Your Unbiased Advisor: Cut taxes and build retirement income by April 15

Not too late to cut taxes and build retirement income

You may owe the IRS this year or receive a smaller refund. You can change that by increasing your deductions by $12,000 for a joint return; $6,000 for single. Open and fund a traditional IRA at your bank, mutual fund or broker by April 15, and you can reduce your income, thus lowering your tax obligations. A traditional IRA will also grow tax deferred so you pay taxes on the income and its accumulations when you retire. Hopefully you tax bracket will be lower then. If building retirement income sounds like a great idea, how about using your refund to create a nest egg of as much as $1 million. The average refund is about $2,900. Investing in a low-cost broad market index like the Vanguard S&P 500 for about 34 years will provide about $1,000,000. This is the perfect way to have the money when you need it even if your employer does not offer a 401k account. You can set up automatic investing from your checking so you never miss a market rise. You just keep investing year after year—no trading, no broker fees, nothing! Your future $1 million is in your refund: https://www.amazon.com/401k-IRA-Tax-FREE-Tax-Deferred-retirement/dp/1475057938

Our new taxes are going to GM refund: $104 million refund in 2018, ’19 ’20 …

We are not fooled by Trump’s claim that his tax law changes were for the middle class. Our taxes go to many large profitable firms like GM, Ford and others. They haven’t paid taxes in years just like Trump. Even after bailing out their bad management decisions in 2007-8, they don’t pay taxes on sizable profits now. They still cut jobs and send them to other countries. For instance, GM and Ford have decided they will not make cars HERE anymore. Also, GM's former CFO, Chuck Stevens, said last year that because of the tax credits GM had, the company would not be paying any

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income tax "for the next several years.” This can go on forever because a “business cannot know how many loss carryforwards it will need each year to offset the taxes.” This is like us spending more than we make and using our debt, credit card and student loan debt, as an offset to future taxes. We would never pay taxes if our reps had written the tax code for us instead of for large corporations. When they make poor decisions, they get a tax credit for future years.

Avoid Trump’s Socialism for the Rich: https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Socialism-Rich-little-people/dp/1535218584

Why John Bogle’s invention is so important to us

Bogle just died. He created the Vanguard Group of mutual funds as a kind of Co-op: we, the investors, own the Vanguard Funds. His investment invention, the Vanguard 500 Index, was offered in 1976. It allowed us to own the stocks of most of the large companies in this economy at low cost. He noticed that the money management industry provided profits to the fund owners whether or not investors made money. As the industry got bigger, the costs went up instead of down as in most industries. He compared the returns of the managers of the funds to the returns of an index of all large stocks. The index gave more consistent returns—not too high and not too low. Investors were able to estimate returns within a close range—10-12% per year over time. Test it yourself: moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm. Bogle’s index fund offered every investor the chance to do well with lower costs. When investors pay 2% of their nest egg EVERY year, they give up 63% of the total possible accumulation over time. As Bogle put it, “the tyranny of compounding costs” is overwhelming—over HALF of our money is going to our brokers, staff, owners, marketers, and others. It is COSTS that determine how we do.

“Get what you don’t pay for”: https://www.amazon.com/Vanguards-Top-Ten-mutual-funds/dp/150073909X

Are you paying for 401k plan kickbacks to Fidelity?

Fidelity has been sued by a 401(k)-plan participant for accepting "secret payments" from certain retirement-plan business partners. In this so-called pay-to-play scheme, Fidelity required mutual funds and other investment products offered through its FundsNetwork platform to make "kickback" payments if the revenue-sharing payments (such as 12b-1 fees) they made to Fidelity fell below a certain level, according to the class-action lawsuit. Fidelity makes $ millions from the payments, which are not disclosed and are "deceptively characterized" to retirement-plan clients, according to the lawsuit. The payments allegedly harm retirement savers by increasing the costs of the mutual funds. Fidelity started requiring kickbacks in 2017 when 401k-plan participants chose index funds with no revenue sharing from plan record keepers. 401k fees reduce our retirement savings.

Costs can take 63% of our earnings: https://www.amazon.com/Robbing-You-Blind-401k-fees/dp/1493588966

Is a trust the right beneficiary for your IRA?

If you have a sizable IRA account, you may be concerned about leaving the whole thing to one child or couple (community property states). Heirs who inherit an IRA directly — not through a trust — lose the IRA protections. Trusts shield IRA assets in the event of lawsuits, business failures, divorce and creditors, for example. Heirs have access to the assets but the access may be designed to limit complete disillusion. For parents of a spend thrift adult child, the trust may be the only way to protect them. Naming the spouse as beneficiary just delays this decision. Spouses can roll over the decedent's IRA assets into their own IRA tax-free. The spouse has the burden of how to pass on assets. Finally, a trust is costly to maintain so the size of assets must be substantial to warrant a trust. There are rules to follow closely. The RMDs would still be required for the IRA. You must select the proper type of trust: "see-through" or "look-through" trust. The RMDs are smaller since the lifetime of the trust bene is longer. However, trust fees can eat up the actual payout to an heir.

Consider alternatives: https://www.amazon.com/What-your-RMD-much-spend/dp/1718946716

Trump’s new taxes allow wealthy to buy planes

The new tax regulations were supposed to cap the extra perks used by executives of any company including their own private jet. However, once again, their lawyers and accountants have found a way around the tax law. The “bonus depreciation” creates sizable business losses that are now capped. They can avoid the limit on “excess business losses” by changing the name of their revenue stream thus soaking up the sizable business loss that buying an airplane usually creates. They can thus avoid a capital gains tax bill on their income and ordinary taxes on their fees. While this avoidance trick doesn’t affect investors like pension funds or foreign individuals and businesses, it can hurt

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individual investors—us. The new cap on losses was supposed to raise nearly $150 billion over a decade, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. Now we taxpayers will need to make up that $150 billion loss by paying more taxes on wages.

Avoid paying for their taxes: https://www.amazon.com/Tax-Credit-Class-your-credits-pay-ZERO/dp/1539462382

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Make

~~America~~

, “The Don”, Great Again

Senile Psychosis or Parkinson’s delusions? quetiapine and clozapine

Truth isn’t truth, his lawyer says

Two

Americas

: A Banana Republic? Do we really want an infant king? Daddy Putin!

“The campaign -- for him -- was always a marketing opportunity.”

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