Comments on: 9 Year End Tax Moves to Make by Dec. 31st

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 22:41:07 +0000

Kay – remember too, that this year congress extended the “donate from your IRA” for those 70-1/2 and older. Even with suspended RMDs, for those who don’t itemize they are still better off (in most cases) donating from the IRA instead of with ‘regular’ money.
Joe

By: JoeTaxpayer

JoeTaxpayer — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:13:34 +0000

Another point – if you are on the edge of taking the standard deduction and itemizing, this pull-in can be part of your itemized in odd years, and the 11 payment years fall into the years you take the standard deduction. Same thought towards stacking donations in JAN and DEC of the year to itemize.

By: lostAnnfound

lostAnnfound — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:39:09 +0000

Thanks for the explanation. Making an extra payment makes sense in terms of paying off a mortgage early, it was just figuring out how making a payment early was actually beneficial in terms of taxes.

By: JoeTaxpayer

JoeTaxpayer — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:34:18 +0000

Kay – remember too, that this year congress extended the “donate from your IRA” for those 70-1/2 and older. Even with the suspended RMDs, for those who don’t itemize, they are still better off (in most cases) donating from the IRA instead of with ‘regular’ money.
Joe

By: Kay

Kay — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:15:46 +0000

Thanks for the opportunity and for the comments from the readers!

By: stonewall

stonewall — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:00:11 +0000

The strategy is to accelerate a deduction in a year where you are in a higher tax bracket. It’s a temporary fix, but if you are in the 28% bracket in ’09 vs a 15% bracket in ’10, then you’ll see a nice chunk of savings.

By: stonewall

stonewall — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:52:50 +0000

To comment further, some states such as Arizona allow you to deduct all medical expenses regardless of the federal AGI limitations.

By: Izalot

Izalot — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 01:59:53 +0000

Hey Fallout Bobble-head boy! Could he be a miscellaneous deduction for your blog?

By: saladdin

saladdin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:12:12 +0000

Great point that few people understand.

saladdin

By: steve

steve — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:49:02 +0000

By making an extra payment each year, you can also pay off your mortgage 7 years earlier on a 30 year mortgage.

By: Paige

Paige — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:49:55 +0000

We have never been able to itemize, even with owning a home. So owning a home is not a big tax benefit for us.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:46:14 +0000

You’re not missing something, what you said is 100% accurate. It’s not a huge benefit, but it’s something worth doing simply because it’s easy.

By: lostAnnfound

lostAnnfound — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:28:08 +0000

“Similarly, pay your January mortgage payment this month and you’ll be able to deduct that extra loan interest amount, too.”

I don’t quite understand the benefit on this one. If I pay January’s payment in December, then next year, assuming I do the same thing, I will still have made 12 payments for that year and for each year after that. It seems like the only benefit is realized the first year you do it when you would have made payments from January to December and then paid the following January’s bill also in December, so 13 payments would have been made at that point.

Or am I totally missing something regarding this?

By: jsbrendog

jsbrendog — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:35:22 +0000

sigh, I am in a limbo middle stage where none of these aply to me….although that could also be a good thing right now…

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:26:03 +0000

Thanks for the details kosmo.