Annual Gift Tax Exclusion Archives

10 Year-End Tax-Savings Tips for 2025 for Individual Filers

By Office Staff|2025-11-17T14:49:55-08:00November 17, 2025|Categories: Taxes|Tags: 2025 Tax Filing, Annual Gift Tax Exclusion, Donation, IRA, Retirement Contribution, Roth IRA, Tax Withholding, Wash Sale|0 Comments

The end of the tax year is fast approaching, which means there’s still time to execute some year-end tax-savings strategies, but not that much time. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) has extended and enhanced many taxpayer-friendly provisions, and you’d be wise to act now to take full advantage of them.

Here at SWC, we hate to see anyone pay more in taxes than they’re legally obligated to, which is why we offer year-end tax projection meetings for our clients from October through December. If you haven’t scheduled yours yet, use the Contact page on our website (click on the Appointments link to get started).

To demonstrate our commitment to helping as many people as possible minimize their tax burden and use the money they save to build long-term wealth, we present these 10 year-end tax-savings tips.

Tip No. 1: Review Your Tax Withholdings and Estimated Tax Payments

To avoid having to pay an underpayment penalty, take a look at how much income tax you already handed over to the government for the 2025 tax year in the form of withholdings from your paychecks and any estimated tax payments you’ve made.

To avoid an underpayment penalty on your federal income tax, your withholding and/or estimated tax payments must be at least one of the following:

90 percent of this year’s total tax liability
100 percent of last tax total tax liability
110 percent of last year’s tax liability if your current year’s adjusted gross income (AGI) is more than $150,000 ($75,000 if you’re married filing as single).

If you had unexpected income or capital gains during the year, we here at SWC can help you project your 2025 tax liability and take steps to avoid underpayment penalties. To schedule a consultation, reach us by visiting the Contact page of our website.

Tip No. 2: Consider Bunching Itemized Deductions

Each year, you can deduct the greater of your itemized deductions (mortgage interest, charitable contributions, medical expenses, and state and local taxes) or the standard deduction. The 2025 standard deduction is: Continue reading… Continue reading… Continue reading…

Thanks, Inflation! Cashing in on Inflation-Driven Tax Breaks

By Office Staff|2022-11-16T14:58:45-08:00November 16, 2022|Categories: Taxes|Tags: Annual Gift Tax Exclusion, Earned Income Tax Credit, Estate Tax, Income Threshold, Inflation, Standard Deduction|0 Comments

Recently, inflation has commandeered the news cycle. Everyone’s worried about it. And why wouldn’t they be? With inflation, everything costs more, and increased income usually lags far behind.

But inflation isn’t all bad. If you own a home, for example, inflation will eventually increase its value (in most cases). And if you have a mortgage on that home, you’ll be paying it off with dollars that aren’t worth nearly as much as the dollars you borrowed.

In addition, inflation can save you money on taxes. “How so?” you ask. In this post, we reveal several ways where inflation has recently resulted in lowering taxes (for some people).

Inflation-Driven Tax-Relief Baked into the Tax Code

Most people assume that inflation will increase their tax burden. Since income taxes are based on income, and if your income increases, you’ll pay more in taxes, right? You might even suffer a double whammy, paying more tax on higher income and getting boosted into a higher tax bracket.

While that’s true to some extent, the tax code has some protections built in that prevent rising prices from automatically triggering higher taxes. In fact, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently announced that thanks to inflation, taxpayers can expect the following relief in 2023 (the following generally applies to tax returns filed in 2024):

Income thresholds will be increasing 7 percent for all tax brackets. For example, instead of paying the lowest tax rate of 10 percent tax on the first $10,275 you earn, you’ll pay 10 percent on the first $11,000 you earn. If you’re married filing jointly, instead of paying 10 percent on the first $20,250 you earn, you’ll pay 10 percent on the first $22,000 you earn. In other words — assuming you earn the same amount in 2023 as you did in 2022 — you’ll actually be paying less federal income tax.
The standard deduction is increasing 7 percent from $12,950 for individual filers in 2022 to $13,850 in 2023, and from $25,900 for married couples filing jointly in 2022 to $27,700 in 2023. This represents the largest adjustment to deductions since 1985, when the IRS began annual automatic inflationary adjustments. You’ll start to see the new figures reflected in your income tax withholding statements on paychecks beginning in January 2023, resulting in an increase in take-home pay.
The maximum Earned Income Tax Credit, one of the federal government’s main anti-poverty measures, will increase from $6,935 in 2022 to $7,430 in 2023.
The annual gift tax exclusion (the maximum amount one person can give to another without incurring a tax penalty) will increase from $16,000 in 2022 to $17,000 in 2023.
The estate tax threshold (often used by wealthy Americans to shield inherited assets from levies) will increase from $12.1 million in 2022 to $12.9 million in 2023.
The amount of income adoptive parents can shield from taxes will increase from $14,890 per child in 2022 to $15,950 per child in 2023.

You May Now Qualify for the Premium Tax Credit

Thanks to the soaring costs of “affordable” health insurance premiums, you may now qualify for the Premium Tax Credit where in recent years, you fell short of the cutoff.

Starting next year, if your Continue reading… Continue reading… Continue reading…