About Phil Gaudiano, CPA

Retirement income, tax-efficient withdrawal, and the questions the industry won't answer.

The work, in a sentence

I am a CPA whose practice is built around a specific corner of retirement planning: the tax structure of retirement income. Most retirement advice is written for the years when you are accumulating savings. The work I do is for the years after, when the rules change and the math gets harder. That body of work is the focus of this site, the book I have written, the worksheets I make available, and the practice I operate.

How I got here

I trained as a CPA in Cleveland, earning a Master of Accountancy with a focus in taxation from Cleveland State University. My career in public accounting started at Novogradac & Company in Cleveland, where I worked on tax credit transactions. From there I moved into the tax departments of several large, publicly-traded corporations, where I spent a number of years before leaving to start my own practice.

My professional life since then has been focused on small business and individual taxation, with a growing concentration over the past several years on retirement income planning. The latter began, in part, as a response to what I kept seeing in tax preparation engagements. Year after year, I watched households arrive at retirement with portfolios carefully built during the accumulation phase but with little planning for the decumulation phase that followed. The tax bill was often the largest single line item these households would pay for the rest of their lives, and it was almost never the subject of any planning conversation. I started doing that planning work, and over time, it became the center of the practice.

I am licensed as a CPA in both Ohio and Virginia. I hold the retirement planning certificate from the AICPA. I am a member of the Virginia Society of CPAs and the National Association of Tax Professionals.

The work I do now

The retirement planning work, including tax planning, withdrawal strategy design, and the educational writing on this site, is delivered through Sagatax LLC. Sagatax is the CPA firm I founded. It also handles tax preparation and general tax planning for a smaller group of clients outside the retirement specialty, though that work is not the focus of my practice.

When retirement planning requires implementation through insurance products, including annuities and protected income strategies, I work with clients through Potomac Assurance Associates LLC. Potomac is my licensed insurance agency. Keeping the planning and implementation work in separate entities is a deliberate choice. The educational and planning conversations on phil.cpa and through Sagatax happen without any obligation to implement anything. When implementation makes sense for a specific client, Potomac is the operational vehicle that handles it.

I am also co-founder and CFO of Chainwise CPA, a tax advisory firm focused on cryptocurrency taxation and complex tax compliance for high-net-worth individuals and businesses. Chainwise is a separate practice with a separate client base. It is referenced here for transparency about how I spend my professional time.

The three entities serve different purposes. Phil.cpa is the home of the writing, the framework, and the educational work. It is also the entry point for anyone who wants to work with me directly on retirement planning.

What I write

The framework I work in is laid out in detail in Beyond Risk and Safety, a book I wrote over several years that sits at the intersection of tax planning, retirement income design, and the use of protected-income tools. It is the longer version of what the diagnostic worksheets on this site introduce. The book is available on Amazon.

I write more regularly here on phil.cpa, under the title The Pensioner's Paradox. The posts are shorter than book chapters and longer than newsletter emails, and they are where I work through specific questions, planning scenarios, and developments in the retirement industry that I think are worth a careful reader's attention. The same posts are also published on Substack for readers who prefer to follow along there, but phil.cpa is the canonical home.

If you want a sense of how I think before you decide whether to work together, the writing is the place to start.

On how I work

I do this work the way I do because I think the structure of how retirement advice is delivered has a gap. Tax preparers are paid to file last year's return, not to plan next year's. Investment advisors are paid on assets under management, which can work against the client's interests when the right move would temporarily reduce those assets. Insurance agents have access to tools that can solve specific problems, but the tools are sometimes positioned as solutions to problems they were not designed to address. None of this is anyone's fault individually. It is the structure of the industry.

The practice I have built operates inside that gap. The work is educational first, planning second, and implementation third. Clients who come through phil.cpa generally start by reading, then by working through the diagnostic worksheets on their own, then by applying for a working relationship if and when the framework fits their situation. That sequence is deliberate. It produces a different kind of client conversation than the standard retirement industry funnel, and a different kind of working relationship.

Credentials and affiliations

Education: Master of Accountancy, Taxation. Cleveland State University.

Licenses: Certified Public Accountant, Ohio and Virginia. Licensed insurance producer, multiple states (through Potomac Assurance Associates LLC).

Certificates: Personal Financial Planning, retirement planning certificate. American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

Professional memberships: Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants (VSCPA). National Association of Tax Professionals (NATP).

Author: Beyond Risk and Safety. Available on Amazon.

Current entities: Sagatax Limited Company, founder. Retirement planning and tax practice. sagatax.com Potomac Assurance Associates LLC, principal. Licensed insurance agency. potomacassurance.com Chainwise CPA (Polygon Advisory Group LLC), co-founder and CFO. chainwisecpa.com

Contact

The most useful first step for prospective clients is to download the diagnostic worksheets on the homepage. The second step, if the framework fits, is to apply for a working relationship. The application form asks the questions that let me give a useful response.

For questions that fall outside that flow, email is the right channel. I read every message and respond personally, though responses sometimes take a few days depending on the week. Email address: phil@phil.cpaCredentials