Brad Palen, Principal, Pinion, LLC
If Brad Palen wasn’t an accountant, he’d be a farmer. To him, just as to the ag producers he helps, success is not only short-term financial management and oversight, but also involves passing on legacies from generation to generation without strife and unnecessary financial consequences. By providing a road map of the optimal route to achieve a family’s specific vision, he puts business owners’ minds at ease.
Brad specializes in business consulting for agriculture producers, and creates strategies around income tax and estate planning for family-owned and closely held farming businesses. Owners count on his expertise to minimize their income taxes and guide them successfully through succession planning, restructuring, and other challenges. Some recent examples of his work include:
- Restructuring a $10-million family-owned farming business to accommodate an additional family member, divide ownership fairly, achieve equitable division of profits, and minimize income tax liability.
- For a high-net-worth family with a large cattle-farming business and investments in real estate, oil, and banking, he implemented tax-advantaged estate planning practices and ironed out details of how each asset should be passed on to the next generation.
- Hosting family business meetings to educate and involve the children in current operations and facilitating strategic planning so that the business can stay intact after the parents pass away.
- Providing CFO services on-demand to help agriculture producers make sound business decisions with insightful information such as financial analysis, crop profitability and cash flow projection, budgeting, and lender education.
Brad Palen helps family-owned businesses succeed. He grew up in, and remains an owner of, his family’s farm business about 75 miles from Salina. Having first-hand experience in farming and serving other agriculture producers for the last 25 years, he thoroughly understands the financial, operational, and emotional challenges they face. He merges each individual’s goals and opinions into one creative solution that is both sensitive to family dynamics and financially advantageous for everyone involved.
