How do I move from preparing returns to tax planning?

There is a real difference between the two, and it is worth naming so you stop feeling like a fraud. Preparing a return is about recording what already happened. Planning is about shaping what happens next. Those are two different skills, and being good at one does not automatically hand you the other. Planning trips people up because it feels like you have to see the whole future at once. You do not. It is really a set of smaller questions asked at the right time. What changes next year, and what could we do now to be ready for it. That is thinking a return backward, from the outcome you want. Start small and concrete. Take one client whose situation you know well and ask a single planning question about their next year. Just one. You do not need to become a strategist overnight. You need to practice looking forward on a small scale until it stops feeling foreign.