Tag Archives: Taxes
Beware of Erroneous Tax Refunds!
The IRS has issued some warnings recently about a new scam which seems especially on the rise with more tax professionals having more client data online than ever before. The scammers file a fraudulent tax return – but include the taxpayers’ real bank account information (or if they don’t file for electronic deposit of their […]
Doubling Your Tax Break: Giving Appreciated Assets to PTA and PIE
[Note – this was written with Palo Alto CA public schools in mind, and specifically a pair of charitable organizations which help support those schools. It applies just the same to any 501c3 charitable organizations, including similar organizations associated with other school systems as well as other types of charities altogether.] It’s annual appeal time […]
IRA Number Soup
All those tax-related forms which come with having an IRA, what they mean, and what to do with them. IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account (or, possibly, the collection of all such accounts), and each IRA account you have generates a small torrent of paperwork, both throughout the year and after the end of the […]
9 Things To Do Before Year End 2015
Give gifts to charity. To get a tax break for any gifts you give (cash, stock, etc), those gifts have to be given by Dec 31 to qualified charitable organizations. The IRS provides a tool for checking on this: <https://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Exempt-Organizations-Select-Check> For a contribution of cash, check or other monetary gift, you need to keep a record […]
How are Social Security benefits computed, and what are WEP and GPO?
Social Security. Perhaps the most successful government program ever, Social Security was put in place as a form of “social insurance” in order to protect against people who’d worked their entire lives ending up in poverty in their old age. Before diving into various details about benefits, there are a few things to clear up […]
What You Need To Know About Property Taxes in California
What You Need To Know About Property Taxes in California Property taxes in the US are generally proportional to the value of one’s property. The more valuable the property, the higher the taxes… Except in California. This is because in 1978, California enacted Prop 13 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978)> which limited increases in the taxes on […]
Obamacare and Your Taxes (2014 and beyond)
The Affordable Care Act has a wide ranging list of tax effects, some of which apply to individuals, some to corporations, some intended to provide incentives for individuals or businesses to get insurance, some to provide funding which helps keep other parts of the law up and running. Before you get worried, though, or dive […]
High Income Year or Low Income Year
To be more precise, we are talking about whether one’s taxable income is high or low in a given year — relative to expected income in future years. And what we can do to take advantage of the fact that some folks are going to have higher or lower incomes now versus in the future. In […]
2015 IRA, 401(k) and other retirement plan contribution limits announced
By law certain retirement plan limits get adjusted every year, not exactly tracking inflation (i.e., not by the CPI) but rather in “chunks” which approximate it. For 2015, the following limits have been announced: IRA Contributions (combined limit across Roth and Traditional): $5,500IRA Catch-Up Contributions (for folks over 50): $1000[Both unchanged from 2014 and, actually, […]
58.7% increase in tax rates at the beginning of 2013 for income above $11,950
Yes, you read that right. There was a 58.7% increase in tax rates on taxes paid by certain taxpayers as of the beginning of 2013. That’s the increase in capital gains taxes for folks in the highest ordinary tax brackets, due to the increase in the capital gains rate from 15% to 20%, and the […]
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