Tax planning shouldn’t occur just before the deadlines; it needs to happen at least monthly. At this time of year, there’s no shortage of “year-end tax-planning tips” that show up in articles, social media feeds and your email. It’s like clockwork: such articles magically appear from about Nov. 1 until Dec. 31 every year. And similar articles on “tax planning” will once again start appearing around mid-February of the following year and end after the April 30 personal tax filing deadline. This past week, I received quite a few of these types of articles on my feeds, including three on Nov. 1 alone. While these articles are well intentioned — and I certainly do not begrudge the authors for writing them — they frustrate me. Why? Well, it’s simple. Like most important things in life, tax planning shouldn’t occur just before the deadlines. It needs to be much more proactive than that (as I said in my book, Making Life Less Taxing)…

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