American College to Roll Out Tax Planning Certification

The American College of Financial Services is preparing to launch a new certification program aimed at supporting the needs of financial advisors who want to serve clients in a more tax-aware manner.

A spokesperson for the American College told ThinkAdvisor the full details of the program are still forthcoming, but she confirmed the veracity of an informal announcement shared in a LinkedIn video post Wednesday afternoon by Jeff Levine, a CPA and planner, who is one of the certification’s chief architects.

“We’re excited to formally announce the launch of the American College’s Tax Planning Certified Professional program,” Levine, the lead financial planning nerd at Kitces.com, said in the video. “For the last year or so, I’ve been hard at work with the American College helping to create a curriculum that will enable advisors to better tax plan for their clients, and it is going to feature some of the industry’s leading experts in this field.”

Though he didn’t mention them by name, promotional materials visible in the background of the video feature five other well-known tax experts whose insights have informed the creation of the new TPCP designation. They are Michael Finke, professor and Frank M. Engle Chair of Economic Security at the American College of Financial Services; Sophia Duffy, a tax attorney and associate professor of business planning at the American College; Michael Kitces, founder of Kitces.com and head of planning strategy at Buckingham Wealth Partners; Ed Slott, the tax and IRA expert at the helm of Ed Slott and Co.; and Alan Gassman, a tax attorney and partner at Gassman, Crotty and Denicolo.