0:01 Alright, we are getting close to April 15th, 2024 and I've just got five things I'm gonna go over, and just a few minutes, like very last second things you could do for your tax return.
0:13 I know I'm really, I'm all about year-end tax planning and make sure you do as much as you can by the end of the year.
0:18 But when the year is over and you're getting ready to file your tax return, the deadline is coming up, like we're very close to it.
0:25 Here are some things you can do like ride it. Last second, I kind of call these, sometimes just call these like the Hail Mary things.
0:30 They're, my opinion, they're not the best strategies, like the best way to do it is to start early. But we're past that, right?
0:37 The year's over. So what can you do right now? In the next couple of weeks before April 15th. So these, there's five things I want you to consider.
0:45 So one of those is, if you do think you're going to, oh. So if you've not done any estimating at all, you haven't done any tax projections, you have no idea if you're going to, oh this would be really hard for you.
0:54 But if you just, if you just know that you're going to, oh, but you're still waiting for something, you'll still want to pay.
1:00 Even with an extension, you still need to pay the tax by April 15th. That's one of the weirdest things and one of the most, M- just commonly misunderstood things with the IRS, is that you think like, oh, I've got an extension.
1:14 I'm fine. I don't need to pay any taxes. Well, that's wrong. You might still need to pay your taxes. You don't have to f your tax return, but you would have to pay tax pay for 15th if you don't want to have any interest or any penalties.
1:27 It's confusing, right? It's weird. It's like I have an extension. Why do I not have an extension of time to pay?
1:33 But it's an extension of time to file and not an extension of time of time to pay. So just think of that.
1:39 When you're, if you do when you're on extension, you might still need to pay. So to pay it, it's really easy just, well the hard part is figuring out how much you might owe, a lot of times it'll estimate high for people.
1:50 But you go to iris.gov forward slash payments. And we do, I do recommend paying online now instead of mailing checks just because we've seen nightmares with the IRS losing checks like applying them to the wrong years.
2:03 So I would pay online at the iris.gov forward slash payments. Okay then one of the other ones this Hail Mary thing like you got two weeks to do this are the department plan contributions.
2:15 So I've done other episodes about like the specifics of like specific plan contributions. I'll go over some of those and just kind of high level.
2:23 But by April 15th you can still put money in. For last year, for the year before, like now we're in 2024 you can put money in for 2023 into like a traditional IRA plan.
2:35 You can put in $6,500 a person into a traditional IRA. But watch out because- If your income is too high, you don't get a benefit for that.
2:43 Make you're not gonna get a deduction if your income is too high. So it doesn't apply to everybody, but if you're less than you're filing like a married joint tax return, if you're less than about $200,000.
2:53 event. income, you should be able to get a deduction with the traditional IRA contribution. If I remember, it doesn't always make the most sense as far as your like your financial plan goes, you might want to put money into a Roth IRA.
3:06 You don't get a deduction. You don't with the Roth, but you can still put in for the prior year. You just don't get a deduction, but you'll have to watch for some income limits with that too.
3:14 So remember, traditionally you get a deduction Roth. You don't get a deduction, but the Roths can grow tax free. If you're young, like, well if you're younger than 45, I say try to put money into the Roth because then it'll have, it'll have 20 years to grow completely tax free.
3:31 If you're older than 45, or if you're taxed if your tax income is high, $250, $300,000 in up, then I'd look at the traditional because you're going to be in those higher tax brackets.
3:42 But these are things you can still do by the end of the year. Or by the end of this I'll see.
3:47 These in April 15th. Then the other when if you are self employed and it's still related to this retirement plan contributions, there are solo 401k contributions you might be able to do depending on how much you've earned or how much you've paid yourself from a w2.
4:00 know or there's a SEP IRA contribution. The SEP is a self employed like a self employment retirement plan and you can put it up to 25% of your taxable income if you're self employed.
4:12 So if you made $100,000 as a self employed, you could put in 25,000 dollars into this SEP retirement plan before April 15th.
4:22 You get a deduction meaning you don't have to pay tax on that 25,000 and then you'll have that 25. So that that could definitely be a planning opportunity for you.
