Tax-Loss Harvesting

You might be asking yourself what is Tax Loss Harvesting? So 2022 was a dismal year in the stock market, in the bond market. But does it make sense to start harvesting losses? So this is only going to be applicable to your after-tax investments. So if you have a brokerage account either in your name or maybe held jointly that’s again, after-tax money and you have different investments that have either gained or lost. That’s what we’re talking about here. It doesn’t apply to your IRA, 401K, Roth IRA, etc. So selling investments that are currently at a loss so that you can realize losses in this calendar year is Tax Loss Harvesting. So it’s mainly going to be for tax purposes that you’re doing this. Now there’s only $3K of capital losses that you can write off as a maximum in each tax year. But you can also use those to offset gains that you have in different stocks. Or you can carry those losses over for future years. Now there is this key area known as the Wash Sale Rule. So this applies for 30 days after you sell this position, you have to wait and you can’t buy that same share or stock. And you can’t do that within this 30 day timeframe. Now you could go out and if you sold, you know a certain technology stock you could go and find a different company technology stock or you could go and find maybe a technology based exchange traded fund that would hold similar types of investments and everything. You would be allowed to do that, but you can’t hold the same particular stock during that 30 day window. And you can’t do that. The other little known rule you can’t go and do that within an IRA or 401K. So if you sell that stock out of your after-tax brokerage account, you can’t go and then buy that stock in your IRA or 401K. That essentially, the IRS says that violates the Wash Sale Rule. So you want to be careful of that. Again, losses in your IRA or Roth IRA are not deductible. So this rule only applies to your after-tax accounts. And that’s where if you don’t currently have any after-tax money built up, it might be an important tip to try and get some money built up in after-tax accounts that when you get to a stage either before retirement or in retirement when you need some additional funds, but you don’t want to have the tax implications of what you might have in your 401K or traditional IRA. Having that after-tax bucket of money can be pretty valuable to you. So we encourage you to give us a call here if you have any questions, we’d love to sit down and chat.