Taxes

Yes, it’s still a few months before you have to strap on the gloves and step into the ring with the IRS again, but you still have some time to create the maximum amount of legal deductions and reduce the tax bite. Here are some to consider: Adjust your W-4 withholding If...

Have you ever had that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize there was a tax deduction you could have taken and didn’t? There’s just something deflating about knowing Uncle Sam got more of your money than he had to. The folks at TurboTax have...

There are certain questions of life we all want answered. What happens when you die? Does my life have meaning? How long should I keep tax records? Personally, my answer about keeping tax records is biased because I’m a safety man. I would wear a belt AND suspenders—just in case. But the length of...

Hunting season is open again and you’re the target. According to the Internal Revenue Service, there is a new IRS impersonation email scam trying to con you out of your personal information with the end game of stealing your identity. There are variations of what appears in the email subject...

Let’s update some two-thousand-year-old tax advice—Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but don’t give him more than that. Today, tax deductions and credits help determine how much Caesar gets. As an old guy told me a long time ago, “If it’s in the IRS code, it’s there to...

“Will I outlive my money?” That’s one of the biggest concerns for most retirees. There’s the high cost of medical care, which gets more expensive all the time. There’s inflation, which raises the cost of goods and services, eating into your retirement budget. And then, there’s taxes, which are...

It's that time of the year again! RMD's! Many retirees love to hate their required minimum distributions, or RMDs. What to do? When to take it out? How much to pay in taxes? There's a myriad of questions. In this video, Morningstar discusses the topic with Maria Bruno, head...

When the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was passed it changed the rules about deductions for charitable giving. Under current law the only way to deduct charitable gifts is to itemize on your tax return. Because of that, giving to charities has fallen substantially. In 2018 almost 32 million Americans made charitable donations....

To say there were some ticked off folks after-tax returns were filed for 2018 is an understatement. Border-to-border and coast-to-coast people who normally don’t have to send the IRS additional money were first shocked, and then angry that the government was demanding more. People who got a smaller-than-usual refund...