The Case for a Multi-Year Tax Strategy

Every year around tax time, the calls start coming in:
“What can I do to lower my tax bill this year?”

Fair question.

Nobody wants to pay more than they have to. But for business owners, the single-year mindset around taxes is one of the most common and costly planning mistakes there is.

Minimizing Today Can Cost You Tomorrow

William Bissett and the Portus Wealth Advisors team hear it constantly. Clients looking for ways to reduce their tax liability right now, whether that means maxing out deductions, rushing to purchase equipment before December 31st, or deferring income wherever possible.

None of those moves are inherently wrong. The problem comes when they’re made in isolation, without any view of what the next two or three years are likely to look like.

The 401k illustration makes this clear. If you are in the 10% tax bracket today and contributing to a traditional 401k, you’re deferring taxes at that low rate. But if your income grows substantially by the time you start taking distributions, you may find yourself paying taxes on that money at 25 or 30%. You deferred at 10% and paid at 30%. The tax arbitrage you were counting on has worked against you.

What a Multi-Year Strategy Actually Looks Like

The better approach is to zoom out.

Rather than asking what you can do to minimize taxes this year, the question becomes what does the next two to three years look like for your income, and what tax bracket are you likely to be sitting in?

That shift in perspective opens up conversations that a single-year view never surfaces. It also changes when those conversations need to happen. The Portus team pushes clients to engage their CPA in the summer, not in October or December when time’s already run out. Starting early means there is room to model different scenarios, align on what the business is expected to do over the coming years, and deploy strategies in a way that makes sense across the full picture rather than just the current calendar year.

The Business Adds Another Layer

For business owners specifically, this kind of forward planning matters even more. Business income can shift significantly from one year to the next. A strong year followed by a year of heavy reinvestment can create real opportunities if you see them coming. A reactive year-end scramble rarely captures those.

Understanding where the business is headed, not just where it is today, is what allows a multi-year tax strategy to really work. That means bringing your CPA, your financial advisor, and your business projections into the same conversation, ideally well before the fourth quarter puts everyone on the defensive.

Tax season will come around again next year.

The question is whether you will be reacting to it or ready for it.

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Stop Thinking Year to Year: The Case for a Multi-Year Tax Strategy | Portus Perspectives

​[00:00:00] 

Taxes. Uh, so as we record this, it’s pretty dang close to tax tax time. It’s at the end of March, 2026, and so everybody’s in the mindset of trying to scramble to get their taxes either extended or or filed if they can. And as we take these phone calls at, at this time of year, and again at the end of the year as as well, I rarely get phone calls from clients saying, Hey, what can I do to increase my tax liability this year?

It’s always a discussion of what can I do to minimize my taxes this year? Right? And so. It’s a great conversation to have, right? We’re don’t want to pay more than we need to pay in, in, in federal or state income taxes if you live in a state with state income taxes. And so that minimization strategy is, is always something that comes into mind.

But the reality is [00:01:00] minimizing taxes today might not always be the best possible decision. Um, and so I’ll go back and, you know, the easiest way to think about it. Is somebody that’s contributing to a 401k plan. Um, and so if I’m in the, we’ll pick apart a, a, um, a, um, somebody not making as much money. If I’m in the 10% income tax bracket today and I’m contributing money to a traditional 401k plan, then.

I’m deferring at 10% and if something happens in the future, and when I start taking distributions from that 401k plan, I’m paying taxes at the 20 or 25 or 30%, um, rate, then I’ve deferred at the 10% rate and, and then I start taking distributions at the 20 or 30% rate. I’ve lost that tax arbitrage and so.

Tax minimization today isn’t the right way to think about it. Um, [00:02:00] what we really wanna sit down and think about is understanding a multi-year strategy. Um, and that multi-year strategy is, you know, maybe a two to three year strategy. It also should be a peek into the future of what might the future hold from an income tax perspective, not for the federal income tax totality, right?

Those get changed on a regular basis by Congress, but more about where your income is gonna be and where that traditionally might spell for you to sit in from the federal income tax bracket. You know, we’re always rushing around to try to buy a vehicle or try to buy this, or try to buy that at the end of the year so that we can fully expense that item this year.

And again, I’m not saying that’s the wrong decision to make, but when we think about a year by year. Decision from an income tax perspective, and we peel back out and we look at a multi-year strategy. Then oftentimes when we think about a multi-year income tax strategy, and we engage the [00:03:00] CPA, we engage the client, we outline what the business is currently doing this year versus what we expect the business to be able to do.

Over the course of the next couple years, we can open up some additional strategies or some additional conversations that might come to light about. What makes sense over a multi-year income tax? Play rather than a single year income tax play. So a lot of fun things come out of those conversations is why we usually like to push in on the CPA and the client to begin tax strategies in the summer.

Open up those conversations, really understand what the business is doing, what the business can do, and deploy those strategies across multiple years rather than just a single year. Hey, I’m at the end of the year. It’s been good year. I need to minimize income taxes. So try to think. Multi-year rather than single year with taxes.

ORIGINAL MEDIA SOURCE(S):

William Bissett: The Case for a Multi-Year Tax Strategy | Portus Perspectives

Originally Recorded: March 30, 2026

Portus Perspectives: Episode 8

By /Published On: April 20, 2026/