PLUS: Small Business Judicial ALERT The beginning of each year is a great time to start next year's tax planning. One area to help reduce your tax obligation, that benefits from an early in the year start, is leveraging your kids to the fullest using the kiddie tax rules.
Background The term kiddie tax was introduced by the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The rules are intended to keep parents from shifting their investment income to their children to have it taxed at their child's lower tax rate. In 2025 the law requires a child's unearned income (generally dividends, interest, and capital gains) above $2,700 be taxed at their parent's tax rate. Applies to
Planning thoughts So while your child's unearned income above $2,700 is a problem, you will still want to leverage the tax advantage up to this amount. Here are some ideas: Create accounts in your child's name. Establish a Uniform Transfers to Minor Act (UTMA) account at your favorite bank and/or investment institution. This will allow you to manage assets in the name of a minor child. Then gift cash or investments into the account. Gains and interest in the UTMA account will now create unearned income in the name of the child. Be aware of annual gift limits to keep reporting simple (currently $19,000 per individual per year in 2025). Build these accounts to provide up to $2,700 in unearned income each year. Maximize your lower tax investment options. Look for gains in your child's investment accounts to maximize the use of your child's kiddie tax threshold each year. You could consider selling stocks to capture your child's investment gains and then buy the stock back later to establish a higher cost basis. Be careful where you report a child's unearned income. Don't automatically add your child's unearned income to your tax return. It might inadvertently raise your taxes in surprising ways by reducing your tax benefits in other programs like the American Opportunity Credit. Leverage gift giving. Each year, if your children are not maximizing tax-free investment income consider gifting additional funds to allow for unearned income up to the kiddie tax thresholds. Properly managed, the kiddie tax rules can be used to your advantage. But be careful as your child reaches their legal adult age, this part of the tax code can create an unwelcome surprise if not handled properly. ================================ Small Business ALERT: Department of Justice FinCEN Judicial order is overturned. What this means. All firms must register their beneficial owners (BOI) through the FinCEN application as originally dictated by the law. The law was ruled an overreach by a judicial order earlier this month, but in an emergency ruling the Justice Department got the order overturned. The original filing deadline of 12/31/24 is now extended to 1/13/25. If you are a small business and have not registered your owners you will need to ensure you comply. Go to www.FinCEN.gov and review the information. "Tax Tips" are published to provide current tax information, tax-cutting suggestions, and tax reminders. If you would like more information on anything in "Tax Tips," or if you'd like to be on our mailing list to receive other tax information from time to time, please contact our office. The tax information contained in this site is of a general nature and should not be acted upon in your specific situation without further details and/or professional assistance. We are trusted CPA advisors servicing Burr Ridge, Hinsdale, Willowbrook, Darien, Naperville, and all Chicagoland area. Do you need assistance with your business and/or personal tax returns? Would you like to have a trusted source for your accounting, allowing you additional time to focus on increasing your business? Do you use QuickBooks, or plan to in the future, for your accounting? We include these in all our service packages, customized to fit your personal or business needs. We are currently accepting new clients. Your initial consultation is free, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Our experienced staff is available to help you streamline your accounting, giving you more free time for yourself. Set up an appointment today by calling (630) 320-3720 or email us at [email protected]. For more free resources, such as Tax Organizers, and Record Retention Schedules, access our website www.monarchaccountinggroup.com. Mia Verc, CPA; Janice Papais, CPA
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 The Child & Dependent Care Credit provides a reduction in taxes to offset the cost of daycare when you are employed. The maximum amount of the credit is $3,000 for one dependent or $6,000 for two or more qualifying persons.*
To take advantage of the credit here is what you need to know. 1. Qualified dependent(s). Your dependent must be under the age of 13. A spouse or older dependent who is physically or mentally unable to care for themselves can also qualify. 2. Earned Income. You must have earned income to support the credit. 3. Qualified daycare expenses. You must actually incur the care expense for the qualified dependent. 4. Financial support requirement. You must maintain the home and financial support for the qualified dependent (more than half the cost and more than half the year). Here are some tips;
