There have been many scams in recent years where people impersonate authorities in an attempt to gain access to your personal information. The most common we have seen is scammers who pose as the IRS. They call or email unsuspecting individuals demanding information and threatening to call the police if you don’t comply. The IRS explains on this website:
The IRS requires you to pay in 90% of your current year tax liability or 110% of your prior year tax liability. These amounts are considered “safe harbor” payments. If you are a W-2 employee, the withholding from your wages will typically cover this safe harbor payment amounts. If you are not a W-2 employee, you need to determine if it’d be best to pay in taxes based on 110% of your prior year tax liability or on 90% of your estimated current tax liability. If you don’t meet either of these thresholds, the IRS will assess underpayment penalties based on the amount of the underpayment and the time period when you were underpaid.
We have previously covered the federal estate tax changes implemented by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) here and here. We also explained how these changes impact state estate taxes for Maryland residents. A recent article written by Franklin Karibjanian and Law PLLC points out an important new wrinkle in the Maryland estate tax law.
One of the less heralded aspects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was the change in how you calculate the “Tax for Certain Children Who Have Unearned Income”, otherwise known as the Kiddie Tax. This alternative tax calculation was put in place back in 1986 in an effort to prevent wealthy taxpayers from shifting investment assets to their children, where the investment income would be subject to a lower tax rate. This calculation is just one of the many reasons why preparing tax returns for children can often be more complicated and time consuming than you’d think!
I recently had the opportunity to organize and moderate a session at the AICPA Personal Financial Planning conference that discussed the best planning ideas being implemented by financial planners right now. This conference and specifically this session brings together some of the best minds in the financial planning community. Below is a list of the top planning ideas we discussed during the session and some things you should be thinking about in your own planning:
The second quarter of 2019 ended about the same way it started, with positive returns across the financial markets. Let’s recap what happened, what we learned and where we go from here.