The recent bear market has not affected all investors equally. Clients who are still working could potentially have years to buy stocks at fire-sale prices. Older retired clients have Social Security checks, pensions in some cases, bond interest and—with good planning—enough of a cash reserve to defer selling their depressed stocks.
When stocks slide, taking capital losses can be a savvy move. You’ll cut your taxes now and in the future. However, tax losses help you only if you take them in taxable accounts. If you take losses in a tax-deferred account such as an IRA, you won’t get any benefits. That said, there may be […]
Barry Picker has a clear idea about what workflow products are supposed to accomplish in his firm’s tax office. “The goal is to do as little possible with the keyboard when you are working with a tax return,” says Picker, a partner in a nine-person firm Picker and Auerbach, CPAs based in Brooklyn, N.Y. That hasn’t been […]
With many retirement accounts in the tank this year, presidential candidates and other lawmakers have called for all sorts of measures aimed at helping people pick up the pieces of their broken nest eggs. Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed waiving the requirement that Americans age 70-1/2 and older must take a minimum […]
IF your retirement assets took a beating in the recent stock market decline, converting a traditional I.R.A. to a Roth I.R.A. may be one of the best tax strategies this year. When you do the conversion, you must pay income tax on the amount you are converting. This can be the whole account or a […]
UNCERTAINTY about future tax rates is complicating estate planning at a time when the economic downturn offers significant opportunities. Most methods of saving estate taxes reduce a person’s net worth through irrevocable lifetime transfers. Yet even the very wealthy are sometimes reluctant to take this step, because they worry that it will leave them short […]