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How to defer US taxes

taylor.town

21–30 of 186 posts

Re: How to defer US taxes

#21
post #12

I'm not sure to understand how deferring taxes is a better deal than paying it here and now. Since I'm not a financial adviser, someone asked me take on which 4k projector to buy last Xmas. I explained that the tech has improved so much lately, they've become somewhat affordable, I recommended a model and pointed ou that he would certainly get a better device next Xmas, for half the price. I thought he would follow s…

Not sure I understand your example. If you always wait for the new version of a product to release the following year then you are never going to buy anything.

but you'd wait only long enough for a version that's good enough, not forever.

Re: How to defer US taxes

#22

I'm not sure to understand how deferring taxes is a better deal than paying it here and now. Since I'm not a financial adviser, someone asked me take on which 4k projector to buy last Xmas. I explained that the tech has improved so much lately, they've become somewhat affordable, I recommended a model and pointed ou that he would certainly get a better device next Xmas, for half the price. I thought he would follow s…

Suppose I defer $1 million in taxes until after I'm dead, and my estate conveniently does not have $1 million in assets left. What happens?

In the meantime, I gave all the assets to my children while I was alive

The answer is nothing. The government eats the loss.

Re: How to defer US taxes

#23
post #6
post #2

> Defer US taxes by reinvesting your taxable income into the economy as business expenses, depreciating assets, etc. Be really careful when doing this. Make sure you have a great accountant - if you go more than a few years without turning a measurable profit, your risk of being audited apparently goes up. My accountant personally cautioned me about this since my business has been in an R&D phase for 5 years so we've…

Can you elaborate? As a business owner in the U.S. I can opt to reinvest all revenue back into the business, thus would show zero net profit but (presumably) increase my company’s value. (And remember there are other taxes and fees paid to various governments, not just tax on income/profit, so it’s not typically like nothing gets paid.)

As a business owner, if you provide labor to the business, you have to pay yourself a salary.

Re: How to defer US taxes

#26

This feels like a great way to get audited by the IRS. It does not feel like sound advice.

So the advice here is (from my understanding, not a tax lawyer) sound, but it is "unsound-adjacent" -- so a lot of people will start from this basic understanding and then go off into crazytown.

So like influencers get to hear other influencers explaining this "you can reinvest your profits and then you won't have profits" type of advice... but then they will put it right next to unsound advice about "by the way, a great way is to invest in a "business" trip to Greece to sail the Mediterranean, it is "team-building" between you and your spouse and kids who are all employees of your little influencer company, oh by the way you should buy fancy watches so that you can show them off in your videos, and get a very expensive hairstylist to do your hair -- as long as you make a video about it!"

And it's like, no, the tax courts actually have procedures they follow to determine if those things are personal expenses or business expenses and 90% of the advice that you hear here are some form of tax fraud.

But from the point of view of a company, as the tax year comes to an end you hopefully have extra money left in the bank, now you can either use it to buy things that the company needs and thus grow the company, or you can hold onto it where if you're a C-corp the government will take 21% of the year-on-year delta, or you can pay it back to the shareholders as a dividend and they pay 15% capital gains tax on it. (And of course you don't have to dump the whole account into just one bucket, you can choose how much goes into each of the three.) And when it gives the advice "pssst, you should probably reinvest most of it," that's a standard practice explicitly sanctioned by the government.

Re: How to defer US taxes

#30

I'm not sure to understand how deferring taxes is a better deal than paying it here and now. Since I'm not a financial adviser, someone asked me take on which 4k projector to buy last Xmas. I explained that the tech has improved so much lately, they've become somewhat affordable, I recommended a model and pointed ou that he would certainly get a better device next Xmas, for half the price. I thought he would follow s…

In addition to the other reasons given: Sometimes it also makes sense if your income is lumpy and you e.g. expect to have years where your income will fall into a lower tax band. It then can pay to suddenly recognise more income to take out as much as you can within the lower band.
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