Approved IAR CE Courses

Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) under IRC Section 1202 offers significant tax advantages to founders, investors, and advisors who understand how to navigate its requirements. Enhanced by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), these benefits can translate into meaningful tax savings, but only if specific qualifications are met. In this session, expert Lisa Fetherngill will explore the requirements to qualify for QSBS treatment, highlight potential pitfalls and nuances, and review both tax and non-tax advantages of QSBS status. Attendees will also discover advanced planning opportunities, including strategies to combine QSBS treatment with gifting and other techniques to maximize benefits for clients.

Financial advisors often work with clients who are nearing or in retirement, and healthcare is one of the most pressing concerns for people as they approach retirement age and beyond. But although it's important to make sure the numbers all add up and that clients have the resources to pay for healthcare costs throughout their retirement, what's even more important (but often forgotten) is that they - and the people who might become responsible for caring for them - are aligned on their healthcare goals, so they can maintain their desired quality of life even when health issues arise.Join Carolyn McClanahan, founder of Life Planning Partners, at the October Kitces Monthly Webinar, where she will discuss the real-life challenges faced by planners and their clients around meeting healthcare needs in retirement, including pre-planning before a medical event occurs to ensure the client's goals are communicated with and supported by family and health care providers, deciding who will provide care (be it family members, friends, or professional help) and how they will be paid, and learning what government assistance programs may be available to help with the cost of care.

Transitioning from making and saving money to spending one’s life savings is a vulnerable period for clients that often centers on a major underlying goal: ensuring the assets last through the remainder of their lives. Researchers and practitioners have found several techniques to meet this goal, but they all have tradeoffs. In this webinar, Amy Arnott of Morningstar reviews the evolution of retirement income planning and examines how flexible withdrawal strategies can improve retirement outcomes compared to the traditional 4% rule. She explains the strengths and weaknesses of fixed real withdrawal approaches, emphasizing that retirees’ spending patterns typically change over time and that market conditions materially affect sustainable withdrawal rates.
Throughout the presentation, eight flexible spending methods are compared, including guardrails, RMD-based withdrawals, constant percentage spending, and endowment approaches, highlighting the trade-offs between higher lifetime spending, cash flow stability, and leaving a legacy. Arnott also discusses the importance of incorporating Social Security timing, non-portfolio income, inflation risk, and spending shocks into retirement planning decisions.

In this continuing education session, learners will review 2 Nerd’s Eye View blog articles: Box Spreads Explained: A (Lower-Interest) Borrowing Alternative To Margin Loans And SBLOCs and Reducing Retirement Income Volatility With The Modified RMD Safe Withdrawal Method.

In the first article, Ben Henry-Moreland explains how box spreads function as a synthetic lending strategy that can provide lower borrowing costs than traditional margin loans and SBLOCs by leveraging options pricing tied to near risk-free rates. It also evaluates their tax treatment, risks (notably margin calls), and appropriate use cases within the broader hierarchy of debt options.

In the second article, Michael Woloch, CFP®, illustrates how a modified Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) approach can be used as a flexible and practical safe withdrawal strategy in retirement. It highlights how using a rolling three-year average of portfolio values can reduce income volatility while maintaining adaptability to market conditions and client goals.

New planning strategies often create confusion for both advisors and clients, especially when complex rules, unfamiliar terminology, and political branding create barriers to clear communication and objective analysis. With the introduction of Section 530A “Trump Accounts,” advisors must navigate new contribution structures, tax treatments, and planning use cases while determining where these accounts fit relative to more established vehicles like 529 plans and custodial accounts. In this webinar, Ben Henry-Moreland breaks down the core mechanics of Trump Accounts, including contribution types, growth-period restrictions, distribution rules, and post-age-18 planning strategies such as Roth conversions. He also highlights key pitfalls, including gift tax concerns, kiddie tax implications, and state-level tax differences, while offering practical guidance on how to explain these accounts to clients. This webinar concludes with a framework advisors can utilize when evaluating whether Trump Accounts align with client goals, particularly in the context of retirement-focused gifting strategies for children.

In this continuing education session, learners will review 2 Nerd's Eye View articles: Business Buy-Sell Agreements In The Wake of Connelly V. IRS: Ensuring Clients' Business Succession Plans Don't Create Future Estate Tax Issues and Gifting Without The Headache: Tax-Efficient Strategies To Stay Under Gift Reporting Limits. In the first article, advisors will review the mechanics of buy-sell agreements, including the pros and cons of cross-purchase versus entity-purchase agreements, and then delve into the impacts of the Supreme Court's decisions in Connelly V. IRS. In the second article, David Haughton, JD, CPWA' provides an overview of gifting, including what gifts result in taxation or the necessity of gift tax reporting. Strategies to structure gifts to not use the lifetime gift and estate tax exemption or the annual exclusion are also discussed.

If you spend any time on the internet or watching the news, you will be bombarded with doom and gloom. In this webinar, Michael Finke makes the case for optimism. In his research, Michael has found that optimism helps people to invest more in the present with expectations of payoffs in the future in the realms of health, relationships, and personal finances, setting clients up with a higher chance of a happier retirement. Additionally, optimism can help clients be resilient when faced with inevitable setbacks in life and in their investments. However, overoptimism can negatively affect financial behaviors like risk tolerance. Finke uses this research to explain how advisors can work best with optimistic clients and encourage optimism in clients that tend to have a more pessimistic outlook.

The compliance regulations that RIAs are subject to can and do evolve over time, as markets and platforms change, and regulators update their own rules accordingly. In this session, compliance attorney Chris Stanley will address the latest changes in regulations for RIAs and their IARs, covering five critical topics: FinCEN Beneficial Ownership Reporting, FTC Non-Competes, SEC Marketing Rule Enforcement Actions, Custody Rule Triggers and Reporting, and the SEC's Reg S-P Rule Amendments, to help financial advisors ensure they stay compliant with the evolving regulatory landscape.