Poll- How Much Tax in 2007?

[haha]

I am paying eay more tax in retirement than I ever paid working, at least in nominal $, and I have yet to draw from an IRA or take any SS. And our tax rates are reputed to be low.

This poll is for retired singles; I'll post another for retired marrieds. You working people are making so much money I won't bother you with what would likely be a very painful exercise.

Well, apparently there is no way to edit a poll- I meant line 63, not line 46.

Ha

 

[jIMOh]

Don't fully understand, my AGI was 103k, taxable income 62k.... 41k of deductions. Married filing jointly.

 

[Moemg]

Okay I got out the dreaded tax return and my tax bill was slightly over $2600 . The thing that kept mine low was $11,000 in deductions and since I worked occasionally last year I could still deduct $5,000 for an IRA , plus I had a long term loss of $3,000.

 

[happy2bretired]

My line 63 is $1,471 and I also had a lot of deductions this year as well as my brokerage firm balanced out gains with losses so I'm sure that helped too. I get a government pension so that was part of my income along with monthly payments from my investments.

My accountant over estimated my taxes for last year due to the financial chaos that was due to my husband's death. So...I'm getting $10,000 back this year from Federal and state. Yeah!

 

[happy2bretired]

Are you sure you want line 63? If you take into consideration the amount that I have deducted from my pension check, that's another $3,564 on line 64. So, I guess my total is $5,035. That make sense?

 

[happy2bretired]

Hmmm...now I'm confusing myself. Dummy...I'm getting some of it back....so I'm confused.

 

[Moemg]

Line 63 on mine is still $2,600. I paid estimated last year and had tax withheld from my pension so I got a small refund . I have not touched my IRA and will probably not touch it until required .

 

[Donzo]

I payed a boatload this time because of the sale of some investment property. Could have been alot worse -
if Obama gets in and raises capital gains to 30% as he says he plans to......

 

[haha]

There is a huge spread, isn't there? My pretty big bill is a result of having realized capital gains in taxable accounts.

Like Donzo says, taking them now may prove to be a reasonable move depending on what comes next.

Ha

 

[Patrick]

I payed a boatload this time because of the sale of some investment property. Could have been alot worse -
if Obama gets in and raises capital gains to 30% as he says he plans to......

Sell all your capital right after the election . . .

 

[FIRE'd@51]

My pretty big bill is a result of having realized capital gains in taxable accounts.

So long as they were LT, you are still putting at least 85 cents in your pocket for each 15 cents you send to the Feds. I don't see how you could do much better than that.

 

[haha]

So long as they were LT, you are still putting at least 85 cents in your pocket for each 15 cents you send to the Feds. I don't see how you could do much better than that.

True, and they were entirely LT. Some ST that was offset by ST losses from expired index puts.

Ha

 

[BoutDone]

Perhaps a better poll would be taxes as a % of AGI. Still working and our Fed tax has hovered around 18.5% of AGI. Live in FL so no state hit.

We've plugged 18% into our retirement spreadsheet. Hopefully, this is adequate though I sure see higher taxes in our future - at least the next four years.

 

[audreyh1]

We started paying way more taxes as soon as we retired. This was a) because of realized capital gains as we diversified from company stock and b) because we diversified into a mutual fund mix that generates distributions from equities and bonds.

Also most years we have realized enough in LT cap gains or LT cap gains distributions to cause us to pay AMT rates on non-LT income.

We sure were tax efficient before retiring! Much less so now.

Audrey

 

[FIRE'd@51]

We started paying way more taxes as soon as we retired. This was a) because of realized capital gains as we diversified from company stock and b) because we diversified into a mutual fund mix that generates distributions from equities and bonds.

Also most years we have realized enough in LT cap gains or LT cap gains distributions to cause us to pay AMT rates on non-LT income.

We sure were tax efficient before retiring! Much less so now.

I'm not sure I understand this. First of all, you are only paying a maximum rate of 15% on LT gains. This must be much less than what your marginal rate was when you were working.

With regard to the AMT, why wouldn't you only take enough LT cap gains in a given year to stay just below the threshold that triggers the AMT?

Finally, I thought private banks allowed their high net worth clients to do swaps to get diversification, e.g. swap the return on company stock for the return on the S&P 500 or some combination of the S&P 500 and bonds. This way you avoid selling large amounts of stock and incurring large capital gains taxes, but still achieve the desired diversification.

 

[cardude]

My percentage of tax paid (line 63 / line 38 ) was 26.1%. How does that compare?

I'm still working and still have a pretty high income............My line 38 has 120K in LT capital gains in it.