It seems like taxes are a game sometimes. When you know the rules, you can play the game better and save a lot in taxes. The tax code contains the basic rules for this game, and once you know the rules, you can apply the correct strategies.
Here’s the basic strategy:
To avoid the higher rates, here are seven possible tax planning strategies. Strategy 1 Examine your portfolio for stocks that you want to unload, and make sales where you offset short-term gains subject to a high tax rate such as 40.8 percent with long-term losses (up to 23.8 percent). In other words, make the high taxes disappear by offsetting them with low-taxed losses, and pocket the difference. Strategy 2 Use long-term losses to create the $3,000 deduction allowed against ordinary income. (You are allowed to deduct up to $3,000 of capital losses a year.) Again, you are trying to use the 23.8 percent loss to kill a 40.8 percent rate of tax (or a 0 percent loss to kill a 12 percent tax, if you are in the 12 percent or lower tax bracket). Strategy 3 As an individual investor, avoid the wash-sale loss rule. Under the wash-sale loss rule, if you sell a stock or other security and purchase substantially identical stock or securities within 30 days before or after the date of sale, you don’t recognize your loss on that sale. Instead, the code makes you add the loss amount to the basis of your new stock. If you want to use the loss in 2021, then you’ll have to sell the stock and sit on your hands for more than 30 days before repurchasing that stock. Strategy 4 If you have a lot of capital losses or capital loss carryovers and the $3,000 allowance is looking extra tiny, sell additional stocks, rental properties, and other assets to create offsetting capital gains. If you sell stocks to purge the capital losses, you can immediately repurchase the stock after you sell it—there’s no wash-sale “gain” rule. Strategy 5 Do you give money to your parents to assist them with their retirement or living expenses? How about children (specifically, children not subject to the kiddie tax)? If so, consider giving appreciated stock to your parents and your non-kiddie-tax children. Why? If the parents or children are in lower tax brackets than you are, you get a bigger bang for your buck by
Strategy 6 If you are going to make a donation to a charity, consider appreciated stock rather than cash, because a donation of appreciated stock gives you more tax benefit. It works like this:
Here is an example. You bought a publicly traded stock for $1,000, and it’s now worth $11,000. If you give it to a 501(c)(3) charity, the following happens:
Two rules to know:
Strategy 7 If you could sell a publicly traded stock at a loss, do not give that loss-deduction stock to a 501(c)(3) charity. Why? If you sell the stock, you have a tax loss that you can deduct. If you give the stock to a charity, you get no deduction for the loss—in other words, you can just kiss that tax-reducing loss goodbye. These stock strategies have a long history in tax planning and can benefit you. Use them now that you know them.
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As the end of the year approaches, you may be considering what equipment and asset purchases you need to make for your business before the end of the year to get a current year tax deduction.
If you use the asset in your business, you can deduct the full cost using regular depreciation, bonus depreciation, or IRC Section 179 expensing. Regular depreciation takes three to 39 years depending on the property involved (deducting a portion of the cost each year over the useful life of the asset), while bonus depreciation allows you to deduct 100 percent of the cost of personal property in one year through 2022. Up to $1,050,000 of personal property may also be deducted in one year under IRC Section 179 subject to profit limitations. If you are considering buying personal property (such as a car, a computer, or other equipment) or real property (such as a building), if you use the property for personal purposes, it’s not deductible. If used for both business and personal, the asset must be used more than 50% for business in order for a portion of the cost to be deducted. If used more than 50% for personal purposes, there is no deduction. Depreciation won’t begin if you purchase property with the intent of beginning a new business. You must actually be in business to claim depreciation. This doesn’t require that you make sales or earn profits—only that your business is a going concern. Also, depreciation doesn’t begin the moment you purchase property for your business. It begins only when you place property in service in your business. You don’t have to use the property to place it in service, but the property must be available for use in your active business. This could occur after you purchase the property. Finally, if you use regular depreciation, you must apply rules called conventions to determine the month in which your depreciation deduction begins. The earlier in the year, the larger your deduction for the first year. The default rule is that regular depreciation for personal property begins July 1 the first year (mid-year convention). But if you purchase 40 percent or more of your total personal property for the year during the fourth quarter, your depreciation begins at the midpoint of the quarter in which it is placed in service (mid-quarter convention). First-year depreciation for real property begins at the middle of the month during which the property is placed in service (mid-month convention). Buying needed equipment and assets for your business before the end of the year can lower your taxable income. (P.S. You should never buy something you don’t need to get a tax deduction.) |
PurposeThis blog allows you to experience the raw, gut wrenching drama of human conflict through accounting in each of its three stages: preparing to do battle, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Archives
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