Tax

How to Minimize Taxes During Market Downturns

How to Minimize Taxes During Market Downturns

Market downturns, like the one we’re currently experiencing this year, could be a good time to adjust your investment portfolio to minimize the tax bite. Here’s how it works.

Investments in taxable accounts held longer than one year are taxed as a long-term capital gain. The rates are either 0%, 15% or 20%, depending on your income.

If held less than a year, then the sale is a considered a short-term capital gain and taxed as ordinary income based on your marginal tax bracket.

When calculating net capital gains taxes, you should first evaluate all short-term and long-term transactions separately:

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The Backdoor Roth IRA

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The Backdoor Roth IRA

How to Contribute to a Roth IRA Even if Your Income is Too High

Roth Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA) are attractive investment accounts because of the tax-free income that they provide with qualified withdrawals. However, many higher-income earners are not eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA.

Fortunately, there is a strategy to navigate around this – often referred to as the "Backdoor Roth IRA". The process involves opening a traditional IRA, making your desired contribution - up to the annual maximum amount, and then later convert the funds to a Roth IRA…

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2020 Contribution Limit Changes & the Secure Act

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2020 Contribution Limit Changes & the Secure Act

Understanding the changes for 2020 so you can maximize your retirement

With the new year comes some new changes to retirement plans starting January 1, 2020. Between the Internal Revenue Service announcing cost-of-living adjustments for tax year 2020 and the new Secure Act, there is a lot to digest.

Here are the highlights:

IRS Cost-of-Living Adjustments

Detailed in Notice 2019-59 and posted on IRS.gov, the IRS is increasing the contribution limits to 401(k) and other retirement plans starting January 1, 2020, including:

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Year-End Charitable Giving

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Year-End Charitable Giving

A list of things to consider as you think about year-end charitable donations

With its blinking lights, family traditions, and festive music, December is the most wonderful time of the year. And according to Charity Navigator, the month of December really is wonderful because December sees approximately 30% of all annual charitable giving.

Despite the greatest of intentions, many will inevitably make mistakes in how they give, especially if they wait until the last minute. So, here is a list of things for you to think about as you consider your year-end charitable donations…

How Bunching Expenses Can Enable Taxpayers to Continue to Itemize

How Bunching Expenses Can Enable Taxpayers to Continue to Itemize

In response to the significant changes to the tax deduction rules under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), many taxpayers are searching for ways to recover some of the tax benefits associated with itemizing deductible expenses that have been eliminated. Taxpayers who were previously able to lower their tax bills by itemizing may want to consider using a “bunching” strategy, which generally means either accelerating or deferring deductible expenses so that more of these expenses fall in a single tax year rather than in multiple tax years.