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 let you donate the same amount to charity while maximizing the [Learn more...]
Taxes
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 show how a specific type of gift (“capital gain [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 to need cash from your taxable [Learn more...]
