The Stacking Benjamins Show · Monday, August 3, 2026
OG outlines the crucial information needed for tax planning, starting with the 2025 tax return as a baseline. This includes current year pay stubs and income earnings to forecast year-end income, and a review of tax-related activities such as charitable contributions, property taxes paid, and any capital transactions or conversions.
“What are the questions we asked? Because at this point of the year, OG, what we want to do is we want to build a forecast, right? What do we need to gather before we start making tax moves?”
“Oh, well, this is something that we actually tackle every second half of the year for clients. This is one of the kind of standing review segments in our planning year. What are the things that we look for? Uh, well, we look for obviously your completed 2025 return, you know, because that's the basis for all the changes from 25 to 26. You've got really accurate data from 25, clearly because you just filed it and that's the starting point.”
“The 2025 return is, you know, the basis for, here's all the changes we're going to make, you know, or the changes that can happen from 25 to 26. And it's a good barometer for where you're at relative to where you were pacing this time last year. So we know we're 25 is. The next thing we want to look at is all of your paysubs and income earnings for this year. Obviously, forecast that out for the rest of the year. If you get paid a bonus in the second half of the year, maybe that's a little harder to to estimate what it's going to be. But by this time, maybe you have some idea of what that is.”
“And then the other piece is, what are the other tax things that you've done so far this year that we need to be aware of? Did you make any charitable contributions? Did you pay property taxes or real estate taxes? Have you done any capital transactions? Buy or sell any property or stock? Have you done any conversions or you thinking about doing any conversions? Most people honestly wait until the end of the year or should wait until the end of the year for that.”