Category Archives: Tax planning

Tax stamp

Why your taxes went up

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Many of us are still pondering why we didn’t benefit from the alleged tax cut and worrying about what will happen this year, again. After all, tax brackets went down 3-4% for the first 4 tax brackets. But (and this continues this year) your taxable income most likely went up. Don’t expect that to improve for 2019. At a recent conference I attended, this was much discussed. Why?

You live in a blue state. Clever how that worked, huh? Because in many blue states and urban areas, your property taxes on a middle-class home probably exceeded the $10K cap. Add in your state income tax paid. And don’t forget that mortgage interest you used to itemize. With just these three, there’s a good chance you could exceed the $24K standard deduction (married filing jointly) or $12,000 (single). These increase to $24,400/$12,200 for 2019. Woohoo. But once income tax and property tax are capped at $10K total, your mortgage interest might not put you over the standard deduction.

Your charitable deductions don’t count. If you don’t itemize, you don’t get to take a charitable deduction.

You can’t deduct employee expenses. If you buy supplies, or uniforms (except for teachers), that’s on your dime, now.

You don’t have kids. People with kids saw the tax credit doubled.

For 2019, your medical deductions might not qualify. For 2017 and 2018, you needed medical expenses  greater than 7.5% of your income. For 2019, it goes back up to 10% of adjusted gross.

Changes to alimony. Alimony is no longer deductible to the person who pays, beginning with divorces finalized in 2019. The recipient will no longer be taxed on the alimony, but this is likely to result in lower payments to the recipient (since the payer will be dinged for more).

There’s not a whole lot to be done, except by voting. However, it’s important to remember that lower taxes are not the only consideration—what you get for them is also important. It’s how much spendable income actually ends up in your pocket. If you didn’t have to pay for healthcare, long term care, could look forward to a decent guaranteed income in retirement, and didn’t have to save or pay for  college or vocational training, but had to pay, say, 5% higher taxes, you’d most likely be better off.  It’s the value you get, not just the taxes you pay. I discussed this quite extensively in this post, and what exactly we get compared to other Western Democracies here.

 

Health care stethescope

That other retirement account: Financial planning for HSAs

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Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) may be the best deal out there, if you can get it. All of us like to beat the tax man, right? HSAs are what’s known as triple tax free: you get a deduction when you put money into the account, the account grows tax free, and as long as you make withdrawals for allowable health care expenses (pretty easy to do), you don’t pay any tax on that either. They’re like a traditional IRA or 401k going in, and a Roth coming out.
But like many good things, there are a few problems and things to watch out for:
1) I’ve probably repeated this for the millionth time now, but you don’t have to pay yourself back for the medical expenses in the year you spent the money. You can accumulate the receipts (and carefully file them so you can find them) and withdraw them in any year, as in when you actually retire. You’ll have to be able to pay your deductible and out of pocket costs out of pocket, but if these are fairly low, you can keep the HSA invested.
2) As with every financial account, watch the fees. Some accounts ding you heavily if you don’t keep a minimum balance. Some charge you a monthly fee. Some employers will pay fees while you’re employed with them, but if you leave they stop paying the fees and the account starts getting bites out of it. If this is the case, you can rollover your HSA into a servicer with different (hopefully, better) rules.
3) It doesn’t do you any good to park it in a savings account paying half a percent. In this case, woohoo it’s growing tax free. But the growth is infinitesimal. You want an HSA that allows you to transfer the bulk to a brokerage, or at least invest in mutual funds. Even if you still work for the same employer as when you deposited the funds, you can rollover the account (or most of it) to a provider of your own choosing. Be sure you carefully check fees and options at your current account, and at the one you are thinking of opening.
4) If you are working with an investment advisor, you may want to consider whether the HSA should be invested as part of your overall portfolio strategy. If it’s going to be untapped for years, it should be managed to build wealth.

Once you’re retired, it’s probably a good idea not to hoard that HSA. If you leave it to your spouse, it becomes their HSA. But for any other heir, it’s a lump sum distribution that they will have to pay taxes on.

So, how do you use it up? Well, of course you can submit those hoarded medical expenses you’ve saved. You can also use it to pay premiums for long term care insurance, premiums for Medicare Part B and Part D (drug), vision and dental care not covered by Medicare supplement insurance, and any copays and deductibles. You cannot use it to pay supplemental or Medigap premiums.

