Description
Tax Planning, Tax Advice, and Tax Preparation by Investment Advisers: Compliance Risks and Best Practices
This course will address several of the regulatory, legal, and operational risks that arise when SEC-registered and state-registered investment advisers provide tax planning, tax advice, or income tax return preparation services. The course will cover fiduciary duty, Form ADV disclosure, conflicts of interest, scope-of-service limitations, coordination with CPAs and attorneys, Circular 230 considerations, tax preparer obligations, IRC Section 7216 consent requirements, privacy/cybersecurity obligations, and best practices for policies, procedures, client disclosures, and engagement letters.
Learning Objectives
By the end of the course, participants should be able to:
- Distinguish among tax-aware financial planning, tax planning, tax advice, and income tax return preparation.
- Identify when tax-related recommendations may create fiduciary, disclosure, supervisory, licensing, or liability issues for an investment adviser.
- Explain why tax services must be accurately described in Form ADV, client agreements, marketing materials, and internal compliance policies.
- Recognize when a tax strategy should be referred to or approved by a CPA, attorney, enrolled agent, or other qualified tax professional.
- Identify key tax return preparation obligations, including PTIN/EFIN, tax preparer penalties, client authorization, return review, document retention, and e-filing controls.
- Understand the importance of IRC Section 7216 consents when tax return information may be used or disclosed for non-tax-preparation purposes.
- Apply privacy, cybersecurity, vendor due diligence, and incident response controls to tax data handled by advisory firms or affiliated tax preparation entities.
- Develop practical best practices for engagement letters, disclaimers, supervision, documentation, and client communications.
Instructor(s)
Bryan Hill, President of RIA Compliance Consultants, Inc.
Jarrod James, Senior Vice President of RIA Compliance Consultants, Inc.
Audience
Investment Adviser Representatives; Supervisors; Compliance Professionals and Executives
Continuing Education
IAR CE: This course has been approved by NASAA as an IAR CE Course providing two hours of credit in the Ethics & Professional Responsibility category.
There are several additional requirements before you are eligible to receive credit:
- Login – You must be logged in during the live presentation under your email address. You cannot be logged in under someone else’s email address.
- View Entire Live Presentation – You are required to watch the entire live presentation the course. If you do not watch the entire live presentation, you will have to watch the recorded version in its entirety.
- Attendance Codes – As you watch the live presentation, you will receive two attendance codes, each containing three alphanumeric characters. Save these codes. You will need to enter the full six-character attendance code prior to accessing the final quiz.
- Purchase CE Course
- If the course is approved by NASAA for IAR CE and you purchased this webinar on an a la carte basis, you will then need to request a course discount code from RCC to utilize at https://www.CE4Advisers.com .
- If you are attending this course as part of an Annual Compliance Program package of RCC, you will need to purchase the IAR CE Course at https://www.CE4Advisers.com or use a course discount code provided under your firm’s Annual Compliance Program package. Please note that note only certain ACP packages include course discount codes.
- IAR Acknowledgement – Sign the IAR CE Acknowledgement & Attestation.
- Final Quiz (Recorded Course Only) – You must complete each lesson and receive a score of 70% on the final quiz to receive IAR CE credit (assuming the course has been approved by NASAA). You are only allowed three attempts on the final quiz.
- Survey. You have to answer a survey on the course and instructor.
NASAA Disclaimer
NASAA does not endorse any particular provider of CE courses. The content of the course and any views expressed are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of NASAA or any of its member jurisdictions.
Important Disclosures
Please carefully review the following disclosures and limitations of this course.
- Although the sponsor of this course, RIA Compliance Consultants, Inc. (“Sponsor”), is an affiliate of a law firm and Sponsor may have an individual on its staff that is also licensed as an attorney providing legal services in a completely separate capacity, Sponsor is not a law firm and does not provide legal services or legal advice. A consulting relationship with Sponsor does not provide the same protections as an attorney-client relationship.
- This course is offered for educational purposes only and should not be considered an engagement with the course instructor or Sponsor. This presentation should not be considered a comprehensive review or analysis of the topics discussed today. To these educational materials are not a substitute for consulting with an attorney or compliance consultant in a one-on-one context whereby all the facts of your situation can be considered in their entirety.
- Information provided during this course is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including, without limitation, warranties and merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. The course instructor and Sponsor assume no liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in the content of the presentation.
- To the extent that this course description or the course itself includes reference to a pending enforcement action or a consent order, please understand that the course instructor and Sponsor have not not verified the accuracy of the securities regulator’s complaint, order or other statements, and the course instructor and Sponsor are not offering any opinion whether the allegations made by the securities regulator in such enforcement action are accurate.
- The course instructor and Sponsor are not be under an obligation to advise you of any regulatory developments or subsequent changes to educational material presented in this course.
- There is no guarantee or promise that concepts, opinions and/or best practices discussed in this course will be favorably received by a regulator or result in a certain outcome in adversarial proceeding.
- Communication with the course instructor is not protected from discovery by third-parties during litigation or regulatory proceedings. Please keep questions during this course in a hypothetical form.
- Reviewing the slides and/or attending this course does not create a consulting engagement with RIA Compliance Consultants, Inc.
