Year-end Tax Planning Checklist: How Sequoia Helps You Prepare for a Strong Start to 2026

As the year draws to a close, now is the ideal time to review your financial picture and ensure you’re entering 2026 with clarity, confidence, and momentum. Proactive year-end planning can help align your wealth strategy with your long-term goals, manage potential tax exposures, and create structure around the financial decisions you’ll face in the coming year.

While every client’s situation is unique, the following checklist outlines key areas to review, with specific examples of how your Sequoia Financial Group advisory team partners with you at each step.

1. Review Income and Cash Flow

Understanding how this year’s income compares to expectations is foundational for thoughtful planning. This includes reviewing realized income, investment distributions, business profits, and any liquidity events that may impact your tax liability.

Your Sequoia team conducts a comprehensive cash-flow review, stress-tests projections for the upcoming year, and can coordinate with your CPA to evaluate preliminary tax impacts.

2. Next Year, Integrate Tax and Estate Planning Early

Waiting until year-end to address tax and estate considerations can limit your options. As you define your 2026 financial goals, your Sequoia advisory team can help you incorporate tax efficiency and wealth transfer planning from the start. This includes reviewing existing trusts, gifting strategies, and philanthropic vehicles early in the year to allow for sufficient time to coordinate with legal counsel, tax advisors, valuation specialists, and other professionals as needed.

Proactive integration of these strategies not only supports your long-term goals but also enhances near-term returns by minimizing unnecessary tax drag.

3. Revisit Investment Portfolios

A year-end portfolio review helps ensure that your investments remain aligned with your goals, risk tolerance, time horizon, and overall financial strategy, especially after a year of market fluctuations, geopolitical shifts, and interest rate changes.

This review goes beyond performance. It can examine how your allocation performed under real market conditions, whether your current risk posture still aligns with your long-term objectives, and where opportunities may exist to reposition assets for 2026 and beyond.

We review your asset allocation, evaluate the impact of interest-rate changes, analyze performance in the context of your Investment Policy Statement (IPS), and identify opportunities for the upcoming year.

4. Evaluate Charitable Giving Plans

Philanthropy is often a powerful expression of your values, legacy, and long-term wealth strategy. As the year concludes, it’s essential to revisit your giving plan to ensure your contributions remain tax-efficient and aligned with the impact you want to make.

Your giving strategy may include direct gifts, donor-advised funds (DAFs), family foundations, charitable trusts, or qualified charitable distributions (QCDs). Each vehicle carries different tax implications, timing advantages, and opportunities for multigenerational involvement.

Your advisory team can help you evaluate various charitable techniques. For example, if you experienced a high-income year, we can model the tax impact of front-loading DAF contributions or donating appreciated securities to maximize charitable deductions.

5. Reassess Estate and Wealth Transfer Strategies

As your life evolves (new family members, changes in net worth, asset growth, business transitions, or shifts in tax policy), your estate plan should evolve, too. Significant changes in asset values or personal circumstances may necessitate a thorough review of how your wealth will be passed on to future generations.

We help you revisit beneficiary designations, evaluate trust structures, and analyze gifting options. Sequoia coordinates directly with your estate attorney, CPA, and valuation professionals to ensure all documents and strategies remain aligned with your multigenerational goals.

6. Review Business Interests

For business owners, year-end is a pivotal moment to evaluate how your company’s financial decisions align with your personal wealth goals. This includes reviewing compensation structures, distributions, capital expenditures, tax elections, equity planning, partnership agreements, and long-term transition considerations.

Because business and personal finances are often deeply intertwined, a coordinated review ensures that decisions made within your business support your overall financial well-being. Your Sequoia advisory team works closely with you to ensure that business decisions support your personal financial goals.

We also help you assess compensation and retirement plan options, confirm that partnership or shareholder agreements remain aligned with your intentions, plan for future liquidity events such as a sale or ownership transition, and review key insurance and risk management needs tied to the business.

7. Examine Retirement and Deferred Compensation Plans

Retirement and deferred compensation strategies play a crucial role in shaping both your long-term financial well-being and your near-term tax situation. Year-end is the perfect time to re-evaluate contribution levels, allocation choices, plan performance, and upcoming distribution schedules to ensure they remain aligned with your personal financial goals.

This includes reviewing 401(k) and IRA contributions, assessing employer plans such as 403(b)s or 457(b)s, and evaluating deferred compensation programs that may significantly impact income planning for the upcoming year.

Your Sequoia team reviews contribution opportunities (401(k), IRA, cash balance plans, SEP/SIMPLE plans), evaluates the tax efficiency of Roth conversions, and models distribution strategies for upcoming RMDs or deferred comp payouts. We also ensure that these decisions align with your long-term cash flow needs and tax profile.

8. Confirm Insurance and Risk Management Coverage

As life changes, so do your protection needs. Year-end is an ideal time to review your insurance coverage across life, disability, property and casualty, long-term care, and liability to ensure your risk-management structure still reflects your current life stage, assets, and overall wealth picture.

This review is particularly critical if you have experienced significant life transitions during the year, such as acquiring property, selling a business, welcoming a child, or expanding your investment portfolio.

We conduct a holistic risk review across life, disability, long-term care, property and casualty, and umbrella coverage. If gaps exist, like insufficient liability coverage after acquiring a new property, we can coordinate with your insurance providers to bring coverage back in line with your goals and exposures.

9. Plan for Next Year

Year-end planning isn’t just about wrapping up the current year; it’s about establishing clarity, structure, and direction for the year ahead. Proactive planning for the upcoming year can significantly influence tax outcomes, liquidity management, investment decisions, business transitions, and your long-term legacy.

This forward-looking review helps ensure that your financial plan remains dynamic and responsive to both life changes and the evolving economic environment.

Your Sequoia team can help you establish 2026 priorities, including liquidity planning, tax optimization ahead of the 2026 estate tax sunset, business transition timelines, philanthropic goals, and investment strategy adjustments tied to market opportunities. We also build or update your financial plan and ensure your IPS reflects your evolving goals.

The Bottom Line

Thoughtful year-end planning creates clarity, confidence, and alignment across your entire financial picture. At Sequoia Financial Group, we partner with you and your attorneys, CPAs, and other professionals to ensure that every decision reflects your values, goals, and long-term strategy.

If you’re ready to review your year-end priorities or begin planning for 2026, your Sequoia advisory team is here to help. Let’s start the conversation.