Tax, Investing, and Legal Strategies for Tech Professionals

Tech industry professionals thrive on innovation, cutting-edge technology, and rapid growth.

However, navigating the world of personal finance requires a different set of skills. 

Experienced tech professionals can earn lucrative compensation packages, which unfortunately means significant tax liabilities. That’s why they have to optimize tax strategies and get professional help navigating complex tax laws. 

The unique financial challenges faced by tech workers call for tailored tax, investing and legal strategies to help you make the most of your wealth. These include:

Navigating the world of taxes can be daunting, especially for tech workers with complex compensation packages, stock options, and freelance gigs. With the right strategies, however, you can make an informed decision about the best steps to take to secure your financial future.

Let’s get started.

Tax Planning for Tech Professionals

Equity compensation, a high income, remote work (where your employer is in another state with different laws) … These can make tax planning for tech professionals quite complex.

You have to take a lot into account.

Different types of equity compensation have different tax treatments. For example, Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) are taxed as ordinary income upon vesting. Incentive Stock Options (ISOs) may qualify for preferential tax treatment if certain holding periods are met. Non-Qualified Stock Options (NSOs) are taxed as ordinary income upon exercise. But exercising ISOs can trigger Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) liability.

Lost yet? It can get pretty confusing very quickly.

I believe a solid wealth management strategy starts with tax planning. Remember: salaried (full-time) tech workers are taxed on gross income first, with the IRS taking their cut before you receive your paycheck.

Compare this to business owners and investors (with the correct structures in place), who pay the IRS quarterly on their net income after expenses. 

When you (as a full-time employee) invest through a properly structured entity, your investment income gets the same tax treatment as a business. This allows you to use your money before deducting taxes. 

Tech professionals early in their careers may benefit from Roth conversion strategies, paying taxes now on traditional retirement accounts to enjoy tax-free growth and withdrawals in the future.

But if you’re like most of our clients, you’re further along in your career, making a good salary, and you've been told there isn't much you can do to lower your taxes beyond taking deductions or using retirement vehicles like 401ks and IRAs. 

High earners in the tech field spend years growing their career and growing their income. The more they make, the more it hurts to see 20-30% of earnings yanked away by the IRS.

I have good news for you: The right CPA can help you leverage tax strategies to achieve and maintain tax rates in the 0-10% range. 

Many CPAs don’t understand that it's possible to save outside the standard deductions. Things like tax-loss harvesting can offset gains and reduce tax liability. Charitable giving or even setting up a private nonprofit foundation can also help.

A high-level CPA will be able to help you navigate complex tax decisions and make it seem easy. They can find creative (but completely legal) ways to save taxes. And that savings can be invested in equally creative, equally overlooked ways.

Such as …

Investing Strategies For Tech Professionals

After implementing all the best tax strategies, our tech clients then focus on investing their tax savings into tax-advantaged deals. There are tons of deal types, but there are two categories of investments you really need to know about:

• Depreciation Deals: Investing your tax savings in energy, machinery, or RV park deals allows you to become a general partner (GP) and claim accelerated bonus depreciation. And if you get  Real Estate Professional designation, you can access bonus depreciation from multi-family and commercial investments.
• Cash Flow Deals: These deals (things like self-storage and algorithmic trading) can drive so much income that they outperform the tax savings. Investments in this category include. Cash flow deals may also include a tax shelter, such as a 501(C)3 Non-Profit Private Foundation, which delivers both tax savings and a tax-advantaged portfolio growth.

Legal Strategies For Tech Professionals

Software executives, Saas founders, and other tech professionals have giant targets on their back when it comes to frivolous lawsuits.

All it takes is a car accident, an injury on your property, or a contractual disagreement—and once somebody knows what you own, they can hire a good attorney to pressure you until you settle out of court. 

The way you prevent this is to set up asset protection before you get sued.

Anonymity across all of your entities and assets is key. Holding companies are where you should place your assets. This could be things like real estate properties or other investments. Anything of value that could be exposed during a lawsuit is important to protect.

Entity structuring means creating LLCs and making sure your assets are held anonymously. Once your LLC hits the $50-75k income mark, you’ll opt for an S-Corp election  S Corps feature pass-through taxation, meaning income and losses "pass through" the company directly to the shareholders. 

Unlike C Corps that face corporate taxes and then shareholder taxes on dividends, S Corps allow shareholders to pay taxes only at their individual income tax rates, simplifying the process. S Corps split profits into wages and distributive shares, the latter of which is not subject to self-employment taxes. This distinction can provide considerable savings on the Social Security and Medicare tax burden.

We’ll also help you employ different types of trusts to create anonymity at the County Recorder and Secretary of State offices, as well as during probate (so you look like a beggar on paper and can transfer your assets anonymously to your heirs).

My team can show you how to save $20k or more in taxes during the first year, and additional tax and legal structures will  continue to reduce your taxes down to the 0-10% range. Without entities, this would be impossible.

Here’s a 20-year forecast that shows how the right combination of tax strategies, investing and corporate entity structure can grow your wealth:

Protect yourself from lawsuits, no matter how unlikely you think they are, so that you don't have any major setbacks on your journey to time and financial freedom.

The Path From High Tech To Financial Freedom

You’ve worked hard your entire life. It’s time to gain control over your time and money. Rapidly achieving true freedom requires a good tax and investment strategy.

We help tech executives and other professionals in the digital space save $20k or more in taxes during the first year—then re-invest that tax savings into turnkey properties, ATMs, self-storage syndications, apartment complex rehabs and more. We help them create the right tax and legal structures to continue to reduce your taxes and create true anonymity to protect their money.

In the end, we can help you:

• Own assets anonymously so that your wealth isn't at risk
• Set up limited liability companies to protect your wealth from lawsuits
• Minimize risk by separating your business activities from your assets
• Hold each asset in isolation so that lawsuits can't jeopardize your entire portfolio
• Use insurance as a last line of defense