Product Description
An investor looks at a monthly brokerage statement. The eye goes straight to the figure on the bottom -- the account value. That number is the total portfolio return, right? Wrong!All too often, investors assume that what they see is what they get. But the minute they sell an asset or trade a security, they're socked with the tax bill, and the portfolio's true value begins to erode. For example, more than three-quarters of the value of an inherited IRA account can be consumed by estate and income taxes.
This doesn't have to happen. Brokerage firms know how to handle risk for their own accounts -- tax risk, as well as investment risk. Savvy individual investors can use the same techniques to protect themselves. Bob Gordon, a Wall Street veteran, shares the strategies of an insider to demonstrate how you can take advantage of tax law -- instead of letting taxes take advantage of you.
In plain English, this book explains federal and state tax considerations that investors need to factor in when they're ready to cash in their portfolios. Whether they are investing pros or neophytes, investors will learn how to harvest capital losses without selling and without risk, and how to capture interest as a long-term gain. They'll also learn tax-wise moves with options and the best end-of-year planning techniques. By the time they finish reading this book, their "tax bite" will be more like a "nibble".