Art Werner: Avoid Tax Surprises for Clients | Quick Tax Tip

Unexpected tax bills erode trust fast. Most are preventable—if CPAs spot the warning signs early enough.

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Quick Tax Tip
With Art Werner
CPE Today

Surprise tax bills remain one of the most common—and avoidable—sources of client frustration. In most cases, the issue isn’t aggressive planning gone wrong, but passive assumptions left unchecked throughout the year.

Tax attorney Art Werner, JD, points to predictable triggers: income that rises while withholding stays flat, investment activity that isn’t incorporated into estimates, and planning decisions made without coordination across the return.

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Variable income is a frequent culprit. Bonuses, equity compensation, retirement withdrawals, and side-business earnings can easily push clients into higher brackets or trigger phaseouts.

Posted on January 18, 2026

Art Werner

About the Author

Arthur Joseph Werner, JD, MS (Taxation), is the president and founder of the professional education firm Werner-Rocca Seminars Ltd.

Werner’s lecture topic specialties include business, tax, financial and estate planning for high-net-worth individuals.

Werner lectures extensively in the areas of Estate Planning, Financial Planning, and Estate and Gift Taxation to Certified Public Accountants and Financial Planners, and has presented well in excess of 3000 eight-hour seminars over the past 25, years as well as numerous webinars and video presentations. He has been rated as having the highest speaker knowledge in his home state of Pennsylvania by the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs, was awarded the AICPA Outstanding Discussion Leader Award in the State of Nevada, the Florida Institute of CPAs Outstanding Discussion Leader Award, and the South Carolina Association of CPAs Outstanding Discussion Leader Award.

In addition, he is a former adjunct professor of taxation in the Master of Science in Taxation program at The Philadelphia University. Werner received his B.S. in Accounting and his M.S. in Taxation from Widener University. He holds a J.D. in Law from the Delaware Law School.

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