The best retirement plan for self-employed persons with no other employees is the solo 401k plan. See the easiest way to set up one.
What’s My Marginal Tax Rate?
Your marginal tax rate isn’t just the listed rate in the tax brackets table. Many phaseouts increases your marginal tax rate.
Reset Cost Basis Higher By Realizing Capital Gains
When you are in the 15% tax bracket or below, long-term capital gains are taxed at 0%. Take advantage of the tax-free capital gains and reset your cost basis higher.
Effective Tax Rates Under ACA Premium Subsidy
The previous post Converting to Roth and Harvesting Capital Gains Under Obamacare Premium Subsidy shows when you are getting a premium subsidy for buying health insurance on the exchange under Obamacare, you face a marginal tax rate of about 25-30% for ordinary income and 10-15% for long-term capital gains, when normally ordinary income would be […]
Circular Reference In Self-Employed Health Insurance Deduction Under ACA Premium Subsidy
If you are self-employed, you can potentially get both the subsidy tax credit and a deduction for your health care premium under Obamacare, but calculating the numbers can be tricky.
Converting to Roth and Harvesting Capital Gains Under Obamacare ACA Premium Subsidy
You will pay an extra 10-15% tax if you convert to Roth or realize capital gains while you receive the premium subsidy under the ACA.
Marriage Penalty Under Obamacare ACA Premium Subsidy
Married couples are at a disadvantage when it comes to getting the premium subsidy under the ACA.
Happy Trails With Income Poor
This is the third and final installment on my Asset Rich Income Poor strategy. The road to asset rich sounds simple at a high level but it’s not that easy at the details level, because every decision you make has tradeoffs. The tradeoffs affect the final outcome in ways you can’t know for sure. I […]
Increase Tax Withholding On ESPP Gains
I filed my taxes in the first week of April. I received paper I Bonds on April 29, just in time to have them earn the 1.76% rate in the first six months as opposed to the lower 1.18% rate. That’s good. The bad news is for the first time in 20 years I’m paying […]
Traditional and Roth IRA: Recharacterize vs Convert
When it comes to Traditional and Roth IRAs, convert and recharacterize means different things even though they both involve changing something. Make sure you use the right word.
Obama Budget Proposal: Chained CPI and Cap on Retirement Accounts
The news media, Internet discussion boards and Twitter are full of protests about two things in President Obama’s budget proposal, leaked to the press before its official release: chained CPI for Social Security and cap on retirement accounts. First of all, these are only proposals. The President does not make law. The proposals get fed […]
Fiscal Cliff Law and Exemption and Deduction Phaseouts
The previous two posts about the fiscal cliff law looked at Roth conversion and dividends and capital gains. Today we look at the new law’s reductions to personal exemptions and deductions for higher income taxpayers. Higher income for this purpose is defined as having Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) in 2013 over $250k for single and […]