help a rural hospital, save on state income tax
There is a rural health crisis in Georgia and many rural hospitals are facing severe demographic, industry, and financial challenges. Now, you can pay your 2017 Georgia income taxes with [...]
Last minute tax deductions for 2016
You’ve got 2 weeks remaining in 2016, here is a quick checklist of ways to reduce your taxes:
- max out your 401k ($18,000 + $6000 if over age 50)
- max our your HSA if you have a High Deductible Health Plan ($6750 for families / $3350 for singles)
- do you have any investment losses in a taxable account? Sell now and deduct up to $3000
And don’t forget about Itemized Deductions on your Schedule A form, plan ahead and get more deductions:
- Medical/Dental Expenses: keep track of your out of pocket expenses. If over 10% of Adj Gross Income you can deduct.
- Long Term Care premiums can be included in this
- State Tax or Sales Tax (you choose which one to deduct)
- Personal Property Tax
- Real Estate Tax
- Mortgage Interest
- Mortgage Insurance (PMI – deductible for some income levels)
- Mortgage Points/Loan Orig fees (basically prepaid mortgage interest can be deductible)
- CHARITABLE – big one you can do in the next two weeks
- Cash donations to qualified charities are deductible (keep records and written verification from charity)
- Non Cash Donations (donating household items to your favorite charity thrift store or qualified charitable institution)
- < $250 just need to record name of organization and description/value of property
- $250 to $500 need above + receipt from organization
- $500 to $5000 have to list more details with tax return including form 8283, still very easy
- >$5000 you will need to have an appraisal of the property.
- Misc Itemized Deductions (may or may not be subject to 2% AGI threshold) :
- Investment expenses and fees + some legal expenses
- unreimbursed employee expenses
- Job search expenses
- Job related education
- work uniforms (some restrictions here)
10 year yields
The interest rates on 10 year US treasury bonds have really shot up this fall. We were at 1.4% in July and now at 2.4%, quite a large jump and a level not seen since 2015. By comparison other developed countries like Germany (blue line) and Japan (red line) are much less. The spread has widened, will the others play catchup or will we see a retreat in US yields soon?
normally don’t trash competitors but……..
I think this says enough about the financial services industry: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/merrill-lynch-brokers-must-refer-2-customers-or-face-pay-cut-2016-12-07?mod=mw_share_twitter
appealing medicare premium surcharge
To follow up on the previous video post: If you would like to appeal the “income surcharge” attached to your medicare part b premium, here is the form https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-44.pdf
Medicare increases for 2017
Forbes has a good summary on the medicare premium increases for 2017: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2016/11/14/medicare-part-b-premiums-will-top-10000-a-year-for-high-income-senior-couples-in-2017/#4011937940b3
How to see everything Google knows about you
An interesting post from Clark Howard’s website on Google’s My Activity page: http://www.clark.com/google-my-activity-data-dashboard-delete?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5821747304d3014e53b2b514&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
stepping back from high yield for the time being
Not sure where high yield bonds are heading (junk bonds) but we’ve had a nice run this year and it was time to take profit. I can’t get a good read on High Yield here, so with it falling out of this wedge I took clients out on Friday morning.
