In our last two pieces, we covered some tools of the tax-planning trade, as well as how to deploy them for tax-efficient investing. Tax planning isn’t just for your investments. Life happens. Often, we cannot predict its next moves. But we can weave each event into the tax-planning fabric of your financial life.
In our last piece, we introduced some of the tools of the tax-planning trade. These include tax-sheltered accounts for saving toward retirement, healthcare, and education, as well as tax-efficient tools for charitable giving, emergency spending, and estate planning. It’s one thing to have the tools. It’s another to make best use of them. After all, the same paintbrush can create a valuable work of art, or a clashing mess on canvas. It all depends on how you use the brush.
Whether you’re saving, investing, spending, bequeathing, or receiving wealth, there’s scarcely a move you can make without considering how taxes might influence the outcome. No wonder people get nervous when there’s lots of talk about higher taxes, but little certainty on what may come of it, and who it might affect. How do we plan when we cannot know?
With much of the country in self-isolation, perhaps you’ve got time to read the entire H.R. 748 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act. If you’d prefer, here is a summary of many of the key provisions we expect to be discussing with you in person (virtually), depending on which ones apply to you.
First Quarter 2019|Jim Williams| Our tax systems, I’m referring primarily to federal and state income taxes, have gotten ever more complex and will likely continue that track. This is, in part, due to the social choice on taxes, which is to provide incentives for behaviors that are deemed desirable, and disincentives for behaviors that are deemed less desirable. Taxes are also based on the notion of raising revenue, to the extent possible, to fund government operations. History shows that, ironically, there are levels of taxation where increased tax rates reduce government receipts and reduced tax rates increase them. Who knew?
Fourth Quarter 2017|Jim Williams| Tax reform is now real and as we expected in early November, the changes are fairly consequential.