Other details apply. Please ask for help if you wish to review your situation. *Note: If your employer provides daycare reimbursement as a benefit on your W-2, the employer benefit is limited to $5,000 or $2,500 if married filing separate or single. You can still use excess daycare expenses to maximize your credit to the full $3,000/$6,000 amount. "Tax Tips" are published to provide current tax information, tax-cutting suggestions, and tax reminders. If you would like more information on anything in "Tax Tips," or if you'd like to be on our mailing list to receive other tax information from time to time, please contact our office. The tax information contained in this site is of a general nature and should not be acted upon in your specific situation without further details and/or professional assistance. We are trusted CPA advisors servicing Burr Ridge, Hinsdale, Willowbrook, Darien, Naperville, and all Chicagoland area. Do you need assistance with your business and/or personal tax returns? Would you like to have a trusted source for your accounting, allowing you additional time to focus on increasing your business? Do you use QuickBooks, or plan to in the future, for your accounting? We include these in all our service packages, customized to fit your personal or business needs. We are currently accepting new clients. Your initial consultation is free, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Our experienced staff is available to help you streamline your accounting, giving you more free time for yourself. Set up an appointment today by calling (630) 320-3720 or email us at [email protected]. For more free resources, such as Tax Organizers, and Record Retention Schedules, access our website www.monarchaccountinggroup.com. Mia Verc, CPA; Janice Papais, CPA  Each year the IRS publishes the top dozen tax scams it encounters over the prior year. One of them that makes an all too common appearance on their list is the phishing scam. Here is what you need to know.
Phishing requires bait Phishing is the act of creating a fake e-mail or website that looks like the real thing. This bait is then used to reel you into the scam by asking for private information. This includes your name, address, or phone number. It could also include potentially dangerous ID theft information like your Social Security number, a credit card number or banking information. The bait is often very real looking - just like correspondence from the IRS or the IRS website. How to avoid the lure How do you know the phishing is fake? Here are some tips.
What do phishers do? When the phishers have your information, they can file false tax returns requesting refunds, steal bank account information, set up fake credit cards, establish false IDs, plus much more. Remember, if it smells like a phish, it probably is! "Tax Tips" are published to provide current tax information, tax-cutting suggestions, and tax reminders. If you would like more information on anything in "Tax Tips," or if you'd like to be on our mailing list to receive other tax information from time to time, please contact our office. The tax information contained in this site is of a general nature and should not be acted upon in your specific situation without further details and/or professional assistance. We are trusted CPA advisors servicing Burr Ridge, Hinsdale, Willowbrook, Darien, Naperville, and all Chicagoland area. Do you need assistance with your business and/or personal tax returns? Would you like to have a trusted source for your accounting, allowing you additional time to focus on increasing your business? Do you use QuickBooks, or plan to in the future, for your accounting? We include these in all our service packages, customized to fit your personal or business needs. We are currently accepting new clients. Your initial consultation is free, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Our experienced staff is available to help you streamline your accounting, giving you more free time for yourself. Set up an appointment today by calling (630) 320-3720 or email us at [email protected]. For more free resources, such as Tax Organizers, and Record Retention Schedules, access our website www.monarchaccountinggroup.com. Mia Verc, CPA; Janice Papais, CPA  As part of your planning for next year, now is the time to review funding your retirement accounts in 2025. Recent cost of living calculations means much higher contribution limits for next year. Plus the higher income phaseouts for eligibility will make many more taxpayers eligible for fully-deductible contributions. So plan now to take full advantage of this tax benefit. Here are annual contribution limits for the more popular programs:  How to use
If you have not already done so, also consider:
"Tax Tips" are published to provide current tax information, tax-cutting suggestions, and tax reminders. If you would like more information on anything in "Tax Tips," or if you'd like to be on our mailing list to receive other tax information from time to time, please contact our office. The tax information contained in this site is of a general nature and should not be acted upon in your specific situation without further details and/or professional assistance. We are trusted CPA advisors servicing Burr Ridge, Hinsdale, Willowbrook, Darien, Naperville, and all Chicagoland area. Do you need assistance with your business and/or personal tax returns? Would you like to have a trusted source for your accounting, allowing you additional time to focus on increasing your business? Do you use QuickBooks, or plan to in the future, for your accounting? We include these in all our service packages, customized to fit your personal or business needs. We are currently accepting new clients. Your initial consultation is free, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Our experienced staff is available to help you streamline your accounting, giving you more free time for yourself. Set up an appointment today by calling (630) 320-3720 or email us at [email protected]. For more free resources, such as Tax Organizers, and Record Retention Schedules, access our website www.monarchaccountinggroup.com. Mia Verc, CPA; Janice Papais, CPA Is there a taxable income reduction idea you can use? Many tax experts talk about shifting your tax burden from one year to the next. While in theory it may make sense, how can you make it work for you in practice?
