Table of Contents
Written by : Merlin Luben |
Current |
Write a comment |
Write a comment
one of the main ways to profit from investing is to buy assets at one price and then sell them at a higher price these types of profits are known as capital gains as with most kinds of profits they're subject to taxes taxes can impact the growth of your portfolio so it's important to understand how capital gains taxes work and learn some strategies to potentially minimize them let me note up front that in this video we're just covering the basics taxes can be complex and vary based on a lot of factors so it's always best to consult the irs or a tax professional to understand your specific situation we'll start with a simple example let's say you're an average investor and have a regular taxable brokerage account you buy a share of stock xyz for fifty dollars and over the course of a year it increases to sixty at this point you've gained ten dollars but it's an unrealized game because you don't actually profit until your position is closed no matter how long you hold the stock or how much its price changes you won't be taxed on gains as long as you don't close the position and gains remain unrealized note that other types of income from stocks like dividends may still be subject to taxes but these may not be considered capital gains now back to our example let's say you decide to sell the stock at sixty dollars that is considered a realized capital gain and is a taxable event you now owe taxes on the 10 profit we're focusing on stocks in this video but be aware that capital gains taxes also apply to other types of investments like real estate bonds and mutual funds so how much are capital gains taxed it mainly depends on two factors how long you held the investment and your income level there are two types of capital gains short term and long term proceeds from investments you sell after holding for a year or less are generally classified as short-term capital gains they're typically taxed at the same rate as your ordinary income which is determined by the marginal tax bracket you fall into for reference marginal tax rates for the 2020 tax year ranged from 10 percent to 37 but rates can change over time so it's best to check with the irs for specifics proceeds from investments held for more than a year are typically classified as long-term capital gains they're usually taxed more favorably because the us government views them as providing economic benefit the specific rate may still vary based on your income but for reference the 2020 long-term capital gains rate did not exceed 15 for most people again rates can change over time so it's best to check with the irs or a tax professional in most cases you report capital gains for the year as part of your annual tax return which could increase your tax liability when you file if you realized any gains it may be a good idea to have money set aside in case you have to pay because taxes can significantly impact the performance of your portfolio it's important to be proactive in tax planning here are a few strategies you can follow first weigh the pros and cons of short-term investments versus long-term investments active investors may attempt to increase returns by quickly buying and selling investments however because of increased taxes and fees it's difficult for most people to outperform a well-diversified portfolio of long-term investments that are almost always taxed at a lower rate when planning your investment strategy consider how the investment holding period can affect your tax bill second consider maximizing your tax advantaged accounts like retirement and education accounts depending on the type of account you may be able to buy and sell investments without being subject to capital gains taxes reducing your tax burden could potentially help your portfolio grow faster third in taxable accounts make the most of your losses benefiting from losses may seem counterintuitive but the irs actually allows you to write off certain trading losses which can help offset some of your capital gains taxes for example tax loss harvesting is a strategy that involves closing certain positions to intentionally realize losses that reduce your tax liability many brokerages offer automated tax loss harvesting services but it's not right for everybody so be sure to check with the tax or financial advisor of course tax planning in some capital gains calculations can be confusing that's why even seasoned investors enlist the help of tax professionals to make sure their taxes are in order thanks for watching make sure you subscribe and hit the bell to get notified about new videos open an account to get access to more education
Thanks for your comment Tiana Visvardis, have a nice day.
