Ep. 18 Plan on Doing these things Before the New Year
Too many people look at their taxes in the new year and they ask "What can I do to lower my taxes". By that time it's often too late. Instead plan ahead and be sure you have yourself set up for success before the year is out.
You can do the following things and more to make sure you optimize your tax situation.
1. Update Your Withholding on your paycheck. Get more today so you don't give the IRS a large interest free loan
2. Prepay Your bills if you are a cash basis taxpayer. You may want to pay medical expenses, property taxes or even tuition to get a tax deduction
3. Use tax loss harvesting techniques and maybe even harvest some gains. You can net capital gains and losses to potentially save yourself some taxes.
4. Contribute more to your retirement plan - Whether it's your company 401(k), a SEP IRA or traditional IRA or maybe even a Solo 401(k) make sure you take advantage of the options available to you. In many cases you have until April 15 of the following year to do this, but not with a company plan, so get those in before year end.
5. If you have a small business or side hustle, make sure you are taking full advantage of tax deductions available to you.
6. Giving to Charity - whether it's cash or household items or even real property, you can save money and make a solid impact. Check out epidode 14 for more on this.