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Every year during this time, we reconcile our earnings and deductions for Uncle Sam and either fork over more dough or humbly request that a little be given back. If you follow the strategies of this blog you may not have much tax liability to begin with, but if you find yourself in a position where you owe the IRS and were wondering if you could earn rewards points on that payment, the answer is yes. More significantly, there’s an interesting trick where you can potentially earn hundreds of thousands of points and miles by making estimated payments which is discussed below.
(GCC: I am often asked, “Do you know any good CPAs?” and “What are some good tools for doing my taxes?” I never thought both questions could share a common answer – Kathryn from Making Your Money Matter is a CPA (who gets it) who has developed some very cool tools for doing taxes (and more) that cost less than an hour with a CPA. Disclaimer: links in this post are affiliate links.)
I remember the first time I found Go Curry Cracker and read one of Jeremy’s blog posts going through his tax return in detail. It covered his then-recently filed 2015 tax return, with over six figures of income and still no income tax due (only a small amount of self-employment taxes).
I’d like to say that I—a CPA—was intuitively able to do a quick review of the numbers and figure out pretty fast how this worked out. However, I had to pull out a pen and paper and calculate it by hand just to make sure it made sense.
Each spring since, I’ve looked forward to the annual tax return reveal. (GCC: 2021 tax return coming soon!)
If you have ever wondered, How can I optimize my taxes in the same way… without all the hassle of becoming a tax nerd first, well… have I got a tool for you.
The United States has very generous tax rates for investment income such as qualified dividends and long-term capital gains, as low as 0%. This is a key component of the Never Pay Taxes Again strategy.
But sometimes you want (need?) to realize some large gains – say, if you are paying cash for a boat or a house, or if you are moving from a low-tax to a high-tax residence and want a massive step-up in basis. Or maybe you think the market is hot and you want to take some off the table.
In these cases you may come across the Net Investment Income Tax, a nice little 3.8% extra tax surcharge.
Here at Go Curry Cracker we talk a lot about paying zero taxes. It’s a fun little game that you win just by playing.
But it won’t happen every year, probably. And in the years you owe tax, come April the IRS will penalize you and charge back interest if you haven’t paid enough in advance – either through paycheck withholding or estimated taxes (or both.)
2020 was an interesting year in many ways including all things taxes… I mean, we paid $0 in income tax (again) on ~$143k income.
This was in part because dividends and blog revenue were lower due to COVID-19, which is a bummer. But it is also because we welcomed another child tax credit into the family, which is nice. Plus, he’s kinda cute.
But that’s not all… for all of you tax aficionados, this year’s tax return offers some good examples of both short and long term tax minimization, including use of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, the Child Tax Credit (with phase out), capital gain harvesting, Roth conversions, the Foreign Tax Credit (on International equities), and more.
Advertiser Disclosure: This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CardRatings.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
