As sibling notes, step 1 is to actually have substantial complex income where accountants can do planniung. There's not much trickery that can be done with ord

As sibling notes, step 1 is to actually have substantial complex income where accountants can do planniung. There's not much trickery that can be done with ordinary income since it is handled simply and rigorously. Gains from financial transactions (capital gains, debt, etc.) are much more complexly handled and more ambiguous. * Accounting creativity can be employed with capital gains taxes because it is only paid on asset sale by the asset seller. So you can "move" the taxes around by donating and gifting. Move states to avoid high state income taxes. Better yet, if you die, your heirs never pay taxes -- this leads to all sorts of trust structuring that allows basis step up and estate tax bypass. * Debt (this article) is another example. If you read the article, cancelled debt is taxable, but you can make it a bit ambiguous whether the debt was cancelled or just merely restructured.