Editor’s Note 1/15/2018: The long-awaited White Coat Investor Online Course is live and is available here. The course is entitled: Fire Your Financial Advisor. No more wading through dozens of books at the collection, scrolling through hundreds of blogs on a large number of blogs, or checking out in daily with online community forums attempting to get a financial education the way the hobbyists do. This course will take you from feeling anxious and having no intend to use a written financial plan you can follow the others of your investing career as a specialist and a retiree.
It’s tax season again. I’ve found tax literacy among doctors to be low especially, so much so that many doctors get sucked into doubtful investments and “tax shelters” to save minimal quantities on taxes. I’ve an entire series coming up on understanding the fundamentals of the taxes code, before April 15th about taxes deductions but I thought I’d do a little piece. Let’s have a look at ways you can reduce your tax bill. This is actually the biggest taxes deduction I see doctors regularly passing up on. I’d guess significantly less than 1/4 of doctors actually max out all the retirement account options available to them.
Some because they simply don’t save enough money (a related but split concern), but many simply don’t realize just how much money they can squirrel away into these things with huge tax benefits. Every buck placed into a tax-deferred retirement account isn’t taxed this season. 1 on your tax bill.
- Population: 29.391 million (July 2011 est.)
- Cashier’s bank checks and money orders
- Renovation of traditional drinking water physiques including desalting of tanks
- 1960-1969 Age 25-34 Age 35-44 38,808,409 37,991,817 36,606,962
That’s pretty darn good. 50K limit. If yours doesn’t, I suggest you talk to your employer. 50K, or more even. This one doesn’t offer you a tax break this year, but it can allow you to shelter-retirement investments from any future taxes. It is a much better option than many insurance-related tax shelters salesmen often push on you. 5K for your spouse. You’ll be able to instantly convert these to an IRA. Health insurance is expensive, no doubt. But at least you pay for this with pre-tax money. Your health insurance costs are a deductible business expense, as will be the contributions to a health checking account (AKA a stealth IRA) which you can use for co-pays and deductibles.
A high-deductible health plan combined with an HSA isn’t the right move for everyone, but for the healthy, it can save you a complete lot of money on payments and on your fees. Many self-employed doctors lose out on all sorts of tax deductions, just because they don’t realize what’s deductible and what isn’t. If you are a single proprietor, partner, or a service provider, it would behoove one to keep careful information of your business expenditures.
Travel, meals, accommodations, office supplies, and equipment, medical equipment, CME expenditures, licensing fees, communication expenses, plank exam fees…the list goes on and on and on. The primary benefit of being an owner, then an employee rather, is that you can get all these sweet deductions. That’s off-set by the requirement to pay the employer part of your payroll fees, but at least those are deductible too.