When I started Segment Wealth Management in 2010, it was because my view of investing looked nothing like Wall Street’s. Most firms seemed to think the path to success was clever trading, complex products, and a casual attitude toward fees and taxes. I never bought that. My bet was simpler: slash fees and obsess over…
Back in 2017, Congress made changes to the tax code via the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). One of its provisions raised the Lifetime Gift Tax Exemption, the amount of assets each person can pass to heirs without estate taxation. TCJA raised the exempt amount from $5.49million to $11.18million per person….
As we head into election season, you will surely hear more rhetoric claiming that the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Warren Buffett is famous for once saying that he paid less in taxes than his secretary did. If Warren really wanted to fix this, he could simply declare a dividend for Berkshire…
Traditional investment advice normally focuses on allocation into buckets. These buckets could be traditional mutual funds, or ETFs, or managed accounts holding individual stocks. In most cases, the allocation buckets are tactically rearranged, and the securities within mutual funds and managed accounts are also actively rearranged. This process of rearranging can easily result in realized…
We get puzzled looks from new clients when we explain our position on taxable fixed income (bonds) in IRAs. Traditional planning advice recommends placing your highest growth assets in an IRA to maximize the tax deferral. We usually recommend the complete opposite approach, which becomes more and more preferable the higher the income of the…
Just in time for Tax Day 2023, Gil talks tax strategy with the Houston Business Journal. “With tax season upon us, it seems an appropriate time to discuss tax strategy with a local specialist. Investors might assume that the frontline professionals for advanced tax strategy are CPAs. However, some investors find that their CPAs work…
Gil published a piece in Forbes Council titled, “Death and Taxes: Not So Certain After All.” After years of writing about the subject, long-time readers will surely realize how degrading taxes are to returns. With market liquidity at all-time highs and trading commissions now free, investors are seemingly incentivized to trade their accounts. The math…
Rather than count the ways, let’s just discuss one for today – tax efficiency. Traditional Mutual Funds Traditional mutual funds, like those from Fidelity, Putnam, or any other fund company, have a particular type of accounting that results in tax inefficiencies for investors. Accounting rules for these open-ended mutual funds force all fund shareholders to…
There are very few tax issues more complicated than the intersection of estate taxes, income taxes, and IRAs. Very few couples exceed the $24million exemption amount to begin with, and even fewer get this part of their planning correct. If not navigated well, this confluence of factors can conspire to cause 80% of an IRA…
Mr. Biden’s new tax policy has proposed yet another angle to get more tax revenue from the “millionaires and billionaires.” This time he’s circling back to see if he can get a tax on unrealized (unsold) taxpayers’ gains after all. The new twist is that this tax policy is limited to those folks with more…
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