Since these accounts do not usually grow extremely large, it seems to me that it would be pretty easy to use it up during a normal retirement. It’s a nice way to build up a war chest for unexpected medical expenses that crash retirement budgets. Too bad I can’t use it for veterinary bills.

Taxes: we’re not Europeans

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We don’t want to pay as much tax as the Europeans do. How many times have you heard that? If less than 1,000 times, congratulations—you live without internet service. But, I still retain an old-fashioned interest in verifiable facts, not just what I’d like to be true. I hope one or two readers still feel the same way, so let’s take a look at some numbers on just who pays what taxes, and what those taxes pay for.

The moment you delve into comparing countries, you have to contend with currency conversions, buying power and the cost of necessities (what’s a middle class house in Chicago vs. Lyons vs. Haarlem?) so of course we can argue “not comparable” whenever. We work with what we have, and what I found was some very interesting data on the Forbes website. Forbes states all figures in Euros, but I’m going to use a handy dandy currency converter to put this all in U.S. dollars. (I wish these figures were newer–2009–but it isn’t easy finding facts that are up to date. I just don’t know where all those Freedom Caucus people can get their information.)

Let’s look at a couple earning $108,667 (100,000 euros) with two children. Here’s what Forbes says their after-tax income would be:

United States (overall—some states like Illinois have higher taxes) $84,760
France $78,029
United Kingdom $72,154
Germany $73,676
Netherlands $64,113

 

I could add more countries, but as you might expect, taxpayers in countries with small population bases (Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, etc.) keep less of their gross because there are fewer taxpayers to pay for services.

So, we ARE better off by at least $6,000 and maybe as much as $20,000? Wait a minute—you get what you pay for. And our mythical couple is going to have to pay for a lot more out of that after tax income—stuff that is already paid by government programs in these other countries. I’ll admit I don’t have the specifics on every policy in every other country (but would welcome input from anyone who does), but I do know a few expenses our model couple would need to cover out of pocket:

  • Yearly deductible for health care. Mine’s $3,500/family but employer plans can range anywhere from about $2,000 to $6,000. I’ll be conservative and use just $2,000. Let’s assume the parents’ employers cover all health care premiums—increasingly rare, but I’m trying to be conservative here.
  • Savings needed to cover $30,000 in college costs per year for each of two kids—I’ll again be conservative and assume the kids aren’t going to Harvard, and are 2 years old and newborn, so the amount needed will be on the low side. If the kids were older, more would need to be deducted. According to the SavingForCollege calculator, the parents would need to be saving $613/month for the 2 year old and $558/month for the newborn: a total of $14,052/year.
  • If these parents have such young children, they’re probably not very old themselves. Nevertheless, since in the US people are “free” to pay for their own long term care, and this is covered by many European health systems, let’s estimate a low $1,000/parent per year for long-term care insurance: $2,000. (forget saving for the actual cost of care—it would about double the amount needed if the parents are currently in their 30s and can save for 40 years).
  • I’m not including the value of the living allowance that is given to college students in some countries (Netherlands), the free student exchange programs that are routine, the excellent trades and vocational schools available to non-college Europeans (and which are hard to get at any price in the U.S.), the lump sum children’s benefit given to parents upon birth of a child, or the cost of co-pays and prescription drugs, since these vary and I wanted to look at just a few things we can agree on. So how does that math look now?

 

US $84,760
health care deductible (cost of insurance premiums not included) -2,000
college savings -14,052
long term care insurance -2,000
what you actually have left after being “free” to pay for those services yourself. $66,708

 

Another “but wait”—what if mom and dad are both working and need to obtain child care? In my neck of the woods that’s going to cost around $20-25,000 a year, but Europeans can pretty much depend on free or very low cost service from shortly after the child’s birth. So now, our model couple could easily be down to $46,708 after paying for the same services the European family would get for free (or greatly reduced costs). I’ll try not to go on about the paid-for health spas that are routine in Europe, the far-more-luxurious birth center experience, the well-child checkups and assistance, the earlier retirement age, the longer paid vacations, guaranteed paid maternity leave, the housing assistance for the elderly and low-income families…

Yeah, I’m glad we pay such low taxes. And that we get what we pay for.