Taxes

Identity theft is one of the major plagues of modern society costing its victims billions of dollars and untold man hours to recover from it. In 2020, 1.4 million Americans were successfully attacked, which translates into a victim every 3 seconds.  That’s more than double the number from the...

Hey! It’s just an IRA. What is there to know? You put money in and it’s a tax deduction, you get to take it out after 59 ½ without paying a penalty, and at 72 the IRS makes you take some out. What else could there be? In reality, there’s...

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...

It’s only taken Congress 34 years, but the threshold for claiming a medical expense deduction has finally been made permanent. For 2021 and forevermore, medical expenses above 7.5% of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) is the law of the land if you itemize on your federal tax return and your...

To modify an old journalism adage, “When a state raises taxes, that’s expected. But when a state lowers taxes, that’s news!” And, believe it or not, there are some states doing just that in 2021. Yes, across the United States taxes are still going up in lots of places. According...

Planning for retirement. We spend most of our working career preparing for it, saving for it, covering every contingency. When you finally wave goodbye to the company, you’re ready for all that planning to take over. But does your planning take into account the taxes you’ll have to pay...

The IRA is a great retirement savings vehicle; money grows on a tax-deferred basis and that’s a good thing. Eventually, though, you have to pay the IRS piper when you choose to withdraw funds for retirement or when you’re forced to withdraw the Required Minimum Distribution at age 72. Let’s...