Enjoy the current installment of “Weekend Reading For Financial Planners” – this week’s edition kicks off with the news that the IRS issued guidance and a revenue ruling drawing boundaries around what it perceives to be legitimate uses of the increasingly popular 351 exchange strategy. While the strategy as a whole remains a viable way to manage securities with large embedded capital gains, the agency warned against certain tactics within ETFs leveraging it, including the rapid turnover of contributed securities, seed baskets that don’t match the ETF’s stated strategy, and transactions that appear pre-arranged. Which suggests that advisors can support clients not only in considering this strategy when appropriate but also in evaluating funds to ensure they will stay on the right side of IRS guidelines (and avoid a potential negative tax surprise for their clients in the process).
Also in industry news this week:
- The Treasury Department announced this week that it auto-enrolled more than 60 million children in the “Trump Accounts” program (though parents still need to claim the accounts to access available government and philanthropic contributions to them)
- A recent survey suggests a valuable role for financial advisors in helping hesitant clients (with the means to do so) spend more in retirement
From there, we have several articles on tax planning:
- Four mistakes related to IRAs that can’t be undone (and how advisors can help clients avoid them), with indirect rollovers being a major culprit
- Why October 15th represents a key deadline for several transactions related to IRA contributions
- While the Federal government is in the midst of modernizing the IRA rollover process, advisors continue to have a valuable role to play in ensuring rollovers of workplace retirement plan assets are completed correctly (avoiding negative tax consequences in the process)
We also have a number of articles on marketing:
- The content, activity, and strategies that help advisors connect with prospective clients on LinkedIn
- A “3-2-1 Method” for consistent (but not necessarily time-intensive) engagement on social media
- How financial advisors can scale their social media marketing by leveraging evergreen content
We wrap up with three final articles, all about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and thinking:
- How thinking (and writing) for oneself can help professionals stand out at a time of increasing use of AI for these activities
- Why “cognitive delegation” in the workplace could make it harder to attribute original work to up-and-coming employees
- Seven principles for writing with (and without) AI, including the importance of maintaining an original voice
Enjoy the ‘light’ reading!
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