Sell Loser Stocks

If you have stocks that are currently worth less than what you paid for them, consider selling them before the end of the year. By doing so, you can lower your taxes, because you can deduct the capital losses against any capital gains you have. Up to $3,000 of a net loss can be deducted each year. Your taxable income is decreased by that loss; therefore, your tax will be decreased as well.

Give to Charities

If you have a desire to give to a good cause, you don’t necessarily have to dip into your savings to do so, yet still reap the tax benefits. Here are a couple of alternatives:

• Donate Appreciated Stock – if you own shares of appreciated stock  (meaning that you purchased them for less than what their current value is), you can donate the stock to IRS-approved charities and claim the donation on your Schedule A (Itemized Deductions) valued at the full fair market value at the time of the donation. In that way, you can reduce your taxable income the year that the donation is made and avoid any capital gains tax on those shares in the future.
• Sell Loser Stocks and Donate the Cash – As described above, you can claim a capital loss on stock sold at less than what you paid for it and deduct the full amount of the cash donation on your Schedule A.

Caution: You must itemize deductions to gain any tax-saving advantage from charitable donations, unless you make them out of your IRA (see below).

Donate to Charities by Taking a Distribution from Your IRA (for individuals age 70 or over)

You can donate up to $100,000 to an IRS-approved charity directly out of your IRA for 2011, if you’ll be age 70 or older by the end of the year. These direct donations are called “qualified charitable distributions” which make them tax free. Note, however, that you can’t also deduct them on your Schedule A. These charitable donations can apply against the required minimum distribution (RMD) rules that apply to traditional IRAs.

IRS is looking to return $153.3 million in undelivered tax refund checks. In all, 99,123 taxpayers are due refund checks this year that could not be delivered because of mailing address errors. These refund checks average $1,547.

If you expected a refund and have not yet received it, you may be one of those that the IRS is seeking. Go to www.irs.gov and click on the link “Where’s My Refund?”

IRS does not send unsolicited emails about your tax accounts, tax situations or personal tax issues. If you receive such an email, most likely it’s a scam. You might also be contacted via phone, fax, internet sites and social networking sites.

Many impersonations are identity theft scams that try to trick victims into revealing personal and financial information that can be used to access their financial accounts. Some email scams contain attachments or links that, when clicked, download malicious code (virus) that infects your computer or directs you to a bogus form or site posing as a genuine IRS form or web site.