Brian Cunning, CFP®

Factoring the impact of taxes into your investment decisions can help you keep more of your hard-earned money, both now and in the future. Explore key questions that investors should be asking themselves about about their taxes here.

Smart tax planning can help you save more for retirement and keep more of what you've already saved. Consider these tax-efficient retirement planning strategies.

Morgan Stanley Portfolio Solutions/Parametric Tax Efficient Portfolios are designed for high-net-worth investors seeking a tax-managed, diversified portfolio. Each customizable portfolio is managed by Parametric, a pioneer in managing tax-efficient portfolios, with asset allocation driven by the investment insight of the Morgan Stanley Global Investment Committee. Portfolios are monitored, evaluated and rebalanced to maintain diversification and react to changing market conditions.

The 2025 Tax Rate Schedule provides standard deductions for different filing statuses, phaseout amounts, and tax deadlines. It includes additional deductions for non-itemizers and tax rates for long-term capital gains, qualified dividends, and child tax credit. The schedule also presents tax tables, deductibility of long-term care premiums, social security benefits, retirement plan contribution limits, and traditional IRA and Roth IRA deductibility and contribution limits.

Brian provides clients with a smart way to give to causes and charities they care about through Morgan Stanley GIFT. The donor advised fund, GIFT, is a 501(c)(3) public charity structured to offer a simple, thoughtful and tax-advantageous way to support your favorite charities.

Insights & Outcomes is designed to inspire and inform, offering a sophisticated blend of in-depth analyses and actionable strategies from industry leaders and specialists, principally from within Family Office Resources but drawing on the broader resources of Morgan Stanley as well.

Brian engages with our Executive Planning Director and Wealth Planning Center to provide a fully integrated, comprehensive analysis of your balance sheet, estate plan, and investment strategy through a collaborative process- at your request we will coordinate with your legal tax advisors as well.

Check out the most recent edition of my newsletter, Cunning Insights, geared with content to refine your perspective on managing your wealth.

The Global Investment Office (GIO) at Morgan Stanley is a comprehensive resource dedicated to providing investment solutions and strategic advice. With a focus on portfolio construction, market research, and investment strategy, the GIO supports clients by offering best-in-class resources and expert guidance to help navigate complex market landscapes and achieve investment goals.

It is critical that all business owners have a plan for exiting/selling their business or transitioning their business to the next generation. These plans can change over time and will likely change many times over the course of the business owner's life, but a failure to plan (even if the plan is liquidation) can leave spouses, beneficiaries, employees and customers lost and without many viable options. This presentation will help guide you as you make critical decisions on how, when and to whom your business should pass. It will also help determine the estate planning strategies, charitable and tax planning strategies to employ while on this journey.

A Family Limited Partnership or "FLP" (or Family LLC) is a business entity which can facilitate business succession, gifting and estate planning. A properly created and administered FLP potentially allows you to leverage your lifetime gift tax exemption by making gifts of limited partnership interests, in trust or outright, to your family members on a discounted basis.

A grantor can create an irrevocable trust funded by a gift, and continue to be the owner of the trust assets for federal income tax purposes but not for federal estate and gift tax purposes. The grantor can then sell property to the trust in exchange for the trust's interest bearing promissory note, without having to recognize a gain on the transaction.

An outright gift generally removes the gifted property and all future income and appreciation on that property from the donor's gross estate for federal estate tax purposes. The underlying gifted property is treated as an "adjusted taxable gift" and will use part or all of the grantor's available gift tax exemption. If rather than making an outright gift of property, assets are transferred to an intentionally defective grantor trust (IDGT), the trust assets generally will not be included in the donor's estate, but the donor (the "grantor") will continue to be taxed on trust income during the donor's lifetime due to the grantor trust status of the IDGT.

A spousal lifetime access trust, or "SLAT," is an irrevocable trust that names the donor's spouse as a discretionary beneficiary along with others (e.g., children). The donor transfers assets to the trust using a portion of the donor's available federal gift tax exemption or as a taxable gift at time of funding.