{"id":2430,"date":"2010-08-16T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T20:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"\/tax-strategies"},"modified":"2025-02-11T11:22:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T19:22:42","slug":"tax-strategies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/tax-strategies\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax Strategies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tax laws are constantly changing and evolving. Therefore, lowering your tax bill involves careful planning and a solid tax strategy. In fact, there is hardly an aspect of your financial situation ? savings, investments<\/a>, retirement funding, education<\/a>, real estate<\/a>, and estate planning<\/a> ? that can’t be improved by tax strategies. In recent years, historic tax reform has provided significant savings for individuals, families, investors, and businesses. However, many of these opportunities are temporary.<\/p>\n

Planning your tax strategy is especially important if your circumstances have changed during the past year. As you begin preparing your taxes<\/a>, take a look at the front of IRS Tax Form 1040<\/a>, and think about the life changes you have experienced this year.<\/p>\n

Have you married or divorced<\/a> in the past year?<\/strong>
\nA change in your marital status will affect your tax planning strategy. Near the top of Tax Form 1040 you must declare your filing status ? single, married filing jointly, married filing separately, head of household, or qualifying widow(er) ? which determines your marginal tax rate<\/a> (the rate at which your last dollar of income is taxed).<\/p>\n

Have you had a child, adopted a child<\/a>, or assumed caregiving responsibilities?<\/strong>
\nTaking on a dependent will surely impact your tax strategies. If so, you may need to change the number of exemptions you claim, or the number of dependents you support.<\/p>\n

Have you changed jobs, started a home business, or rented out your second home? <\/strong>
\nThere may be over a dozen types of income that you must report, as they apply to your situation.<\/p>\n

Have you made payments on a mortgage loan, incurred medical expenses<\/a>, or donated to charity<\/a>?<\/strong>
\nAt the bottom of Form 1040, you may list any tax deductions, which is a popular tax strategy for reducing total income to adjusted gross income (AGI).<\/p>\n

As you can see, life changes are relevant to planning your tax strategies.<\/p>\n

It’s important to remember that timing is critical and planning ahead can make a significant difference. By coordinating your tax strategies with your life changes and other financial planning, you may accomplish a variety of goals ? such as buying a house, paying for higher education, and funding your retirement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tax laws are constantly changing and evolving. Therefore, lowering your tax bill involves careful planning and a solid tax strategy. In fact, there is hardly an aspect of your financial situation ? savings, investments, retirement funding, education, real estate, and estate planning ? that can’t be improved by tax strategies. In recent years, historic tax […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tax-strategies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3226,"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430\/revisions\/3226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}