Year-End Planning Essentials for Your Clients

Your October Content

Year-end planning is underway. We know you’re gearing up to implement clients’ year-end strategies and answer their questions as the end of the tax year approaches including charitable giving. As always, it is our pleasure to keep you up to date on what’s trending.

• Five charitable giving reminders worth repeating with clients before December 31.
• IRAs can play two very different roles in a client’s charitable plan: giving during life and giving as part of a legacy. Make sure your clients understand both opportunities—and why conversations about retirement assets and charitable giving should not be one-and-done.
• An appraisal and a Form 8283 were not sufficient. A recent Tax Court case is a striking reminder that one seemingly small omission in a charitable acknowledgment can have very expensive consequences.

Your Year-End, Five-Part Checklist

It’s October, and you’ve likely begun reminding clients about year-end tax deadlines and important loose ends to tie up before 2027 hits. Remember, memories are short, and just because you’ve already mentioned year-end deadlines doesn’t mean you should stop reminding your clients. Clients appreciate knowing that you are on top of their estate planning, tax planning, and financial planning priorities.

Reminders are especially important this year because new charitable deduction rules took effect in 2026 and markets may have created opportunities for clients to give appreciated assets—not to mention the usual changes in families, businesses, and finances that are inevitable every year.

Here is a checklist of five important items to include in your client conversations as you help them prepare for December 31 deadlines. 

1. Client 70½ or older? Ask about QCDs. Always.

   We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again! For clients age 70½ and older, a Qualified Charitable Distribution from an IRA can be an excellent way to support favorite charities. For 2026, the QCD limit is $111,000 per taxpayer. For clients who are also subject to required minimum distributions, a QCD can count toward the RMD while generally excluding the qualifying distributed amount from taxable income. Remember, under current law, QCDs cannot be made to donor advised funds, but designated, field of interest, and scholarship funds at Gulf Coast can receive them.

2. Much ado about bunching.

   The higher standard deduction means many clients will not itemize every year, and the new 0.5%-of-AGI floor on itemized charitable contribution deductions adds another consideration in 2026. A client who normally gives similar amounts each year might benefit from concentrating several years of charitable contributions into a single tax year and taking the standard deduction in intervening years. A donor advised fund at Gulf Coast makes this simple: the client contributes now and recommends grants to favorite charities over time.

3. Cash is not king! 

   Before a client writes a check to their fund at Gulf Coast or to other charities, encourage them to stop, think, and check with you first! Publicly traded securities held for more than one year are often particularly attractive assets to give to charity because donating the shares directly can generally allow the client to avoid recognizing the unrealized capital gains while qualifying for a charitable deduction based on fair market value, subject to applicable limitations. Gulf Coast can accept the stock and sell it so that the proceeds can be put to use in the client’s donor advised or other type of fund.

4. Stock isn't the only asset worth considering.

   Depending on a client's circumstances, closely held business interests, real estate, and other appreciated property may offer charitable planning opportunities. These gifts require more advance planning than writing a check—and that's precisely why October is a good time to start the conversation. Gulf Coast can help assess whether a proposed asset is appropriate to accept and work alongside you and the client’s other advisors. 

5. Think long-term.

   Year-end is also a great time to do a quick check-in on your clients’ long-term charitable plans. Have IRA beneficiary designations been reviewed lately? Clients are in "get it done" mode, so it's a good moment to make sure their estate plans reflect their charitable intentions.

Lifetime and Legacy Giving With IRAs

Retirement assets are becoming an increasingly important part of charitable planning. Americans hold more than $50 trillion in retirement accounts—nearly $20 trillion of which are held in IRAs. Meanwhile, the Great Wealth Transfer is underway, with more than $120 trillion expected to change hands over the coming decades.

In light of these trends, it is especially important for estate planning attorneys, CPAs, and financial advisors to remind clients that IRAs in particular offer two distinct charitable planning opportunities. Why? Because:

• Clients may blur the two opportunities together
• Clients may know about one opportunity but not the other
• Clients may simply not realize that IRAs and other retirement assets can play a role in their charitable plans at all

So what are these opportunities, in plain language that you can use with your clients?

