Specialized strategies for complex situations
Every family’s situation is unique. Our services are designed to address the specific challenges faced by ultra and high-net-worth families with significant pre-tax retirement assets.
The Legacy-IRA Plan©
Tax-Advantaged Life Insurance Solutions
Specialty Risk & Enterprise Insurance
Private Placement Life Insurance
Business Sale Tax Planning
The Legacy-IRA Plan©
The LIRA strategy addresses one of the most punitive tax exposures facing affluent families: the double taxation of IRA and qualified plan assets. Pre-tax retirement accounts are exposed to both income and estate taxes often to both income and estate tax, often resulting in 60–75% erosion across generations.
LIRA repositions qualified assets through an IRS- and DOL-sanctioned structure that converts heavily taxed retirement dollars into income and estate tax-free life insurance benefits held in trust. By leveraging pre-tax dollars inside a properly designed profit-sharing plan, families can reduce RMD drag, mitigate estate exposure, and create predictable, non-correlated liquidity for heirs.
For clients, this means transforming tax-inefficient assets into protected, multigenerational capital. For CPAs, attorneys, and advisors, LIRA provides a documented, compliance-driven framework supported by tax opinion, actuarial modeling, and coordinated implementation. The result: measurable tax mitigation, asset protection, and a controlled transfer of wealth—designed to protect, maintain, and enhance legacy capital.
Tax-Advantaged Life Insurance Solutions
Life insurance remains one of the most tax-efficient balance sheet tools available to high-net-worth families. Sage designs more tax-efficient life insurance strategies through thoughtful funding design, objective carrier selection, and clear, disciplined planning.
When properly structured—often through irrevocable trust planning and coordinated ownership design—life insurance can provide immediate liquidity at death, during a business transition, or when equalizing inheritances. For families with concentrated wealth in operating businesses, private equity, real estate, or other illiquid assets, it can help satisfy estate tax obligations, support succession planning, protect heirs from forced asset sales, and preserve family capital. We review existing life insurance portfolios and design tax-efficient solutions through disciplined underwriting, carrier analysis, and performance stress testing. In coordination with legal and tax counsel, Sage positions life insurance as a strategic capital planning tool for liquidity, estate planning, and multigenerational wealth preservation.
Specialty Risk & Enterprise Insurance
For families and closely held businesses with significant operating income, insurance can serve as more than risk transfer—it can become a strategic tax and balance sheet planning tool.
Through a properly structured insurance company domiciled in a favorable jurisdiction, business owners may allocate premium dollars to an affiliated risk entity designed to manage defined business risks while creating meaningful tax efficiencies. When structured in compliance with Internal Revenue Code provisions and applicable regulatory standards, premiums may be deductible to the operating company, while underwriting profits accumulate within the insurance entity under preferential tax treatment.
This architecture—similar in economic intent to captive insurance planning—creates a controlled environment for risk financing, liquidity accumulation, and long-term capital redeployment. Over time, surplus reserves can compound in a tax-advantaged manner and become a flexible asset for reinvestment, estate planning, or strategic balance sheet diversification.
For advisory teams, this requires disciplined actuarial support, regulatory compliance, and coordinated tax counsel. When properly implemented, it transforms a necessary business expense into a structured wealth-building strategy—enhancing capital efficiency while maintaining full alignment with fiduciary and regulatory standards.
Private Placement Life Insurance (PPLI)
Capital gains bypass and elimination planning is an advanced pre-sale strategy for business owners seeking to reduce, defer, or potentially eliminate capital gains tax before the sale of a company.
Implemented well in advance of a transaction, these strategies may include trust planning, charitable structures, installment techniques, entity restructuring, and other tax-efficient tools designed to preserve more after-tax wealth. Early planning can help maximize net proceeds, improve liquidity, and align a business sale with broader estate, legacy, retirement, and reinvestment goals. Timing is critical, as the most effective strategies generally must be established before a letter of intent, definitive agreement, or closing process is underway.
Capital gains bypass and elimination planning helps business owners preserve more of their sale proceeds through proactive tax planning completed before a transaction is in motion. By integrating advanced trust, charitable, restructuring, and installment strategies, owners can improve after-tax outcomes and align a sale with long-term wealth and legacy objectives.
Business Sale Tax Planning
Capital gains bypass and elimination planning is an advanced pre-sale strategy for business owners seeking to reduce, defer, or potentially eliminate capital gains tax before the sale of a company.
Implemented in advance of a transaction, these strategies may include trust planning, charitable structures, installment techniques, entity restructuring, and other tax-efficient tools designed to preserve more after-tax wealth. Early planning can help maximize net proceeds, improve liquidity, and align a business sale with broader estate, legacy, retirement, and reinvestment goals. Timing is critical, as the most effective strategies generally must be established before the definitive purchase agreement.
Capital gains bypass and elimination planning helps business owners preserve more of their sale proceeds through proactive tax planning completed before a transaction is in motion. By integrating advanced trust, charitable, restructuring, and installment strategies, owners can improve after-tax outcomes and align a sale with long-term wealth and legacy objectives.
