Category: Taxes

Are You Surprised With Your Tax Return?

While it is common for people to be surprised with their tax return results, ideally, you should not be surprised with your tax return results. There are several things you can do to help minimize surprises and ensure that you have a good understanding of your tax liability:

Tax Planning

Keep Track of Your Income and Expenses: Throughout the year, keep track of your income and expenses, including any deductions or credits that you may be eligible for. This will help you estimate your tax liability and ensure that you are taking advantage of all available tax breaks.
2. Review Your Withholdings: Review your W–4 form and make sure that you are withholding the appropriate amount of taxes from your paycheck. If you have had any significant changes in your income or family status, it may be wise to adjust your withholding allowances accordingly.
3. Know where you land in the tax brackets. How much income do you make? Use that number and subtract the standard deduction for your filing status to get an estimate of your taxable income. Then google tax brackets for that year. Observe where you land and see if it makes sense.
4. Do you have other income, such as investment income, retirement account distributions, self–employment income, rental income? Do you know how that income is taxed?
5. Stay Informed of Tax Law Changes: Keep up to date with any changes to tax laws or regulations that may impact your tax liability. This will help you make informed decisions when it comes to tax planning.
6. Work with a Tax Professional: If you have a complex tax situation, it may be beneficial to work with a tax professional who can help you understand your tax liability and ensure that you are taking advantage of all available tax breaks.

By taking these steps, you can help minimize surprises and have a better understanding of your tax liability when it comes time to file your tax return.

Personal Income Tax Course

We are developing a self–study course that teaches you the basics of a personal income tax return so there are no surprises. If you want to be notified when it is available, please enter your email address here.

Financial Journey LLC is a registered investment advisor offering advisory services in the states of Alabama, Florida, Virginia and in other jurisdictions where exempted. Information provided is for educational purposes only and not, in any way, to be considered investment or tax advice.

Tax Planning at Different Stages

It’s February and now you are receiving all of your tax forms because it’s tax time again. Completing your tax return each year is essentially a true–up to make sure you paid your share of income taxes. Because you are accounting for the previous calendar year, there are not too many things you can do to change your tax situation when it’s time to prepare your taxes. That is why it is important to understand your tax return once it is complete so that if there are any slight changes that you can make, you can do so during the tax year when it counts.

Ultimately, you have to know a little bit about taxes in order to notice where these changes may occur (or know enough to ask for help!)

What are we working with? Age, stage of life, current income, current assets, location of assets, tax thresholds in many different areas and tax law updates, just to name a few.

Working/Accumulation Phase of Life

While you are earning money and building your wealth, you want to be mindful of several things. Understanding the mechanics of the different things going on in your tax return can give you planning ideas for what you invest in, the different account registrations that you may or may not be able to utilize and look at the big picture to decide what could be more beneficial in the future. For example, you could be paying huge capital gains taxes in your individual accounts with mutual funds that are out of your control. A couple of things to look at would be reviewing what the estimated capital gains are and potentially moving out of that position (also reviewing that tax consequence) and into an ETF where taxes can be more controlled. Another planning item is making sure you are investing in different account types with different taxation. For example, if you only invest in your traditional IRA and traditional 401k, when you take the money out later on, it will all be 100% taxable versus maybe investing some in a ROTH IRA or ROTH 401k. Again, depending on your situation, this could be beneficial or not.

Retirement/Decumulation Phase of Life

Even if you are in the retirement/decumulation stage of life there are many things that are going on with your income. For example, your Medicare premiums are based on your AGI from 2 years ago. This means that you can jump Medicare premium surcharges every year even if you are $1 over the limit. If you are budding up close to one of these brackets, then you may be able to sacrifice a slightly lower distribution from an IRA in order to save yourself hundreds of dollars in Medicare premiums.

The Bottom Line

Every situation is different and should be looked at from different angles. If you do not understand your taxes, ask someone who does. Also, make sure you look at your tax return once it’s done and see if there is anything to do DURING the year that can help your situation.

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Wrapping Up The Year

It’s that time of year again. Holidays are approaching and the end of the year is winding down. Before you get in full on holiday mode, make sure you wrap up any loose ends before the end of the year so that you can spend your time relaxing and being present with your loved ones. Here’s a quick list of items that may be helpful.

