The US House and Senate are considering extensive income tax reform. The table below outlines current law and the bills for each chamber as they were at the close of business on Monday, December 4, and provides indications of the bill that has emerged as the “final deal” on Wednesday, December 13. While this “final [Learn more…]
Taxes
Year-end Tax Planning: Should You Do a Roth Conversion?
Many advisors tout the benefits of a “tax-free income” in retirement for those individuals with a Roth IRA. More important than tax-free income in retirement is the goal of reducing your lifetime tax burden by shifting income from one year to another through a Roth conversion. With the December 31st deadline for 2017 Roth conversions [Learn more…]
Flexible Spending Accounts: A Useful Employee Benefit That Can Reduce Your Taxes
In my last newsletter article, I looked at how to save for medical expenses using a health savings account (HSA). In this companion article, I’ll focus on another type of savings account called a flexible spending account. These plans are designed to help employees save for certain qualified expenses using pre-tax dollars. Although you may [Learn more…]
How Strategic Charitable Giving Can Maximize Your Deduction
Charitable giving truly is the gift that keeps on giving. In addition to the positive feelings you get from giving to a needy charity, a charitable gift can reduce your taxes. In this article I’ll show you how planned giving, which takes into account how your income (and therefore tax brackets) change over time, can [Learn more…]
Charitable Giving… Sensibly
If you make, or are planning to make, a charitable gift, and you have a brokerage account with appreciated securities, you might be better off donating those securities directly to your charity than making a cash gift of the same amount. In this article, I’ll describe how a charitable gift reduces taxable income. Then I’ll [Learn more…]
It’s (Almost) 2013, Do You Know What Your (Capital Gains) Taxes Will Be?
Along with the “Fiscal Cliff” (which I wrote about very recently) come two potential capital gains tax increases, of different sizes, and with different degrees of uncertainty. Given that we have at least some warning, is there anything you can do to minimize their impact on you? The short answer follows immediately: If you expect [Learn more…]