1. COMMUTER BENEFITS, $300/month, which is $3,600/year. Applicable to mass transit, ride-sharing, parking meters, parking garages, parking lots, and more.
2. RETIREMENT PLANS . . . offered by your workplace. 401k or 403b retirement plan. 401ks are offered by for-profit companies. A 403b is for certain government organizations or non-profit orgs. When you contribute to either one, you pay fewer taxes this year and you build your retirement accounts. There are more retirement plans, but these are just the more popular ones.
3. HSA, A HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNT, for people with a high deductible health plan. When you put money into your HSA, it lowers your taxable income. It's a tax deduction. HOW IT WORKS: You put money in and if you spend it on qualified medical expenses, you do not pay taxes on that expense. You're paying for health-related expenses with pre-tax money. Additionally, you can invest the money that is in your HSA account, and the earnings and interest will be tax-free.
4. FSA, FLEXIBLE SPENDING ACCOUNT. It allows you to pay for certain healthcare expenses with pre-tax money. WARNING: There is a use it or lose it rule with the FSA. Leftover money in your FSA at the end of the year, you lose it, unless your company has a rollover option.
5. DEPENDANT CARE FSA. You can pay for childcare expenses with pre-tax money--for children and adult dependents. Daycare, nurseries, preschool, nannies, Au pairs, day camps, after-school programs, adult daycare facilities, and more.
SAVING MONEY & PAYING FEWER TAXES ON INVESTMENTS
6. CAPITAL LOSSES. If you have cryptocurrency losses, make sure that you report them because losses are good for tax purposes. Losses are tax deductions. When it comes to stocks, you'll receive the tax form 1099b, and your stock losses will be accounted for on that tax form. Stock losses are pretty hard to overlook; pretty hard to miss. You're throwing away money to the IRS if you don't report your losses.
7. LONG-TERM CAPITAL GAINS. If you hold onto a stock or crypto for more than a year before selling it, that is classified as a long-term capital gain. Long-term capital gains receive much better tax treatments. The tax rate for long-term capital gains is about half your regular tax rate. And if you're under a certain income threshold, you will qualify for a zero percent tax rate. In that case, you'll pay zero taxes at the federal level, making your profits 100% tax-free.
8. REVIEW YOUR 1099 B TAX-FORM. The 1099B is the year-end tax statement for your stock market activity. So you get this tax form from your brokerage account at Robinhood or Ameritrade. They send this to you around late January or mid-February. But you can also download the 1099B from your brokerage account. You just have to go to the tax section in your app or . . . . With the 1099B form, just make sure there are no obvious mistakes. A common mistake that makes people pay more tax than they should. On your 1099B tax form, if you see information that is blank or missing, that could cost you a lot of money, and I see this happen all the time. Your 1099 B says how much you bought a stock for and how much you sold it for. If the buy price is missing, it looks like you got it for zero dollars. And then whatever you sold it for it looks like pure profits. And then you're going to erroneously end up paying a lot of taxes. Therefore, look out for obvious errors like that.
9. MARGIN INTEREST. Do not forget to deduct your margin interest. You can deduct your investment interest expense, and this is going to be listed on your 1099 B tax form as well.
10. GAMBLING LOSSES. Random one that's actually useful because I see this quite frequently. If you went to the casino and you won big on the slot machine, you'll receive a tax form called a W2-G. We're not talking about a million-dollar jackpot. This is applicable if you win a few thousand dollars. The Casino sends a copy of your winnings to the IRS. Therefore, if you don't report your winnings on your tax returns, you will get into trouble. If you do get a W2-G, you can reduce that amount by how much money you lost in gambling. So the money that you lost on table games, slots, sports betting, horse racing, etc, you can use the losers to offset the winners.
11. TRADITIONAL IRA.
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