Short answer
What this page explains
The diagnostic is a fixed-scope review. You provide documents through a secure channel, MMVFO studies the whole picture, and you receive a written tax operating map your advisor team can execute. The intake form lives on the Request Diagnostic page.
Who qualifies
Fit is driven by complexity, not a headline net worth figure. The common thread is a tax picture that no single advisor sees in full.
Business complexity
Multi-entity structures, equity compensation, a pending sale or financing, or income moving across S corporations, partnerships, and trusts.
Asset complexity
Depreciation and cost recovery questions, passive activity posture, concentrated positions, or accounts spread across managers who do not see each other’s moves.
Coordination complexity
Multiple advisors, trusts, gift history, or cross-border exposure. Advisor teams also use the diagnostic as a second set of tax-led eyes.
The diagnostic earns its place as entities, trusts, transactions, and advisors multiply; a single-income, single-account household rarely needs it.
What the diagnostic reviews
The review builds a consolidated picture first: every entity, account, trust, and advisor on one page. Six areas get attention.
Timing windows and elections
Gain and loss timing, bracket and threshold positioning, entity and compensation structure, charitable sequencing, and closing windows.
Cross-account coordination
A loss harvested in one account while a gain lands next door. Income events stacked into the same year. Duplicated portfolios across managers.
Documentation and substantiation
Whether the records behind each position exist, where they live, and what an examiner would ask to see.
Compliance and reporting
Filing gaps, foreign reporting questions, open notices, and screening for positions that carry their own disclosure requirements.
How the pieces connect
How entities, trusts, insurance, and the estate plan interact with the income tax picture, and where they contradict each other.
Lanes and sequence
Which licensed professional owns each open item, and in what order the items should move.
Common failure modes
- Tax rules that reach across all of a taxpayer’s and spouse’s accounts, including IRAs, such as wash sale treatment, and return-level income thresholds, get tripped when each advisor sees only one account.
- Planning moves attempted after a transaction becomes binding often lose their intended effect. The useful window closes when the deal hardens.
- Structures adopted on paper, without the records and real economics behind them, add risk instead of value.
- Every advisor can be right in their own lane while the combined result leaks, because nobody holds the whole map.
What you provide
Send what applies. Requests are scoped: MMVFO asks for what the review needs, not everything you have.
- Federal and state income tax returns for recent years, individual and entity
- Entity organization chart, operating agreements, and ownership records
- K-1s and schedules from partnerships, S corporations, and trusts
- Trust instruments, wills, and gift tax filing history
- Cap table, equity compensation schedules, and basis records
- Real estate schedules, depreciation records, and cost segregation studies
- Investment account statements across managers and custodians
- Life insurance policy summaries and illustrations
- Transaction documents: letters of intent, purchase agreements, financing terms
- IRS or state notices and open examination correspondence
- Prior planning memos, valuations, and appraisals
- Advisor roster with roles and contact points
Missing documents are themselves a finding; the deliverable includes a punch list of records worth completing before positions are relied on.
What you receive: a written tax operating map
The deliverable is a working document, not a pitch. It typically includes five components.
- Prioritized issue register. Each finding stated plainly: what it is, why it matters, and what happens if it sits unaddressed.
- Advisor responsibility map. Which lane owns each item: CPA, attorney, investment adviser, insurance professional, or valuation specialist.
- Sequencing view. What should be reviewed before what, tied to filing deadlines, election windows, and transaction dates.
- Documentation punch list. Records to locate, complete, or create so positions rest on evidence rather than memory.
- Open questions for licensed professionals. Items framed for your CPA, counsel, or other advisors to resolve under their own engagement terms.
Delivery includes a walkthrough meeting to agree on ownership. The map is not a legal opinion, a prepared return, or an investment recommendation. It is the shared picture your professional team executes from, and it stays your property.
Timeline and process
- Fit review. Submit the intake form. MMVFO confirms scope and fit before any engagement.
- Secure intake. Document requests come through a secure channel, scoped to the review.
- Review and mapping. The consolidated picture is built and the six areas are worked.
- Delivery and walkthrough. The map is reviewed together, with existing advisors invited where appropriate.
- Handoff. Licensed professionals take execution in their lanes; MMVFO can stay on as the coordination layer where useful.
Overall timing depends on complexity, document readiness, advisor availability, and scope; document readiness is usually the pacing item. Other structured reviews are listed on the diagnostics hub.
How existing advisors participate
The diagnostic is built to work with the team you already have. MMVFO’s first question is not who can be replaced; it is where the gaps are and whether anyone is coordinating the tax implications across those relationships.
Your CPA, attorney, trustee, investment adviser, or insurance professional can join intake, supply records, review findings in draft, and take ownership of items at the walkthrough. Specialists tend to do better work when they can see the whole field. The coordination method is described on the tax-led virtual family office page.
Confidentiality and secure intake
Diagnostic files include returns, trust instruments, ownership records, and transaction terms. Handling reflects that.
- Document intake runs through a secure submission channel, not plain email attachments.
- Requests are scoped to what the review needs.
- Access is limited to the review team, and advisor participation is coordinated with your consent.
Submission practices are described in the site’s security notice.
What MMVFO does not do
Clear lanes are the point. Within the diagnostic, MMVFO does not prepare or sign tax returns, draft trusts or other legal documents, manage investments, or recommend or place insurance. The operating map makes that licensed work better sequenced and better documented, not unnecessary. MMVFO coordinates the review while regulated implementation remains with properly licensed or registered professionals.
Public website content is educational and does not provide client-specific tax, legal, accounting, investment, insurance, or other professional advice. Client-specific work requires written scope and review by qualified professionals.
MMVFO coordinates strategy, diagnostics, documentation, and advisory execution. Legal, investment advisory, financial planning, securities-related, insurance, and other regulated services are provided only by properly licensed or registered professionals under appropriate written terms.
Request the diagnostic
The diagnostic is the entry point for MMVFO work. If this page describes your situation, the next step is a short fit review through the intake form. There is no obligation attached to asking.