How Charitable Giving Can Help Reduce Your Taxes

Charitable giving can significantly reduce your taxes if you do it the right way. In this hour of the podcast, Joe and Al discuss charitable contribution tax strategies for any budget. Find out if a donor advised fund is right for you, and how this type of fund differs from a private foundation. Joe and Al go through ten tax-reducing tips from Robert Keebler, CPA. Tis’ the season of giving–and in turn, saving on your taxes!

2:49 “When you look at the investments that you choose inside of your retirement accounts versus outside of your retirement accounts, it’s going to have a direct effect on your tax return”

4:01 “Every dollar of gain—I’m going to be taxed on that, and it’s going to be at ordinary interest rates. If it’s outside my retirement account, it’s going to be taxed at a capital gains rate, for most of you it’s going to be a lot lower”

7:10 “Use limited partnerships and outright gifts of appreciated assets to shift income to younger family members”

11:15 “If you give less than $500 (worth of stuff to a charity), then you don’t have to itemize anything on your tax return; it’s a straight deduction. If you give more than that, you have to say who you gave to, what you gave, the date of the donation, what you paid for it”

14:41 “If the stock has gone up in value, yes, that’s the one you want to give to charity. If it’s gone down in value, sell it first then use the cash proceeds to give to charity”

16:24 “It’s [A donor advised fund] a great way to get a deduction now when you need it, and then dole out the money later”

20:57 “When you put money into the donor advised fund, you can let it sit there for twenty years or more if you want to, or you can immediately start taking money out of that account and sending it to a charity”

23:47 “The only difference with a donor advised fund is that you have to give to a charity. With a private foundation, you can give to anyone who serves your charitable purpose”

28:20 “If you have securities that are at a loss, you might want to sell them to offset any gains that you had throughout the year”

28:53 “When you’re looking at creating income in retirement, you want to make sure you’re doing everything you possibly can to reduce the overall tax bill, and tax loss harvesting is one of them—it’s a key component”

31:00 “If you have after-tax monies in a 401(k) plan, you can take those after-tax dollars and directly move those into a Roth tax-free”

33:31 “If you own mutual funds outside of your retirement accounts, you might have an unexpected tax bill because of the turnover that the mutual fund managers are doing inside the fund—even if the fund goes down, you’re going to get hit with a tax bill”