Tax Strategies Scan: Even More Capital Gains Tactics

The capital gains tax rate: How you can pay less:

The Motley Fool says that although the capital gain taxes are normally and relatively less than the other taxes but this can be eliminated at all by the use of strategic planning. An investor has always a choice to set off the capital gains against the capital losses. To illustrate this, take an example of an investor who has capital loss of $5,000 and capital gains of $10,000, his resulting taxable capital gain will be $5,000.

Time to assess your financial fitness:

The New York Times reports that the Dow Jones industrial average tracks only 30 largest US based companies, so it is not a good performance measure of someone’s personal investment portfolio. Other important personal investment performance measures are the tax rate, the savings rate, the income replacement rate and the market percentage changes.

3 tax deductions that could lead to an audit:

The Motley Fool says that in order to avoid the tax audit, the taxpayers should make it certain that they provide correct information to the tax authority in the following tax season particularly about the tax reliefs they have taken. The deductions relating to the business normally lead to an audit, so these need to be paid special attention. The unusual and large charitable donations often cause an audit.

Watch out! Taxes don’t trump fundamentals:

The CNBC advises the clients not to consider tax implications to base their investment decisions. Instead they should pay the taxes resulting from the sales of stocks and securities rather than avoiding the tax, even if it results in a cost to them. The government has decided to take this move irrespective of the fact whether the clients like this or not.