The questions we hear most.

Most CPAs file returns. They take what happened last year and put it on the right forms. That's compliance work, important, but it's documenting the past. We do compliance too, but the bigger value is what we add before the return: multi-year tax projections, Roth conversion strategy, IRMAA tracking, withdrawal sequencing, and coordination with the rest of your financial picture. The kind of work that lowers your lifetime tax bill, not just this April's. If your current CPA never sits you down and walks through what your taxes are going to look like in five years, you're getting filing, not planning.

A Go Beyond Tax tax-planning engagement does not require you to move your investments or replace your current financial advisor. We build the tax plan and, with your permission, coordinate the tax recommendations with the professionals you already use.

No. We focus on the tax side and coordinate with whoever is managing your investments. The friction we see most often comes from a CPA and an advisor who've never actually spoken about the same household: different assumptions, conflicting moves, opportunities that fall in the gap. Our job is to make sure your tax planning and your investment plan are pointing in the same direction, and to flag where they're not. If your advisor wants to talk to us, we'll talk to them.

We work virtually with retirement tax-planning clients across the U.S. Tax law is federal first and state second, and most of the planning work is federal. Onboarding captures the state you live in so anything that needs a state-specific rule check gets flagged before we plan around it, and we bring in a state specialist when one is warranted. Meetings are by video, or in person by appointment in Lockport, Amherst, Clarence and around Buffalo.

You tell us your situation: where you are, what you're trying to figure out, what's worrying you. We listen, ask sharp questions, and tell you what we see, straight, no pitch. Most first conversations surface at least one tax-planning opportunity the household hadn't been shown before. Sometimes it's a Roth conversion question. Sometimes it's an IRMAA bracket you're about to walk into. You leave with sharper questions, a clearer view of your situation, and (if we're a fit) the option to talk about working together. The session is complimentary. We don't charge for it because thirty straight minutes is the fastest way for both of us to know whether there's real planning work worth doing.

Five years out is actually one of the best windows. The Roth conversion math, the entity-structure decisions, the asset-location moves, the income-smoothing plays, these all work better when you have time to execute over multiple years. If you wait until you're 6 months from retiring, you've already missed most of the levers.

Almost certainly not. Even at age 70, with a few years until RMDs hit, there's meaningful Roth conversion runway. Once RMDs start (at 73, or 75 if you were born in 1960 or later), the Qualified Charitable Distribution strategy, asset-location optimization, tax-loss harvesting in brokerage accounts, and income-smoothing for IRMAA brackets are all live levers. Different toolkit at different ages. Always something to do.

A Roth conversion means moving money from a traditional IRA (where you'll pay tax later, when you withdraw) to a Roth IRA (where you've paid tax now and will never pay tax again, including on growth). It works when your tax bracket today is lower than your bracket will be in the future. For most retirees, the years between when they stop working and when RMDs kick in (at 73, or 75 if you were born in 1960 or later) are the lowest-bracket window of their adult life. Converting in that window, at low rates, can permanently lower their lifetime tax bill. The catch: it has to be sized right, timed right, and coordinated with everything else. That's where most people need help.

We work best with pre-retirees and retirees who are thinking seriously about how the next 30 years of taxes are going to play out, want one coordinated tax plan instead of three disconnected ones, value working with a smaller dedicated practice over a big shop, and are comfortable doing the actual work to act on a plan once it's built. If that sounds like you, the 30-minute session will tell us both quickly. If it doesn't, we'll either suggest a better fit or just have a useful conversation. No pressure either way.