Estate Tax Archives

Tax Planning for a Second Trump Presidency

By Office Staff|2025-07-10T10:34:21-07:00November 13, 2024|Categories: Tax Credits, Tax Planning|Tags: Estate Tax, Tariffs, Tax Cut and Jobs Act, Tax Policy, Trump|0 Comments

The votes are in, the winner has been declared. Now’s the time to start planning your taxes around the second Trump presidency (2025-2028). Of course, taxes aren’t entirely within the purview of the President of the United States — only Congress has the power to change the tax code. However, the president has tremendous influence over it.

For his part, the president proposes tax policies that can influence public opinion, rallies Congress to pass tax legislation, and has the power to veto any tax legislation proposed by Congress. And while the president can’t change the tax code through executive orders, he can direct agencies to implement certain tax policies or interpretations and pay less attention to others.

So, what changes to the tax code can we expect from a second Trump presidency? In many ways, we can expect to see more of the same — an extension of many of the provisions in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) that Congress approved in late 2017 near the middle of the first Trump presidency. In addition, we can likely count on additional tax relief to promote growth and increase take-home pay for workers.

In this post, we review key provisions of the TCJA, which will expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress acts to extend them, and we highlight changes to the tax code that Trump proposed during his campaign.

Tax Cut and Jobs Act Provisions That Are Set to Expire in 2025

Many of the TCJA provisions were intended to be temporary. Unless Congress acts to extend them, the following provisions are set to expire at the end of 2025: 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…