If there is anything that you need to do for taxes for this year, now is the time to do it. There are only a few retirement contributions that you can make after December 31st that will still be counted for this tax year. Everything else needs to be done during the tax year for it to count.
Have some extra money and you didn’t maximize your 401k this year? You have until December 31st to make any additional contributions for the year.
Employee Benefits—have you confirmed your employee benefits for next year? Don’t forget that you need to re-elect any FSA and HSA contributions, they do not automatically carry forward.
Gifting—the annual exclusion amount for gifts is $16,000. This means that you can gift anyone up to $16,000 without having to pay any gift tax.
- Charitable gifts are included on Schedule A-Itemized Deductions. Remember that in order to take your itemized deductions, they need to be more than your standard deduction. Check here to see what your standard deduction is.
- Because standard deductions are relatively high, some options for taking your tax benefit for your generosity could be to lump several years’ worth of gifts into one tax year by utilizing donor advised funds.
- If you are age 70.5, you are eligible to make gifts directly from your IRA to a qualified charity and never take that money into income at all. This is called a qualified charitable distribution.
- See this blog post for more charitable giving ideas.
Insurance Plan Deductibles—if you have met your insurance deductible for the year, try to squeeze in any last appointments that you can before your deductible resets on January 1.
Tax Loss Harvesting—do you have large capital gains that you may want to offset? Review your holdings to see if any changes should be made in your taxable accounts.
Address Changes—don’t forget to update your address, if necessary, with all of the people that may send you something in the mail—particularly any tax forms.
RMD’s-Required Minimum Distributions-you must take your RMD’s by December 31st to avoid penalties. Wondering who is required to take RMD’s? See this article.

Financial Journey LLC is a registered investment advisor offering advisory services in the states of Florida, Alabama, Virginia and in other jurisdictions where exempted. Information provided is for educational purposes only and not, in any way, to be considered investment or tax advice.

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5 Questions You Should Ask When Hiring a Financial Advisor

Finding the right Financial Advisor for the job is so important! You need someone who is trustworthy, competent, and affordable.

Questions To Ask Yourself

Before you interview a financial advisor, you need to ask YOURSELF a few questions:

What are you looking for in a financial advisor?
What services do you need?
What are you willing to pay for them?
How often do you want communication (frequent in-person, occasional call, or email)?

Knowing your goals and communication style will help you to quickly determine which financial advisor is the right one for you.

Questions To Ask a Financial Advisor

Are You a Fiduciary?

You want your financial advisor to say yes! Fiduciaries are financial advisors who are required to:

Put the client’s interests first
Disclose important information, including their fees
Reveal any conflicts of interest

How Do You Get Paid?

Financial advisors can make their money in several different ways:

Hourly
A fee based on a specific service
A percentage of the managed assets
A sales commission on investment products

To avoid any conflicts of interest, look for an advisor who is “fee-only.”

What Services Do You Provide?

Different advisors may only support you in certain financial areas, such as:

financial plans
managing assets
investment advice
retirement
insurance
tax planning

Before you hire a financial advisor, know what services are offered and if there are any extra costs for additional services.

What’s Your Philosophy on Investing?

A good financial advisor should fit your needs. You want someone whose investment philosophy matches yours and uses strategies that you understand. This will help you feel more secure through the ups and downs of the market.

Who Are Your Typical Clients?

You want to work with a financial advisor who has experience working with people in your situation.

Conclusion

A good financial advisor should expect questions like these. They understand how important the relationship is between the advisor and the client and want a good fit for both parties which is why you should interview more than one.

Your financial advisor is an important person in your life. Take your time to consider all the candidates and choose the one who’s best for you.

If you are looking for a trusted partner to help you navigate financial decisions, we are here to help. Schedule a meeting with us today to see how we can help you with your own financial journey.

Financial Journey LLC is a registered investment advisor offering advisory services in the state of Virginia and in other jurisdictions where exempted. Information provided is for educational purposes only and not, in any way, to be considered investment or tax advice.

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Tax Planning

It’s hard to believe that we’re already winding down the first quarter of 2022, it’s important to start thinking about your tax planning. While there are many things that can be done to reduce your taxable income, there are a few key steps that should be at the top of your list. Did you know we offer annual tax planning?

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How is my ESPP Taxed?

Some employees that work for large companies have an employee benefit where they can purchase company stock at a discount. This is known as an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).

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Deductions vs. Credits on Your Tax Return

Now that tax season is in full swing and we are all preparing out tax return, you are probably seeing the words deductions and credits. What are they and how do they work?

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Pre-retirement vs. Retirement Income Taxation

When thinking about taxes in retirement—surprise you still must pay taxes in retirement—most people look at their pay stubs and see how much they are paying in taxes. However, there are some taxes on your paystubs and W-2 that you do not have to pay.

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Tax Time!

We are now in January of 2022, which means you have to start thinking about completing your taxes for 2021. Your W-2’s and 1099’s are required to be sent to you by the 31st of January, but other forms have more time to be issued and may have multiple versions due to corrections.

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Give Smarter and Make a Greater Impact with Philanthropy

What inspires you to give? Most of us give for the same basic reasons. We want to help others, make a positive difference in the world—and giving feels good. It makes us happy and connects us to the causes we care about. Studies show that most charitable folks give according to their values or to support causes they care about. But they don’t always have a strategy around giving or a way to monitor for impact.

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