Minimize your tax bill by making the most of your tax planning opportunities.

You can offset realized investment gains, as well as up to $3,000 in taxable income annually, with the loss on the sale of a security. We’ll help you navigate IRS rules on wash sales. We’ll also evaluate your gains and losses to determine whether “loss harvesting” can boost your portfolio while reducing taxes from the sale of appreciated assets.

While $3,000 of capital losses can be used annually to offset taxable income, any remaining unused capital losses can be carried forward. Carryforwards are used to offset gains in subsequent years, which translates to lower future tax payments.

We can minimize your tax impact by limiting the amount of taxable events in your portfolio. This includes tax-loss harvesting, selecting investments that produce qualified dividends, and reducing capital gains distributions.

We can help you decide whether muni bonds, which are exempt from federal taxes, are right for your individual tax planning strategy. As a bonus, if your muni bonds were issued in your state of residency, your coupon payments may also be exempt from state taxes.

We’ll steer you away from higher tax rates by balancing holding periods and risk and return expectations. Securities held for at least one year before being sold are taxed as long-term gains or losses with a top federal rate of 23.8 percent. In contrast, short-term gains are taxed at 40.8 percent.

Consider the date of the distributions when buying or selling a mutual fund. You’re likely to incur a tax liability if you own the fund on the date of record for the distribution in a taxable account, regardless of how long you’ve held the fund.

We can help you evaluate the tax profile of a fund before investing. Mutual funds and ETFs vary in terms of tax efficiency. In general, passive funds (most ETFs and index mutual funds) tend to create fewer taxes than active funds (mutual funds). There can even be significant variation, in terms of tax efficiency, within these categories.

The most common trust for a minor is a UTMA custodial account. You can “gift” highly appreciated shares of stock to your child, have the child sell it, and then report a portion of the profits at the child’s substantially lower tax bracket.

Shift up to five times your annual gift exclusion limit out of your estate into a 529 account. This move will shield the growth of your money from future income taxes, so long as the money goes toward the educational expenses of your children or grandchildren.

As an alternative to donating cash, you can donate substantially appreciated securities to nonprofits and receive a write-off for the full amount. That way, you’ll save yourself the trouble of selling the assets yourself, paying taxes on the gain, then giving smaller donations to the charity.

If you give regularly to charities, consider putting several years’ worth of gifts into a donor-advised fund (DAF). You’ll be able to spread out the giving from the DAF based on your charitable intent.

Tax credits are tools used by the federal government and state governments to encourage business development. Investment tax credits are basically a federal tax incentive for business investment. You can deduct a certain percentage of investment costs from their taxes.

Certain tax-advantageous IRA conversion opportunities, like a down year in your income, are prime times to convert your Traditional IRA to a Roth with a lower tax bill. If you time your conversions well, you can remove substantial portions of your wealth from the required minimum distribution trap by the time you retire.

A 1031 Exchange, also called a Starker Exchange or Like-Kind Exchange, is a powerful tax-deferment strategy used by some of the biggest names in the real estate investment sphere. The 1031 allows you to move your investments to move from one location to another without the IRS knocking. You can avoid paying capital gains taxes when you sell an investment property by reinvesting the proceeds from the sale into another property of like-kind.