Here’s a primer:

Lifetime giving opportunities for clients age 70½ and older

You’re likely well aware that a client age 70½ or older may make a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) directly from an IRA to a qualified charity, including some types of funds at Gulf Coast (but not a donor advised fund, although pending legislation could change that). In 2026, the inflation-adjusted QCD limit is $111,000 per taxpayer.

QCDs can become particularly relevant for a client when required minimum distributions begin, currently at age 73. A QCD can count toward a client's RMD while still excluding the distributed amount from taxable income, assuming applicable requirements are met. But there is no need to wait until RMD age to begin the conversation. The QCD opportunity begins at 70½.

Legacy giving opportunity for clients of all ages

You know quite well that a client can name a charity (including a donor advised fund at Gulf Coast) as the beneficiary of an IRA or other type of eligible retirement plan, allowing some or all of the assets remaining in the account at death to pass to charity. The designation itself is relatively simple, and it can be incorporated into a client's overall estate and charitable planning without necessarily changing the client's current lifetime giving.

This technique is especially useful because retirement plan assets passing to a charitable beneficiary typically are not subject to the income tax that generally applies when heirs receive taxable distributions from inherited traditional IRAs and retirement plans.

So what’s the issue?

Clients sometimes do not realize that these opportunities are independent of one another. One client might use QCDs to support favorite charities throughout retirement and also name a charity as the beneficiary of some or all of a retirement account. Another client may have little interest in lifetime IRA giving but find the beneficiary designation compelling as part of a legacy plan.

Keep your eyes on pending legislation that might expand the ways your clients can use QCDs. Congress is considering two bipartisan charitable giving proposals: the Charity Parity Act, which would permit QCDs directly from employer-sponsored retirement plans, such as 401(k)s, in addition to traditional IRAs, and the IRA Charitable Rollover Facilitation and Enhancement Act, which would extend QCD eligibility to donor advised funds. Neither proposal has advanced beyond committee, but both remain pending and, of course, could be very useful to expand charitable giving options if enacted. 

As always, please reach out to Gulf Coast anytime you encounter the topic of QCDs, retirement plan legacy gifts to charity, or any other issue involving charitable giving. We are here for you!

A Missing Sentence Could Cost Your Clients a Lot of Money

If you advise charitable clients, you know the IRS substantiation rules. But advisors and clients focused on valuing a gift and filing Form 8283 sometimes overlook the contemporaneous written acknowledgment. A June 2026 Tax Court case shows how costly that can be. 

Wells v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2026-49, involving a claimed charitable deduction carryover stemming from a gift of Mississippi real estate to a nonprofit organization. The property had been appraised at $4.42 million. And there was plenty of documentation surrounding the gift. The taxpayers had an appraisal. The property was transferred by deed. The charity's president sent a letter thanking the donors and referencing the property's appraised value. The taxpayers also filed a Form 8283.  

So what went wrong?  

The charity's acknowledgment letter did not state whether the organization had provided any goods or services in exchange for the contribution. You know the rule:  

Specifically, Internal Revenue Code Section 170(f)(8)(C) requires the donor to obtain the acknowledgment by the earlier of 

1. the date the donor actually files the tax return for the year of the gift or
2. the return's due date, including extensions.  

In the Wells case, the contemporaneous written acknowledgment was missing a critical required statement. Although the taxpayers argued that their various documents, considered together, were enough to substantiate the contribution, the Tax Court disagreed. The statutory acknowledgment requirement had not been satisfied, and the charitable deduction carryovers were disallowed.  

The lesson for advisors: The mechanics of charitable giving deserve just as much attention as the strategy. This is especially important when clients are giving real estate, closely held business interests, or other noncash assets where the deductions can be substantial and additional substantiation requirements may apply.   

The defect in Wells was fixable, but only if caught in time. Had someone reviewed the gift file while preparing the return for the year of the gift, the fix would likely have been simple: ask the charity for a corrected acknowledgment before filing. 

Gulf Coast is always glad to share rulings that shed light on charitable planning, and to serve as a sounding board as you help clients with complex gifts.