Key Employees & Executives
The same arrangement, seen from both sides of the table.
Owners want to keep the people the company depends on. Those people want to know what their compensation is actually worth and how to plan around it. I work with both, and understanding one side makes the advice better on the other.
If you own the company
Give your best people a reason to stay.
Retention has to be worth more to them than a competing offer, and still work for the company’s cash flow and tax position. That balance is the whole design problem.
- Deferred compensation arrangements
- Executive bonus and phantom equity
- Buy-sell agreements and internal buyer funding
- Key person coverage on the people you cannot replace
If you are the executive or key employee
Know what your package is really worth.
High income is not the same as a plan. Most of the decisions in front of you are hard to reverse and easy to make by default, especially the ones with a deadline attached.
- Deferral elections and distribution timing
- Equity, options, and concentrated stock positions
- Tax planning across high-earning years
- Retirement date, benefits, and what happens if you leave
A note on who this is for.
Business owners are my primary focus. But a good portion of the work is with executives, key employees, and other high-income professionals who are not owners at all.
The planning questions rhyme: compensation concentrated in one place, elections that are hard to undo, a tax bill that grows faster than the income, and a retirement date that has to survive a few market cycles. If that describes your situation, the fact that you receive a W-2 does not make you a worse fit.
Different source of income. Many of the same problems.