He Loves Talking Taxes! Steve Moskowitz Talks to A&G

For example, I have a question for you. Suppose I told you that you could go on a two week vacation anywhere in the world you choose, some stranger would pay for it, and the money the stranger gives you is tax free. How would you like that?

but the bottom line is supposed. For example, he said, okay, I'm going to rent my place out for one thousand dollars a day, and now everything is so many people like renting a home instead of a hotel. So the bottom line is you go ahead, and let's assume that you rented your house for one thousand dollars a day, so it's fourteen thousand dollars. You go off to Hawaii, you spend ten thousand on your trip. That fourteen grand that you god is tax free. It doesn't even go

on your tax return. It's excluded from income. That's just an example of one of the many, many, many hidden gems in our tax law. And glad people say, well, why should there be such things? Because our legislators and their infinite wisdom thinks this is good for the economy or the business, or there's some special interest that pushed them. But the bottom line is this law is for everybody. All the laws are for everybody. We're all equal under

the law. And the bottom line is you just have to know where these gems are hidden, because there's two reasons for the tax code. One is they get money from us. But the other one if you give us all kinds of incentives like this, mister, well what a deal. I mean, think about it. You're off on vacation anyway. The Airbnb's is so popular and you get fourteen days tax free. So you can see why I get so excited over these things.

it's exempt from lawsuits, so take a level. I hate to mention his name. Suppose you pick a look at OJ Simpson who had a multimillion dollar judgment against him for many, many years, and he never lost a penny of his pension. So that's good when you're in business, so you don't have to worries to take it away from you. And most tax planning you have to write to check by December thirty first twenty four to deduct

it in twenty four. But with most of the pensions, not all of them, but most of them, you have up to the time of filing your returns, including extension, which in English means, depending on your business entity, you could have as late as October fifteenth, twenty five to set up the plan, fund it and still deduct it from the previous year before. And there's all kinds of things in here. So for example, if you're in a pension, there's no everybody knows about forty one k's and Irish

and all that. But there's all kinds of additional plans, what I call the fancy plans, which you can put in much much more money, and they're based on your age, your earnings. There's an actuarial evaluation ticket. But people can put away a tremendous way more than this. But when we talk about putting things away, everybody should have a pension plan. Everybody should put that away.

If you're sixty, sixty one, sixty two, or sixty three, only those ages, you have a super catchup plan this beginning this year in twenty twenty five, where you put it even more. The bottom line is there's so much here. And then what about taking money out of plans? He said, well, okay, you know I need the money, but I don't want to get hit with that penalty. There's all kinds of exceptions to that. If you're a victim of domestic abuse,

you can take money out without the penalties. If you need it for emergency purposes, you can take it out wild penalties. If you take it out because of federally declared disasters, think about O the wildfires in California, let's mention Hawaii and other places. You can take it out without penalty if someone's terminally ill. And also a no to are firefighters. If they're age fifty or twenty five years of service, they can take it out without penalty.

I have to go on and on and on. But there's just so much here for everybody, and whether you know with being a small business owner, this is just the trumendous. Say I get so excited over this. But if you're in business, there are so many benefits to you just it's incredible, and it's all kinds of things. For example, supposed to me says, you know, I'd like to have an electric vehicle. Well, guess what, you know the government will give you seventy five hundred bucks. And

you say, well, that's nice. I can go ahead and take seventy five hundred dollars off my tax return, right you can. But even better, when you're at the dealer, you say, you know what, there's a special program where I can say to the dealer, I'll give the credit to you. You knock seventy five hundred bucks off the price, so I never have to give you the money and ask for it back. You get the seventy five hundred

from the government. There's so much, so much. Then there's another thing that gets me really excited, something called opportunity zones. Suppose you have this situation you sell something anything, some gold, coins, some stock, real property, anything, and you have capital gain and you say, well, all right, you know I realized that there's three capital gains rates zero what's a nice one. But you have to be making less than forty seven grand for that or fifteen percent, which is between forty

seven grand and over just half a mil. You know, most people are making under half of mil. Fifteen percent bad, and it goes to twenty percent if you're over five hundred and eighteen thousand. But the bottom line is you say, you know, I don't want to pay that either. So you can go into an opportunity zone and you can defer the taxes until twenty six. As you say, when somebody gives you something nice, what do you.

for one hundred million. You've made a gain of ninety nine million. You know, I can calculate the tax on that right now in my head. You know, the taxes zero. What Steve Wait talk about, there's a special provision that if you hold this property for more than ten years, when you sell it, there's zero capital game, there's no cap on it. So in my example, you made a profit of ninety nine million bucks, you pay zero taxes.

Talk about an incentive. So you see, that's why I get so excited about this and our laws filled with these things.

And also a lot of things that have changed are the numbers, like the standard deduction went up a little bit for twenty twenty four, and a little bit of numbers. You know, for example, the art didn't come credit. So we talked about the other end of this. For example, suppose you have three kids and you're making under sixty six eight nineteen. The government will give you seven eight hundred and thirty dollars, but is give them will give you the money, so you have those things. There's also

a change to the kittie tax. It's a small change for kids that are under age nineteen. The first thirteen hundred bucks is tax free. The next thirteen hundred bucks is taxed at the child's right, so it's a little something. Then the amounts for the flexible spending accounts and the health savings accounts have gone up. So what are those things. Basically, there are two different types of accounts where you can put some pre tax money at i e. Don't get taxed,

and then you use it for healthcare. Now there's differences between them, so and with an exception, you can't have both. There's an exception, but we won't get into that right now on Michelle. But for the most you say, well, what's more important to me? And you look at these and basically the best way to do it is their charts, and you say, okay, well, a flexible spending account, here's the advantages. With the health savings account, here's the advantages.

But basically the idea here is you get a tax deduction, you use the money for medical and isn't that nice? You don't have to pay tax on that amount of your earnings. And the bottom line, for example, with a health savings account, you can triple benefits. There's no taxes on the money you put it in, it grows tax free, and there's no taxes when you use it for medical bills. So again, I mean, you look at this stuff and you say, well, okay, why shouldn't I have it? There's

so much in tax Lobbrady complaints about their taxes. My taxes are too much. They're that, but people overlook all these benefits. And again I'm just throwing out a few samples and teasers. There's so much there. If you're interested in this to me. This has fascinated me my whole life, and it's here. It's available for everybody.