- Merlin Luben, Staff Member
so today we're going to be talking about how to legally legally lower your tax liability as a trader but before I get into this let me give you a quick disclaimer I am NOT a registered tax professional a CPA or anything of that sort and thus this video and anything and everything in it is for entertainment purposes only but with that being said let's go ahead and get into it so the major factor when it comes to paying taxes is how the IRS sees your trading activity does it see it as investing or does it see it as a business and classifying it as a business basically allows you to deduct all of your expenses and most importantly allows you to surpass the $3,000 capital loss limit for your write-offs moreover you could take this a step further and structure your business in a way that allows you to take advantage of the 21% corporate tax rate instead of paying the high individual tax rate on your personal income tax returns but anyways with the IRS watching us all I ask of you in return for this video is that you hit that beautiful and ravishing like button and also don't forget to subscribe if you see value in the following video so to start one of the biggest mistakes that you can make as a trader is to simply just trade and then at the end of the year then figure out your tax liability that's because if you know that you're going to make a consistent profit if you've already established that you're making consistent profit or at least a tangible amount of income you need to take steps to ensure that the IRS properly classifies your business and again if you fall into the active trader category or LLC category the IRS will then deem any activity or revenue that you generate from trading to be business revenue whereas if you don't do it what happens is that they just end up using it as ordinary income if you are classified in the business category that means that you can deduct things such as your home office margin fees education subscription services chat room fees new computers that you purchased for trading and anything else that is reasonably required for you to earn an income as a trader and if you structure a trading company to be taxed as an S corp which LLC's can now designate for tax purposes you will also be able to deduct your health insurance premium which is great if trading is your full-time income another thing that you can deduct is the full extent of your losses if you are a regular trader you can only deduct up to three thousand of your losses which is really a shame because a lot of traders they lose a lot more than that so this deduction can needless to say make a huge difference and makes it worth it for a lot of people to simply form an see now this is where it gets a little bit more interesting because classifying your trading income as a business activity allows you an exemption from a little regulation that's very pesky culty wash sale rule this rule makes it so that you can't claim a loss on a stock if you buy it back within 30 of the original days of that sale and obviously this is meant to curtail investors from kind of churning losses for tax purposes example if Charlie decides that he's going to sell 2,000 worth of Tesla on Monday and sells it for a $1,000 loss he gets to claim that $1,000 tax deduction then if the sale price is approximately the same the next day he could then hypothetically just buy back the 2000 and also keep the $1,000 loss that he just accrued in other words Charlie still owns the same amount of Tesla shares on Tuesday that he did on Monday but now he also has a $1,000 capital loss and basically this rule will protect against this but if you're under business activity then you don't have to worry about it now there is one more step that you could take to further decrease your tax liability and this one's going to make more sense if you make more money from trading this one's quite complex so I remind you to see a tax professional before you go into any of these things but let's say that you start making say several times the average household income in the United States well we have a progressive tax system so that means that every marginal dollar will be taxed at a higher rate once you could do a certain point if you live in a high tax state like California like I do you could potentially lose half your income in the higher brackets so instead of working half your year for the United States government you can take advantage of a little thing called a holding company and this is 100% legal and this is how a lot of people do it so a holding company basically allows you to take advantage of the corporate tax rate of 21 percent so instead of paying a marginal tax rate around 50 percent you're now only paying a 21 percent tax rate and essentially how it works is you set up two different business entities one is the LLC where you're trading activity occurs they pass-through entity so that the profits passed through the LLC and then the other is the S corp holding company which then receives your profits so the difference between this and many other strategies is that instead of the LLC your LLC passing through the profits to you it's now passing it in to your holding company since the holding company is receiving the profits the holding company is the one that has to pay the taxes on it and because for tax purposes it's an S corp you're able to take advantage of the corporate tax rate instead of the high marginal tax rate so you only have to pay twenty one percent versus potentially fifty percent or more now the only catch with this is that in some situations and mostly based on how you structure the company you will need to pay yourself what the IRS considers a reasonable salary and the normal salary will then pass through to you and will be taxed at the normal rates but the reasonable salary is sort of a gray area where you have a lot of personal freedom in terms of how you set that hypothetically if you made say three hundred thousand a year from parading you could just say well you know I'm only worth fifty thousand a year so I'm only gonna pay myself a fifty thousand dollar a year salary and then that amount would be the amount that's taxed on your personal income tax return and then everything else gets taxed on the corporate rate of twenty one percent but because only that fifty thousand is being taxed on your personal income tax return that means that you get to save on all the higher marginal rates because fifty thousand doesn't make it to the higher brackets and then the rest of the two hundred fifty thousand gets taxed at the twenty one percent rate with that in mind you might ask yourself okay well why wouldn't I want to set the salary to say zero dollars well that's not considered a reasonable salary for IRS purposes you do have to set a salary that's reasonable and they will fight you on that if you try to go too low so again see a tax professional because they'll help you figure out what a reasonable salary is but the key here is that if you paid yourself that fifty thousand under the three hundred that you made you can then put that two hundred fifty thousand in your hol
Thanks Julianna your participation is very much appreciated
- Merlin Luben
About the author
I've studied evolutionary sociology at Goshen College in Goshen and I am an expert in space nuclear power. I usually feel indescribable. My previous job was communications professor I held this position for 7 years, I love talking about magnet fishing and origami. Huge fan of Ryan Reynolds I practice croquet and collect automobilia.
Try Not to laugh !
Joke resides here...