4:32 So one of the other common so without that would talk about number one was just make sure you know if you're going to owe and pay before that.
4:40 Or pay before April 15th even if you're on extension so it was number one. Number two is retirement contributions. Just consider those April 15th.
4:49 Number three are HSA that can help savings account if you have one of those. With your employer or yourself if you're self employed in your insurance plan allows an HSA plan.
5:01 And you have you had an HSA plan in 2023. I love these plans because you can you can still max them out.
5:07 Thank you. It's almost like a retirement plan like combining a traditional array and a Roth. You get a deduction when it goes in and it grows tax-free and you can pull it out tax-free.
5:19 It's like you save tax- this is in three places instead of just two like with the Roth. So the HSA plan if you have one of those just watch for those limits.
5:27 It's like, was it $7,750 max contribution for those? And then I've got a list. Well. Yeah, just send us a message if you want this list of the allowable HRA deductions.
5:39 But it's like a three or four or five page list of things that you can deduct or you can use your money on from your HSA plan.
5:47 And so like say you want to max it out. You have to put in a couple thousand dollars to max it out.
5:52 And you look at the list. Yeah, I had all sorts of those things for last year. You can reimburse yourself immediately.
5:57 So it's one of those ways you you can put money in. You can withdraw it right away. And not have to pay tax on it, but you got the deduction.
6:04 Okay, so that's number three was maxed out your age to say number four. It's it might seem very simple, but you'd be surprised.
6:12 Just make sure no deduct are missing. So one of my main recommendations would be, and this is what like when I'm working with the tax prepares here at the Beemanton Company, or if I'm doing something myself, we look at the current year, like look at what you have.
6:27 For the current year and compared to what you had last year, it seems basic, but just make sure none of those things are missing.
6:33 And then just make sure you're strategizing and brainstorming like what else could there be? What is allowed for this type of business?
6:41 For this type of business, am I missing assets? Am I missing things that were deducted or paid for in my personal accounts that need to be pulled into my business accounts or tracked manually and manually added?
6:53 you can still do that just make sure you're just not missing any of those things and make sure you're like look at your tax return once it's prepared you can still you can still update it you can even file you can file tax returns again for up to three years later so like you can even go back and look
7:09 at your old tax returns to see you see if anything was missing and refyled those if you were missing something.
7:13 Okay that was number four and the last one I'm recommending it gets complex pretty quick but this one is related to capital gains.
7:22 If you were surprised with the capital gain so this could have been on say you sold the property or say you got a K1 which is your reporting share of like a part ownership and like a partnership.
7:35 If you got a capital gain and they sent your capital gain on your K1 you could still have an opportunity to roll that money and even if you've done something else with the money but now you have the K1 that reports it to you.
7:47 You have six months to roll that money into another investment it have to be an opportunity zone investment so go watch the episode on that.
7:55 But if you put it into an opportunity zone investment we can defer the tax on that. So you wouldn't have to pay tax on that in 2023.
8:05 If you roll it over it into an opportunity zone that could be a great opportunity for you. Maybe that's why they call it the opportunity zone.
8:12 Who knows. But no just think of that with- the capital gains. If you hear that word if you're preparing it or your preparer mentions that you have a lot of capital gains just consider just try to strategize to see if that's even an opportunity for you.
8:25 If you still have something more than six months to go and it was not through a partnership just in your personal name.
8:30 You wouldn't have the opportunity because it closed at the end of the six months. But just think of that if you might have that opportunity.
8:37 Okay. So there's the five things I mentioned. remember with an extension if you owe you still need to pay by April 15th.
8:45 And part of that just make sure your extension is in if you're, if you need an extension. Uh consider retirement plan contributions is the last minute.
8:54 Attack savings effort. Max out your HSA plan. That's number three. Just double check that no deductions are missing. That's number four.
9:03 And the last one was the opportunity zones. And the capital gains. Just watch. For what you can do with capital gains to potentially get your taxes down with that.
9:11 So those are the last second tax five tax savings strategies I mentioned. But please feel free to reach out if you have any questions on them.
