I was officially self employed for the first time this year. Just had a meeting with accountant who helped me sort out expenses.
A thing they kept saying was "our job is to get it as close to zero as possible," referring to my profits.
I appreciate the sentiment, that they want to make sure all write-offable expenses are written off, but the way they were saying it implied I should go buy some expensable stuff so that I'm not taxed.
So I just want to make sure it's clear to everybody: it's better to make 100k taxable cash, rather than have 100k of tax free stuff you don't need.
Don't go buy a laptop you don't need for the purpose of not paying taxes. It's the exact same thing as buying junk you don't need only because it's on sale.
Same thing goes for selling stock. Don't needlessly sell stock at a loss purely to not pay tax. It's better to sell stock at a taxable profit than a tax-reducing loss.
You should sell stock at a loss for purpose of saving taxes ONLY if you definitely need to sell that stock at a loss perhaps for need of cash, but you have a choice whichever calendar year (e.g. December 2018 vs January 2019)
tl;dr
Taxable profits are better than a tax saving loss!!!!
Submitted February 05, 2019 at 03:09PM by mtreborv3 http://bit.ly/2t8AayY
