FREE NEWSLETTER

Forum › Taxes

What’s your favorite tax-savings strategy?

More On This Topic

Subscribe
Notify of
17 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Boomerst3
2 years ago

I keep all my income producing assets, like short term bond ETF’s or money markets, in my IRA. All my equities are in my joint brokerage at VG. We will not sell any equities because the gains are too high. I give part of my IRA withdrawal as QCD’s to my college. That keeps taxes down

Dennis Hurley
2 years ago

Using AOTC for college age children to save $10,000 in taxes over the 4 years from college expenses each of them . Not big dollars, but useful for family vacations over those years, etc.

Bruce Keller
3 years ago

QCD’s. Our plan is to live very frugally, fund special expenses (trips, car, etc.) from our Roth’s, augment SocSec a bit from pre-tax IRA’s and give the rest away either in the form of QCD’s or inheritance. A good possibility that we won’t owe a dime of income tax in retirement (given no changes in the tax code, anyway).

jayne brownlee
3 years ago

I’m retired do not have a pension and have roughly half of financial assets in post-tax and half in pre-tax accounts. My basic strategy is to subtract a large sum from the total available, for potential end of life needs, calculate an annual distribution from the remaining amount and subtract 10-20% from that amount to account for market downturns. The tax-savings strategy here, has always been not to wait to take distributions but rather to spread the distributions out over my lifetime.

Sanjib Saha
3 years ago

Tax-loss harvesting whenever opportunity arises. Also, move investments that produce un-qualified dividends or interests from taxable accounts to tax-deferred account.

Rick Connor
3 years ago

To me, the most important tax strategy is developing a good understanding of how the tax code works, and what are the key parts. Many folks don’t understand the basics. Without that, you have little chance of taking advantage of the more sophisticated options.

John Goodell
3 years ago

Lots of great points already made. I think the most overlooked tax strategy by folks who’ve maxed out all the usual tax efficient vehicles is simply to continually buy index funds in a taxable account over many working years and don’t sell. You avoid capital gains tax and trying to time the market. “The first rule of compound interest is to never interrupt it unnecessarily.” -Munger

John Yeigh
3 years ago

During our early retirement years we moved from a high income-tax to a zero income-tax state. We are also Roth converting which we believe should result in long-term savings plus improve the inheritance flexibility for our children.

Michael Flack
3 years ago

Minimize dividends (and therefore taxes), by investing in broad-based index funds.

Marjorie Kondrack
3 years ago

I live in high tax state so Treasuries are a good choice for saving on my state taxes. Also in years when income is higher purchasing 1 year T bills can accelerate reporting of interest income into following when income may not be as high.

Marjorie Kondrack
3 years ago

Following year, that is.