Atlas Tax Advisors teams with CPAs on tax planning

Atlas Tax Advisors is partnering with accounting firms on providing tax planning and wealth management services for clients.

“Currently it seems like there’s either the CPA or tax firm, where the CPA gets a PFS or CFP, or there’s the wealth management firm that gets a CPA or an EA to do the returns inside their firm,” said Atlas founder Kyle Walters. “The challenge that we found with both those models is that you have one person trying to do two things, but they’re pretty different roles. So what we’ve done is we have one firm that is a separate standalone wealth management firm and we have one firm that is a separate standalone tax firm. They’re very good at what they do within their own field.”

He collaborates with accounting firms, acting as a virtual CFO for clients. Walters has written an upcoming book, “The Personal CFO: The Simple, Transformative Way to Manage Money.”

“One of the things that’s a little bit different about us is we don’t do audit and attestation,” said Walters. “We partner with other firms for that because that’s not our core skillset. My take on it is every client is going to need different experts that we need to bring in. The CFO for a client does different things. The book talks about what a CFO does. They’re the catalyst that helps you move forward to make better decisions. They’re the advocate, that person in your corner that’s got your back. They’re going to be looking after you. And then it’s the integrator, the person that’s pulling together all these moving parts and these people into a cohesive plan. We act as the integrator. We bring in other accounting firms as needed. But our core business is high net worth estate planning, trust planning, business planning and all that.”

The word "taxes" is engraved on the side of IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C.
A detail of "Taxes" is seen on the side of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, April 9, 2014. The deadline for filing 2013 U.S. taxes is April 15. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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Tax planning Wealth management Estate planning
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