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My Next Move

Where Did Half of It Go?

Income Taxes

High income was supposed to feel different than this.

RSU vests that land like a second salary and get taxed like one. An S-corp or LLC question nobody has actually run the numbers on. Deferred compensation elections made under deadline. Income in two or three states. Real charitable intent with no structure behind it. If several of those sound familiar, the gap between your gross and your net is not an accident.

You work at a level most people never reach, and the reward is watching the distance between what you earn and what you keep grow every year. The W-2 says one thing. The deposit says something else.

The system compounds against your bracket specifically. RSU withholding rarely matches the real liability. AMT and NIIT arrive uninvited. Deductions phase out precisely where your income sits. The SALT cap binds hardest in the states where high earners actually live.

And the standard relationship is built to look backward. A return filed in April is an accurate record of what already happened. Accuracy is not strategy.

You're not imagining it. The tax code wasn't built for you.
Eric Cooper, Founder

Why this doesn't solve in isolation

This year's income decisions are next decade's problems or next decade's advantages. They don't stay in their lane.

Capital Gains

Every RSU vest creates a position with embedded gain. Compensation strategy and concentration strategy are the same conversation.

Liquidity Event

Deferred compensation and founder equity eventually realize, usually all at once, in the year that matters most.

Retirement Taxes

Today's deferrals become tomorrow's RMDs. Maximum deferral now is not automatically the right answer.

Sooner's approach

Sooner builds the structure upstream of the return: entity selection that's actually been modeled, compensation architecture around vest schedules and elections, deferred compensation sequenced against future brackets, charitable structures that convert intent into deductions.

Your CPA keeps the filing lane, and that relationship is collaborative, not competitive. We own the strategy that determines what there is to file.

The cadence is continuous. Vest dates, election windows, and estimated payments run on the calendar, and the structure is adjusted in real time, not rebuilt every April.

The cost of waiting

Every reactive year is a year of unrealized structure. Entity decisions compound. Election windows don't reopen. The difference between proactive and reactive at your bracket is not a rounding error. It recurs annually, and it compounds.

Ninety seconds tells you where to start.

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