Last week, we discussed more on good budgeting practices. This week, we’re going to turn the page to the world of taxes. We are going to walk through a few introductory topics on what most people deal with year-over-year in their filings.
We’ll discuss:
So let’s jump into tax rates.
In this week’s video, I use the example of a taxpayer that has $100,000 of taxable income. That means after all deductions are applied, they had $100,000 of income subject to income tax.
A reasonable person could take a look at the United States’ tax brackets and see that in 2023, a person making $100,000 falls into the 24% tax bracket. They may rationally assume that means they will owe $24,000 in tax. Makes complete sense, right? However, this is a very common misconception. The US operates under a marginal tax system (sometimes called a progressive system). This means that different portions of your income are taxed at different rates.
Let’s continue with the example. We’re going to reference the 2024 tax tables from here on out. Taxpayer’s $100,000 is taxed in the following way:
If we want to look at a tally of taxes incurred at those rates it would look like this:
That’s a total of $17,053 in taxes. Significantly less than the $24,000 that someone may have assumed they owed.
So, now they know how much they are expected to pay in taxes, but we need another figure for our own analysis – the effective tax rate.
Effective tax rate is the percentage of taxes you pay in relation to your income. ETR = Total tax / total taxable income.
In this example it would look like this: $17,053 / $100,000 = 17.05%
For every dollar earned, they paid about $0.17 in taxes.
Now that you know the marginal tax rate and the effective tax rate – let’s move on to another often confused topic: the difference between tax credits and tax deductions.
The difference is very simple. A tax credit reduces your tax liability dollar for dollar. A tax deduction reduces your taxable income, only.
For example, if the taxpayer has $100,000 taxable income, so they currently have a tax bill of $17,053, and they claim tax credits worth $10,000, they would reduce their tax bill by $10,000 – down to $7,053.
With a tax deduction of $10,000 they would reduce their taxable income by that amount. $100,000 becomes $90,000. That would reduce their taxes by $2,200, as the reduction only happens in one marginal tax bracket, the calculation becomes $10,000 x 22%.
Tax credits are typically preferred albeit they are more rare and apply to less people.
With all that we have discussed so far, we are only concerned with ordinary income taxes. Let’s move on to a different topic: capital gains.
Capital gains come in two forms: short-term and long-term.
The terms are measured by the time you held the asset. If you sell the asset within one year of purchasing it, the gain will be considered short-term.
The opposite scenario would result in a long-term capital gain – holding the asset for longer than one year.
Short-term capital gains are subject to ordinary income tax rates like we discussed in the first portion of this post. For the purposes of this discussion there really isn’t a difference between how short-term gains are taxed compared to your traditional income. One thing to keep in mind is that if you accumulate enough capital gains (short or long-term) you can trigger an additional 3.8% tax called net investment tax. We won’t get into that here, but it’s something to be aware of.
In contrast, long-term capital gains are subject to preferable tax treatment. Depending on your income, you’ll be taxed at 0%, 15% or 20% on those long-term gains.
To drive home the point, let’s take the example of Apple stock that was acquired for $100.
In the first scenario, that Apple stock was held for 3 months and sold for $200. We’ll also borrow from the first example given of a taxpayer with income of $100,000 of taxable income. Following the sale of that stock, that taxpayer would pay an additional $44 in tax because that income would fall into the highest marginal tax bracket that they are currently in (22%).
Let’s take the same example, but the Apple stock was held for 1 year and 3 months. That taxpayer is now looking at the 15% long term capital gains rate on that sale. So, they would only have an additional $30 in tax to pay.
In 2024, for single filers, incomes below $47,025 pay 0% on long term capital gains. The 15% bracket is for income in excess of that amount up to $518,900. Incomes in excess of that amount will be taxed at 20%.
That’s the basics of capital gains taxes.
For this introduction on basic US taxes, the final topic we’re going to cover is how dividends are taxed.
Taxes on dividends are going to be simple, but there’s a few things to note. The first is that there are two kinds of dividends: ordinary and qualified.
Let’s start with ordinary dividends – similar to the capital gains determination it’s based on the length of time you’ve held an underlying asset. The durations are a bit different for dividends.
To be considered an ordinary dividend, you need to have purchased the asset less than 60 days before the dividend was declared by the company issuing it. That declaration date is also referred to as the record date. If you have an ordinary dividend, it will be taxed as ordinary income.
To be considered a qualified dividend, you need to have purchased the asset 60 days before that record date and held it for at least 61 days in the next 121 days before the next dividend. I know that ends up being a little confusing. If you need assistance, your broker should be able to assist you, as all of this will be reported on your 1099-B that they will issue to both you and the IRS. If you end up having a qualified dividend, you’ll pay the long-term capital gains rate on your qualified dividend income, which is preferential once again.
That’s all we’re going to cover here and in this week’s video. It goes without saying that there is much, much more to discuss when it comes to taxes as this truly is the tip of the iceberg.
Thanks for reading!
Financial Advisor