Tax-Efficient Investing – Minimizing Burden

All investments incur costs, but taxes often represent the greatest drain on returns. Therefore, tax-efficient investing should be prioritized.

Tax efficiency depends on understanding how different investments behave across accounts, so you can strategically place them to minimize taxes.

Asset Allocation

Investment decisions should be driven by an investor’s goals, financial situation and time horizon, risk tolerance and preferences. But federal income taxes must also be kept in mind as they could significantly affect after-tax returns.

Asset allocation is a key element of an overall investment strategy to minimize taxes. By considering the tax structures of various investments such as bonds and debt mutual funds and understanding how these impact your tax burden, asset allocation can help minimize tax obligations.

Implementing strategies tailored specifically for your situation could enable you to reduce your tax liability even further. This is achieved through employing various tactics, including selecting tax-efficient investments and taking advantage of tax deductions and incentives such as Roth IRAs, 529 college savings accounts and health care savings accounts (HSAs). By doing this, it may result in greater after-tax returns allowing more of your money to stay with you rather than going towards Uncle Sam.

Tax-Advantaged Accounts

Taxes can be an enormous drain on returns on investments. No matter if you use an advisor or invest on your own, factoring federal income taxes into your investment decision-making framework can make investing more tax efficient.

Asset location, which involves placing assets into the appropriate accounts to minimize tax ramifications, is an integral component of this strategy. Investors usually split their investments between taxable and tax-advantaged accounts for maximum tax efficiency and opt for an asset mix comprising both stocks and bonds with low tax implications.

Tax-advantaged accounts like IRAs, 401(k)s, 529s and HSAs provide the benefit of deferring taxes until withdrawal. Rebalancing to maintain your target asset allocation by selling and purchasing assets that have grown or shrunk is another effective strategy to minimize tax obligations; doing this with both tax-advantaged accounts as well as using realized losses against gains can ensure an optimal after-tax portfolio structure.

Tax-Loss Harvesting

Utilizing investment losses to offset gains (or even completely eliminate your tax bill) is an effective strategy for lowering overall tax bills. Tax-loss harvesting allows investors to do this, by periodically selling investments at losses in order to offset gains elsewhere; with realized losses reducing both cost bases and future tax bills.

Tax loss harvesting can be especially useful if you expect to move into a higher tax bracket in the future, through promotions or an anticipated rate hike by Uncle Sam. By postponing taxes through harvesting losses, tax-loss harvesting helps you build wealth faster while simultaneously increasing returns.

Tax efficiency may add value, but it should never replace broad diversification through optimal asset allocation, disciplined rebalancing and low-cost indexing. Tax-efficient investing requires taking the long view.

Rebalancing

Tax-efficient investing is not solely reserved for the wealthy; anyone can benefit from tax-efficient strategies to maximize after-tax returns and meet financial goals more efficiently. A financial advisor or investment professional can offer guidance tailored to your particular circumstances.

Rebalancing is a critical component of successful investing strategies. Rebalancing involves selling outperforming investments and buying underperforming ones in order to reestablish an optimal asset allocation in your portfolio. Rebalancing should occur periodically – usually monthly or quarterly.

An advisor’s most effective tool for increasing tax efficiency for their client portfolios is employing a household-level, tax-smart rebalancing strategy. LifeYield platform gives advisors access to resources they need to rebalance client taxable accounts in a timely fashion while taking into account each individual’s tax status and expected return profile – thus helping minimize federal income taxes.