Most of these decisions
close on December 31.
Keep More of Your Wealth is a thirty seven page guide to tax efficient investing for high income families. Written in plain language, current through the One Big Beautiful Bill provisions, and organized around the decisions that are still in front of you.
The silent tax leak
A certificate of deposit paying five percent feels responsible. For a household in the top brackets, most of that yield never reaches you.
Federal tax, state tax, and the net investment income surtax take the first bite. Inflation takes the rest. What survives is a fraction of the number on the statement, and it happens quietly, every year, without ever appearing as a loss.
The guide starts here because this is the leak nobody gets a notice about. The remaining chapters are about closing it.
What a 5% yield really returns
Illustration only, assuming a 35 percent combined marginal rate. Your own rates will differ.
Fifteen chapters and a checklist
Every chapter answers a version of the same question: how much of this dollar do you actually keep, and what changes the answer?
The Silent Tax Leak
Why ‘safe’ can mean ‘shrinking’
Key U.S. Tax Rules
What every high-income family must know
Federal Tax Brackets & Income Smoothing
Surtaxes, IRMAA, and bracket management
Investment Income Hierarchy
Interest, dividends, and capital gains
Retirement Accounts
401(k), IRA, Roth, and backdoor strategies
Roth Conversions
The most powerful long-term tax lever
Asset Location
What goes where and why it matters
Tax-Loss Harvesting
Capital gain management strategies
Taxable Account Design
Tax-efficient brokerage portfolio construction
Business Owner Strategies
QBI, S-Corp, and entity planning
Estate Planning
Taxes, step-up in basis, and legacy design
Charitable Giving
Giving as a tax strategy
Tax-Naive vs. Tax-Aware
The comparison that computes
One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB)
Planning windows 2026 to 2028
Implementation Roadmap
The five levers
Complete Action Checklist
Your year-end tax planning checklist
Fifteen chapters plus the appendix checklist, to work through each fall before the year closes on you.
The same people we work with every day
The strategies in this guide matter most when there are real decisions to make and a window in which to make them.
Retirees and Pre-Retirees
Withdrawal order, Roth conversions, Social Security timing, and Medicare surcharges that follow your income by two years.
Widows and Widowers
The shift to single filer brackets changes the math on almost everything, and it happens in the same year as everything else.
Small Business Owners
Entity structure, reasonable compensation, the QBI deduction, and retirement plans most employees never get access to.
Trustees and Households in Transition
A sale, an inheritance, a move between states, a change in filing status. Each one resets the plan.
If your return is straightforward and your filings are current, the guide is still worth reading, but you may not need much beyond it. We would rather say so than sell you something you do not need.
Get the Free US Tax Guide
A guide from Stephen Hazel: the deductions, credits, thresholds, and deadlines that most often change an outcome. Book a Call with Steve and you will get access to Tax Guide along with Complimentary Tax Audit based on your personal stuff.
A Tempe, Arizona practice led by Stephen Hazel, an Enrolled Agent and CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional, serving clients nationwide.
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