Tax Strategy Blog for Business Owners

You were going to give your kids money anyway. For the car. Or college. Or whatever they're asking for this week. When you hand it over as a gift, it comes out of after-tax dollars. When you pay it as a wage for real work in your business, your business deducts it, and your child […]

If you write the check for your long-term care insurance from your personal account, the same way you pay for car insurance or a gym membership, you may be paying for it the hard way. There is a side door most business owners walk right past. Here is the short answer. The IRS treats long-term […]

Walter is 54. His self-directed IRA holds a rental property that pays him steadily every month, and for a few years he has been moving pieces of that account into the Roth version, a little at a time, whenever the numbers worked. His thinking was simple: get it into the Roth, let it grow, take […]

If you own a rental, there is a good chance you are sitting on a deduction you never claimed. Not a gray-area deduction. Depreciation you were entitled to, and never took. Missed depreciation on rental property can be caught up in a single adjustment on this year's return. The tax code calls the mechanism a […]

Qualifying your short-term rental was step one. Most owners stop there, take the deduction the default way, and leave the biggest part of it sitting on a schedule that runs for decades. A short-term rental cost segregation study is the second decision, and it controls how big the deduction gets. The study breaks the property […]

This is Part 5 of our series on Section 199A, the qualified business income deduction, or "QBI." We've been running a series for business owners on the 199A deduction — most people know it as the QBI deduction. If you missed any of them, here is what we covered: We were getting some replies from […]

This is Part 4 of a four-part series on Section 199A, the qualified business income deduction, or "QBI." Catch up on Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 first. Is the business having a good year? Great. Here is what decides whether you keep the 20% deduction on it. Two things determine this: how much […]

This is Part 3 of a four-part series on the qualified business income deduction. Missed the first two? Read Part 1 and Part 2 — they're here. Still on paychecks this week. Last week I told you which side of the line you're probably on. If you're over it, this is the post that matters […]

This is Part 2 of a four-part series on the qualified business income deduction. Read Part 1 here. Last week I told you about a line on your tax return — $403,500 if you are married, half of that if you are single. Cross it, and the 20% deduction most business owners count on stops […]