The concept Since the tax code is complex in its construction, there are often opportunities to reduce your tax burden by controlling the amount of your taxable income. This is because:
So if you can shift your income and expenses from one year to the next, you could create a net tax obligation for both years that might be lower than if you did nothing. Here are six great ideas to accomplish this. Six great tax shifting ideas Idea 1 - Know the rules. Identify whether you are a good candidate for using shifting as a tax planning strategy. For singles, the income tax rate increases 80% or more on earnings over $47,150. For married couples, that increase occurs with adjusted gross income over $94,300. But other tax benefits are lost at different income levels. Common tax breaks subject to income limits are child tax credits, earned income credits, educational credits, premium health care credits and many educational tax benefits. Idea 2 - Load up your contributions. If you itemize your deductions, consider loading up your cash and non-cash contributions into the year that lowers more highly-taxed income. For example, you could shift next year’s donations to your church into this year. This bunching of itemized deductions into one year makes even more sense with the higher standard deductions introduced in 2018. Idea 3 - Leverage the cash basis concept. You can take a deduction when you pay for it. A credit card receipt is good on the date you run the transaction and not when you pay your monthly bill to the credit card company. Knowing this, you could pay a property tax statement or a house payment either a little early or a little late to change whether that deduction occurs in this year or next. Idea 4 - Stop working. There are many cases when this technique is an important tax shifting tool. The most common example applies to those who are under the full retirement age and receiving Social Security benefits. If this applies to you, consider actively managing your part-time work or you could end up paying taxes on some of your Social Security benefits or even losing some of them. Work can also hurt your tax situation when a dependent’s wages put you over the earnings threshold to receive the Health Insurance Premium Tax Credit. It may make sense to stop working or arrange to get your last paycheck delayed into the following year. Idea 5 - Manage retirement plan distributions. Those over age 59½ can use distributions from pre-tax retirement plans to tightly control their taxable income. Your withdrawal calculation should include evaluating how to maximize the tax efficiency of your income. An analysis may indicate it is better to take out a little more this year to get these retirement earnings taxed at a lower rate than if you waited until next year. Idea 6 - Manage your stock and investment sales. You have up to $3,000 in investment losses that can offset your higher-taxed ordinary income. Use this to your advantage when deciding whether to take a stock loss this year or next. If done correctly, you can match your stock loss against ordinary income which is taxed at a higher rate. By shifting your taxable income to the right level, you can often reduce your tax bill. Please call if you wish to have a review of your situation. "Tax Tips" are published to provide current tax information, tax-cutting suggestions, and tax reminders. If you would like more information on anything in "Tax Tips," or if you'd like to be on our mailing list to receive other tax information from time to time, please contact our office. The tax information contained in this site is of a general nature and should not be acted upon in your specific situation without further details and/or professional assistance. We are trusted CPA advisors servicing Burr Ridge, Hinsdale, Willowbrook, Darien, Naperville, and all Chicagoland area. Do you need assistance with your business and/or personal tax returns? Would you like to have a trusted source for your accounting, allowing you additional time to focus on increasing your business? Do you use QuickBooks, or plan to in the future, for your accounting? We include these in all our service packages, customized to fit your personal or business needs. We are currently accepting new clients. Your initial consultation is free, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Our experienced staff is available to help you streamline your accounting, giving you more free time for yourself. Set up an appointment today by calling (630) 320-3720 or email us at [email protected]. For more free resources, such as Tax Organizers, and Record Retention Schedules, access our website www.monarchaccountinggroup.com. Mia Verc, CPA; Janice Papais, CPA |
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