Sean Polley

Your 2027 federal tax bill comes with a choice it never had before. The new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit gives a dollar-for-dollar federal credit of up to $1,700 per person for cash gifts to approved K-12 scholarship organizations. Married couples filing jointly can claim up to $3,400 when each spouse makes a qualifying gift. Florida has opted in. Orlando families can use it from the first day of 2027. Picture a hypothetical couple who already give a few thousand dollars a year to education causes. If they send $3,400 of that giving to a Florida-approved scholarship granting organization, their federal income tax could fall by the full $3,400. The same generosity now costs them a fraction of what it used to. A few details are worth knowing before the check goes out: The gift has to be cash, so appreciated stock stays in your usual giving plan. The organization must appear on Florida’s approved list for that year. The credit is nonrefundable, and any unused portion carries forward for up to five years. For the families we serve, a change like this belongs in the conversation we have with you and your CPA before your 2027 giving calendar is set. If education is close to your heart, let’s talk about how to make your giving go further.

Money inside a qualified plan is money outside the business. That is the part owners undervalue. Diversification with a deduction attached to it.

I spend part of most weeks reading through what families have gathered over twenty or thirty years of building something: wills, trust agreements, insurance policies, and statements from accounts they half remember opening. Good attorneys and good CPAs prepared most of it. What I keep noticing is how rarely any of those documents were drafted with the others in view.

Imagine a business owner here in Central Florida who has spent twenty-five years building a company from the ground up. The business is worth a great deal, and most of her family’s net worth is tied up in it. She still can’t picture a year where it runs without her. I made this short video for owners in that spot. When you work with our team, we plan your business and your family’s wealth together. Your tax strategy and your eventual exit move on the same timeline, and we work directly with your CPA and attorney so you aren’t carrying messages between offices. It’s one relationship with people who know your whole picture. If this sounds familiar, I’d be glad to sit down with you.

The goal isn’t more return. It’s more freedom: time bought back, capital simplified, and a life of meaning.

Owners often discover the tax consequences of their structure at the closing table. That is the most expensive place in the world to learn anything.

Did you wake up this morning determined to be average? Of course not. You were given talents, opportunities, and the ability to make a difference. Don't settle for a life of simply getting by when you're capable of so much more. The world doesn't need you to play small. It needs you to become everything you're capable of being.

I do not replace your CPA or your attorney. I work alongside them, and I make sure the questions get asked before the decisions get made rather than after.

Your estate plan and your buy-sell agreement should agree with each other. They frequently don't, and nobody notices until both get triggered on the same day.

Good advice is a governance system, not a prediction service. For a busy professional, the most valuable advisor translates goals, risks, and liquidity into repeatable decisions and prevents emotions from rewriting the plan under pressure.

Four things move a smaller company's multiple more than anything else. Customer concentration, quality of earnings, depth of the management team, and whether the business runs without the founder. None of them change during diligence. All of them take years.

Turning 65 and Still Working? What You Need to Know About Medicare hartfordfunds.com/insights/i…

The management layer is where transferable value gets built. It is also the first expense owners cut in a soft year. Worth noticing how often those two facts collide.

Check it out... aoniclife.com/pages/aonic-cl…

You cannot change where you started, but you can change where you're headed, and it begins with the choice you make today.

Asset sale or stock sale is not a detail. It can move net proceeds by seven figures on a mid-size deal, and it tends to get decided under time pressure by people who are tired.

What if the sale lands at 70 percent of what you expected? Run that number now, while you can still do something about the answer. Most owners have never seen it.

Check out the latest article in my newsletter: The Right Room Changes Everything linkedin.com/pulse/right-roo… via @LinkedIn

Estate plans age badly. The business tripled, the family changed, the tax law moved, and the documents still describe a situation that was accurate in 2014.

The valuation formula in a fifteen-year-old agreement was designed for a company that no longer exists. It will still be enforced.