If you can’t qualify for the premium subsidy under the ACA, if may be helpful to bunch up your income.
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 […]
Obama Budget Limits Tax Deductions On 401k, Health Insurance, and Muni Bond Interest to 28%
The Obama budget proposal is officially released last week. The proposed tax related changes are further explained in a Green Book. $3 Million Cap On Retirement Accounts First on the proposed $3 million cap on retirement accounts (p. 175 in the Green Book PDF), it’s not exactly $3 million, but actually an amount enough to […]
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 […]
Fiscal Cliff Deal and Dividends and Capital Gains
Today we look at how dividends and capital gains will be taxed after the fiscal cliff deal, officially known as the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. Don’t be surprised it gets a little more complicated. First of all when I say dividends and capital gains, I’m referring to qualified dividends and long-term capital gains. […]
Fiscal Cliff Deal and Backdoor Roth
Happy New Year! News came that Congress passed a fiscal cliff deal, official known as the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. Whether you like it or not, that’ll be the law for now. Rather than doing a run-down for what’s in it, which I’m sure you read everywhere, I will look at one item […]
Your Traditional IRA is Life Insurance and an Emergency Fund
[This is a guest post from Bogleheads investment forum participant Bob’s not my name.] Roth IRAs are touted as backup emergency funds: you can withdraw your direct contributions at any time for any reason, without penalty (and, of course, without tax, because you already paid it). This is a very nice feature. It allows young […]
How to Build a Time Machine With IRAs – Part 2
[This is a guest post from Bogleheads investment forum participant Bob’s not my name as a follow-up to his previous post How to Build a Time Machine With IRAs – Part 1.] In Part 1 we discussed how your money can use a deductible traditional IRA to travel forward in time and to a different […]