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You’ve built a valuable and successful business through hard work, long hours and countless decisions. You want to plan for transitioning the company, and the wealth you’ve created to future generations, but you aren’t ready to cede control. As the company grows in value, the issue becomes acute. What do you do? You’re not alone.

Many powerful trends are taking place in 2017. While much is still unknown in regard to what actions the new Trump administration and GOP-led congress will take towards the estate tax, planners have many opportunities to provide clients structures for both the short and long term. Additionally, planners will need to continue to factor in the recent development by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. Lastly, international families continue to establish trusts in the United States at a record pace, both with and without family members and/or assets in the United States.

The White House joined Congressional Republican leaders in announcing a new framework for tax reform, which they hope to enact before the end of 2017.

Trusts have grown enormously in popularity since the mid-1990s as a result of the development of modern trust laws, the dramatic increase in wealth and evolving family needs and goals.

The Trump Administration recently released its "Unified Framework for Fixing our Broken Tax Code" to flush out its tax reform priorities for individuals and businesses. The nine-page document is similar to the single-page bulleted outline the Administration rolled out in April, and it reiterated its position that taxes on corporations and individuals are too high. There is a lot of work ahead to come up with a tax bill that can ultimately be passed and signed into law. It’s a process that will take months and could very likely extend in to 2018.

In this collection of tax alerts and articles, we provide legislative and regulatory insights to help family offices address their concerns in the following areas: estate and gift tax, charitable giving, partnerships, tax planning for non-resident entering the U.S. tax system, and tax treatment in the financial services industry.

Now that the 2016 tax year is over, it’s not too early to think about planning for 2017 taxes and making tax planning a year-round activity. This year’s tax planning guide addresses potential strategies to consider amidst the uncertainty in the tax landscape, highlights important deadlines, discusses the related changes being proposed in the Trump administration and GOP House plans, and more for 2017. With this in mind, planning with flexibility is key to putting yourself in a positive position.

Many successful individuals and prominent families do not realize the full benefits of strategic financing or leverage, especially when it comes to wealth and estate planning. In fact, an estate or succession plan that includes appropriate borrowing strategies can help preserve a family’s legacy and enable more efficient transfer of wealth from one generation to the next—and beyond.

In light of the portability opportunity and the recent proposal by President Trump to eliminate the estate tax, many people may believe trusts no longer serve a useful purpose in their estate plan. However, trusts still may play a critical role in taxable estates and those estates under the taxable threshold. There are also many non-tax benefits of trusts that should be considered, including asset protection, marital property protection, and a suitable management structure for inherited assets.