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Tax Planning with Federal Savings Bonds
The Treasury Department offers two types of federal savings bonds, Series EE and Series I, for individuals and businesses to invest in cash savings. Until 2021, federal savings bond rates were low; however, with the dramatic increase in inflation and interest rates, interest in federal savings bonds as a savings vehicle has skyrocketed. For example, in May 2023, TreasuryDirect issued $230 million in I bonds in that one month; in May 2020, only $13 million were issued. Federal savings bonds have very favorable tax features. At the federal level, the interest earned is generally tax-deferable and sometimes entirely excluded from tax. At the state level, the interest is always entirely excluded from tax. This article will review the differences between Series EE and Series I savings bonds and the tax savings opportunities available to owners of these bonds.
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CURRENT EDITION
D&A Planning After the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
After 2021, whether an expenditure was deducted currently or recovered through depreciation often affected timing, but it typically did not create a meaningful advantage from a Section 163(j) perspective. The restoration of depreciation, amortization, and depletion addbacks in the computation of adjusted taxable income (“ATI”) has changed that analysis and created a new opportunity for taxpayers with actual or anticipated interest limitation exposure. As a result, taxpayers should reconsider whether certain expenditures that historically may have been deducted immediately can instead be capitalized into depreciable or amortizable property in order to improve their Section 163(j) profile.
What To Watch Out For With Family Limited Partnerships
The story of Anne Milner Fields is one of the reasons family limited partnership (FLP) opinions appeal to me so much. Born in 1925, she grew up in a small town in Texas and then moved to Dallas where she got a job as a secretary and met prominent oil man Bert Fields Sr. They married, and she lived the life of a socialite until he died in 1963. She consciously turned herself into a businesswoman, going so far as to take accounting courses. Having no children or grandchildren, she took her grandnephew, Bryan Milner, under her wing, paying for his education and mentoring him. In 2010, the year she turned 85, she made him executor of her estate and gave him a general power of attorney. He was also set to inherit the residue of her estate after some specific bequests. I really think we have the elements of a novel or a TV miniseries here, but we are tax people, so we are going to focus on how Anne’s estate tax was handled after she passed. It didn’t go well.
Tax Research in an AI World
It has never been harder to do quality tax research than at any time in my 43-year career in tax accounting. In the 1980s, when I was part-time in the industry, there was no internet. Since I was part-time, I ordered Publications 1132, 17, and 334. The rest I found at the library. A few hearty souls might even remember when the post office had stacks of tax forms for the public. Once I went full-time for the 1989 tax season I needed more resources. CCH was my tool of choice. I still used IRS publications and the library. My handy reference guide of choice was, and still is, the QuickFinder. I never used TaxBook much, but it is another good resource for general answers. Then came the internet. The promise was that we would have the world at our fingertips. And for the large part we did, only we forgot some things we would rather keep at an arm’s length. The internet slowly allowed us to replace rooms in our office filled with tax guides and forms with online resources. Law offices and accounting firms often wrote tax articles on narrow tax subjects. Research was easier than ever.
Then came AI.
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Think Outside the Tax Box provides tax reduction strategies along with practical
implementation advice in order to reduce your clients’ federal tax bill with ease.
