Goodbye, 2020. Hello, tax season. Individual taxpayers have until April 15, 2021, t
Unfortunately, many people are struggling to make ends meet during the COVID-19 pandemic. If cash is tight, consider these six last-minute ideas to lower last year’s federal income tax liability.
If you’ve not yet made a deductible traditional IRA contribution for the 2020 tax year, you can still do so until April 15. Then you can claim the resulting write-off on your 2020 return, assuming last year’s income wasn’t too high to qualify. You also can potentially make a deductible contribution of up to $6,000, or up to $7,000 if you were age 50 or older as of December 31, 2020. If you’re married, your spouse can do the same.
Important: Under the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, you can now make traditional IRA contributions regardless of your age. Before the SECURE Act, you lost the right to make traditional IRA contributions after reaching age 70½. Thankfully, that restriction is now gone.
There are two ground rules for deductible IRAs. First, you must have enough 2020 earned income (from jobs, self-employment or taxable alimony received) to equal or exceed your IRA contributions for the 2020 tax year. If you’re married, either you or your spouse (or both) can be the source of the necessary earned income.
Second, deductible IRA contributions are phased out (reduced or eliminated) if last year’s income was too high. Here are the phaseout ranges for 2020:
If you’re married and neither you nor your spouse were covered by a plan, your eligibility to make a deductible contribution isn’t affected by your AGI. You and your spouse can both make fully deductible contributions up to the applicable limit, assuming you have enough earned income.
If you had a qualifying high-deductible health plan (HDHP) last year, you can still make a deductible HSA contribution for your 2020 tax year if you’ve not already done so. The contribution deadline is April 15.
For 2020, the maximum deductible HSA contribution is $3,550 for self-only coverage or $7,100 for family coverage (anything other than self-only coverage). More specifically, if you’re eligible to make an HSA contribution for last year because you had a qualifying HDHP, you have until April 15 to establish an account and make your rightful deductible contribution.
Important: The write-off for HSA contributions is an above-the-line deduction. That means you can take the write-off even if you don’t itemize.
The HSA contribution privilege isn’t phased out for high-income taxpayers, as long as they have qualifying HDHPs and meet other eligibility requirements.
If you live in a jurisdiction with low or no personal income tax or if you owe little or nothing to state and local income tax collectors, you have options. You can potentially claim itemized deductions on last year’s return for either:
Important: Under current tax law, you can’t deduct more than $10,000 for all categories of state and local taxes combined ($5,000 if you used married filing separate status).
The sales tax option is only relevant if your allowable itemized deductions for last year would exceed your allowable standard deduction for last year. The standard deduction for 2020 was:
Higher standard deductions apply for those who were age 65 or older on December 31, 2020.
If you can benefit from choosing the sales tax option, you can use an IRS-provided table (based on your income, family size, state of residence and local sales tax jurisdiction) to figure your allowable sales tax deduction. But if you kept receipts from 2020 purchases and that gives you a bigger write-off, you can add up the actual sales tax amounts and deduct the total.
Even if you use the IRS table, you can add on actual sales tax amounts from major purchases, such as:
In other words, you can deduct actual sales taxes for these major purchases on top of the predetermined amount from the IRS table.
If you itemize deductions on your 2020 tax return, you can potentially claim a deduction for qualifying medical expenses you paid last year. This includes premiums for private health insurance coverage and premiums for Medicare health insurance.
Specifically, you can claim an itemized medical expense deduction if your total qualifying expenses exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income (AGI) for the year. Under current tax law, the standard deduction amounts have been significantly increased for 2018 through 2025. So, fewer individuals will be itemizing on their 2020 returns. But having significant medical expenses may allow you to itemize and collect some tax savings.
Important: If you’re self-employed or an S corporation shareholder-employee, you can probably claim an above-the-line deduction for your health insurance premiums, including Medicare premiums. That means you don’t need to itemize to get the tax-saving benefit.
Several COVID-19 federal tax relief measures are potentially available to eligible S corporation shareholders and owners of unincorporated businesses, including:
These relief provisions can significantly improve your personal tax situation. For example, you can carry back a 2020 business net operating loss (NOL) for up to five years and recover some or all of the personal federal income tax paid for the carryback year(s). Your SSB tax pro can help you maximize tax-saving benefits of available COVID-19 relief provisions.
Coming Soon
The federal income tax filing deadline for individuals is just around the corner. So, if you haven’t yet filed (or extended) your 2020 return, contact your SSB tax advisor. He or she can help soften your tax hit with these and other planning moves.