Do You Need a Financial Advisor Who Also Works With a CPA? What The Villages Retirees Should Know

Among the questions we see Village retirees searching for help with, one of the most specific and telling is this: “I need a financial advisor who also works with a CPA to reduce federal taxes on my RMDs, manage IRMAA brackets, and plan Roth conversions.”

That search query reveals something important: retirees in The Villages are increasingly sophisticated about their financial situation. They understand that tax planning and financial planning are not separate activities — they are two sides of the same decision. And they are frustrated by having to coordinate between an advisor and an accountant who may not be talking to each other.

This guide addresses why integrated financial and tax planning matters, what it looks like in practice for retirees in The Villages, and how West Financial Group approaches this coordination.

Why Financial Planning and Tax Planning Must Be Integrated in Retirement

During your working years, the relationship between financial planning and tax planning was relatively straightforward. You contributed to a 401(k), reduced your taxable income, and let your employer’s HR department manage the withholding. Year-end tax planning was largely reactive: your CPA looked at what happened and helped minimize the damage.

In retirement, that reactive approach becomes significantly more expensive. The decisions you make about when to draw from which accounts, whether and how much to convert to Roth, how to time annuity income, when to claim Social Security, and whether to realize capital gains all have interdependent tax consequences. Optimizing each decision in isolation without considering the others frequently leads to higher overall taxes than necessary.

The Coordination Gap

The most common scenario we encounter: a retiree has a financial advisor managing their investments and a CPA preparing their taxes. The two professionals are competent individually but do not regularly communicate. The result is that neither one is modeling the full impact of income decisions across time. The advisor recommends a Roth conversion without knowing it will trigger an IRMAA surcharge two years later. The CPA flags the surcharge but does not have visibility into upcoming financial moves that could have been timed to avoid it.

Closing this coordination gap — either by working with a single firm that handles both, or with an advisor who takes responsibility for the coordination — is one of the highest-value changes a retiree can make.

The Most Important Tax-Integrated Financial Decisions in Retirement

Roth Conversion Sizing

Converting traditional IRA money to Roth is only beneficial if the conversion is sized correctly. Too large a conversion pushes you into a higher tax bracket, can make more of your Social Security taxable, and may trigger or worsen IRMAA surcharges. Too small misses the opportunity to reduce future RMDs and future tax liability. Getting the sizing right requires simultaneous modeling of your current income, your expected future income, your projected RMDs, and your Medicare situation.

RMD Withdrawal Planning

Once RMDs begin at age 73, you have mandatory taxable income every year regardless of whether you need the money. Strategic planning in the years before age 73 — specifically, drawing down traditional IRA assets at lower rates or converting to Roth — can reduce the size of future RMDs and the tax burden they generate. This requires forward-looking planning that integrates your balance projections, expected returns, and tax bracket management.

Capital Gains Timing

If you have appreciated assets in taxable brokerage accounts — stocks, mutual funds, or property — the timing of when you realize those gains affects your tax bill. In years when your other income is lower, you may be able to realize long-term capital gains at the 0% federal rate, which is available to retirees below certain income thresholds. Knowing when to realize gains requires coordination between your investment management and your tax projection.

QCDs for Charitable Retirees

If you are 70½ or older and charitably inclined, a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) allows you to transfer up to $105,000 (in 2026) per year directly from your IRA to a qualified charity without the distribution being included in your taxable income. For retirees who are required to take RMDs, a QCD can satisfy all or part of that requirement without increasing taxable income — a significant advantage for those who would otherwise donate from after-tax funds.

What Integrated Planning Looks Like at West Financial Group

Skip West and his team do not operate in isolation from your tax situation. Every retirement income plan we build includes consideration of your current and projected tax picture. We work in coordination with your CPA or tax advisor to ensure that financial planning moves are timed and structured to minimize your overall tax burden.

This coordination includes modeling Roth conversion scenarios, projecting future RMD amounts and their tax impact, assessing IRMAA exposure two years in advance, and calibrating withdrawal sequencing to keep your taxable income within your target bracket.

Our retirement tax strategies service is specifically built around this integrated approach. And for retirees generating income through annuities, our knowledge of how fixed annuity and fixed index annuity income is taxed ensures that those products are positioned correctly from a tax perspective.

Finding the Right Professional Relationship

You may not find a single professional who is both a licensed financial advisor and a practicing CPA — and in many cases, working with two specialists who communicate well is actually preferable to working with one generalist. The key is to have an advisor who takes responsibility for ensuring that coordination happens — proactively, in advance, not after the tax year closes.

If your current financial advisor and CPA are not having regular conversations about your retirement income plan, that is a gap worth addressing.

Let’s Have a Tax-Aware Retirement Planning Conversation

If you are a retiree in The Villages or Wildwood and you want financial planning that takes your tax situation seriously from the beginning, we would be glad to sit down with you.

Call us at (352) 461-0645, email Skip@WestFinancialVillages.com, or schedule your free consultation online.

The best retirement income plan is not just the one that generates the most income — it is the one that keeps the most income in your pocket after taxes.