s important to consult with your wealth and tax advisors when considering tax-loss harvesting to ensure you’re in compliance both with IRS regulations and your long-term financial goals.
Optimize financial gift giving
For individuals considering significant financial gifts to family members timing and structure are important. In 2026, the federal annual gift tax exclusion remains $19,000 per recipient. Gifts exceeding this amount to any one individual in a calendar year begin to apply your lifetime gift and estate tax exclusion, which for 2025 is $13.99 million and for 2026 increases to $15 million, indexed to inflation in future years.
While this exemption now offers long-term planning flexibility under the provisions of the recently enacted One Big Beautiful Bill, there may be compelling reasons to accelerate gifting in the near term. For example, you may be able to more efficiently transfer wealth by leveraging the annual exclusion across multiple recipients or take advantage of the ability to make unlimited financial gifts to a spouse that is a U.S. citizen.
As you navigate expenses throughout the year and their potential impact on taxes, it’s also essential to understand what the IRS considers a “gift.” Beyond direct transfers of cash or assets, actions such as paying someone’s expenses, forgiving debt, or providing interest-free loans may be deemed gifts and subject to reporting requirements.
Conversely, certain transfers are excluded from gift tax considerations. Payments made directly to educational institutions for tuition or to medical providers for qualified expenses are not counted against your annual exclusion or lifetime exemption. Charitable contributions also offer meaningful tax advantages, with deductibility subject to limits based on the type of gift and the recipient organization’s tax status.
Timing is critical: To claim a charitable deduction for a given tax year, contributions must be completed by 31 de diciembre, of that year. In order to ensure that your gifts – both personal and philanthropic – are tax-efficient, it’s important to work with your financial and tax advisors.
“Transferring wealth through financial gifts can significantly influence your overall tax exposure," said Judy Raffa, head of Strategic Advisory Solutions for PNC Private Bank. "Maintaining discipline throughout the year—by tracking gifts and optimizing how they are structured—can play a critical role in preserving long-term wealth.”
Take Advantage of Retirement Plans
While retirement accounts are often viewed through the lens of long-term income planning, their role in annual tax strategy should not be underestimated. How you use these accounts can have significant implications beyond retirement, offering opportunities to defer or accelerate income in alignment with broader financial objectives.
One of the most effective tools for managing taxable income year-over-year is by adjusting contributions to qualified retirement accounts, including 401(k)s, Traditional IRAs, and Roth IRAs. Similar in concept to tax-loss harvesting, these adjustments can help you align with a target tax bracket and mitigate the impact of income fluctuations.
For instance, in years when salary, bonus, or other compensation increases total income, maximizing contributions to employer-sponsored plans or IRAs can serve as a valuable offset. Conversely, in lower-income years, executing a Roth conversion—the process of transferring assets from a Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA—can be a strategic move. This conversion moves deferred income into the current tax year, potentially at a more favorable tax rate, while also positioning assets for future tax-free growth.
Making financial decisions throughout the year with tax season in mind can help minimize stress and avoid a last-minute scramble to reposition funds or investments for tax efficiency. For those with significant assets, staying in close contact with your financial, legal, and tax advisors is especially important to ensure you're well-positioned for both tax optimization and long-term wealth preservation.
“Tax planning may not be the most exciting part of a wealth strategy, but it’s one of the most critical,” Raffa said. “Taking a disciplined approach to understanding the tax impact of financial decisions not only simplifies reporting—it can also drive more efficient long-term growth.”
