As students gear up to head back to school, there are some changes to education deductions that could save or cost you more in taxes and even raise college tuition costs. Here is what you need to know to get up to speed:
What is gone
Continuing Education as an itemized deduction: In previous years, you could deduct expenses paid for job-related continuing education as a miscellaneous itemized deduction. This deduction has been eliminated. However, if your employer will pay for the education, they can cover up to $5,250 tax-free.
Home equity line of credit (HELOC) interest for education expenses: A popular method of generating cash to pay for school expenses is taking out a HELOC. Beginning in 2018, you can only deduct HELOC interest if you use the loan proceeds to buy, build or substantially improve your home. This means that if you plan to obtain HELOC for purposes of paying for education expenses, the interest will not be deductible.
What’s new
529 plans cover K-12 tuition: Funds from Section 529 savings plans can now be used tax-free to pay for up to $10,000 in K-12 private school tuition per year. Books, supplies or other K-12 expenses are not included in this change, but they are still eligible as legitimate college expenses. Be careful – not all states have adopted the K-12 inclusion, so they might still be taxable at the state level.
Endowment tax of 1.4 percent on certain private colleges: Congress added an investment income tax on private colleges that have large endowments. The tax is expected to impact roughly 30 schools, including Stanford, Harvard and Notre Dame. The effects of the new tax are yet to be determined. However, tuition may increase or reduced financial aid award amounts may be implemented to offset the cost.
What stays the same
Student loan interest deduction: You may deduct up to $2,500 in student loan interest in 2018 as an adjustment to income. To qualify, your adjusted gross income must be below $80,000 ($165,000 for married couples). Phaseouts start to apply at $65,000 ($135,000 for married couples).
American Opportunity Tax Credit and Lifetime Learning Credit: All three of these educational tax benefits are available once again. Here’s a chart with basic information on these options:
American Opportunity
Tax Credit
(AOPC)
Lifetime
Learning Credit
(LLC)
Max Amount
$2,500 credit
$2,000 credit
Refundable?
Yes – $1,000
No
Max Years
4
Unlimited
Eligible Education
Undergraduate
Undergraduate
& graduate
As a reminder, when you make payments for any education expenses, make sure to keep your receipts and retain any Forms 1098T sent to you from qualifying schools.
Often lost in the excitement of large-scale tax change is how they can negatively impact some individual situations. Check out the questions below to see if you might be in for a tax surprise this year.
Will you pay more than $10,000 in state and local taxes?
Previously, you could take a full deduction for all state income, sales and property taxes as an itemized deduction. That deduction is now capped at $10,000 per year. Take a look at your 2017 itemized deductions to see if your state and local taxes were greater than the new cap. If so, you will now lose any excess amount over $10,000 as a deduction.
Do you pay for work expenses?
Before this year, employees were able to deduct work expenses (business mileage, uniforms, continuing education and other non-reimbursed expenses) as an itemized deduction. These deductions are now gone. If you typically pay for job related expenses, you might be on the hook for more taxes. Employees who deduct business use of their homes may be impacted even more.
Do you own a small business?
There are many business tax changes for 2018. Bonus depreciation and Section 179 expensing are expanded, the domestic production activities deduction (DPAD) is eliminated, and there is a new qualified business income deduction for pass-through entities. It is a near certainty that one or more of these changes will affect your business taxes.
Did you adjust your withholding allowances?
When the tax cuts were finalized, the IRS adjusted the withholding tables as best they could to fit with your current allowances. As a result, your take-home pay likely increased earlier this year. However, based on a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), as many as 21 percent of taxpayers will unknowingly under withhold their taxes throughout the year. If you are one of these people, you will have a tax bill and maybe some penalties to pay next April. It would be time well spent to double-check your withholding for 2018.
Do you have children?
Some good news! The Child Tax Credit is now double to $2,000 per child versus $1,000 last year. The income limits for the credit are also raised significantly to $200,000 Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) for single status and $400,000 AGI for married couples. In many cases, the additional credit will actually offset the loss of the personal exemption that you could take for yourself, your spouse and children in the past.
Now is a great time to do an assessment of your situation in light of the new tax changes.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was passed by Congress in a hurry late last year, and the IRS and tax preparers have been working to digest some of the more thorny issues created by the tax overhaul. Here are the latest answers to some of the most common questions:
1. Is home equity interest still deductible?
The short answer is: Not unless you’ve used the money to buy, build or substantially improve your home.
Before the TCJA, homeowners were able to take out a home equity loan and spend it on things other than their residence, such as to pay off credit card debt or to finance large consumer purchases. Under the old tax code, they could deduct interest on up to $100,000 of such home equity debt.
The TCJA effectively writes the concept of home equity indebtedness out of the tax code. Now you can only deduct interest on “acquisition indebtedness,” meaning a loan secured by a qualified residence that is used to buy, build or substantially improve it. If you have taken out a home equity loan before 2018 and used it for any other purpose, interest on it is no longer deductible.
2. I’m a small business owner. How do I use the new 20 percent qualified business expense deduction?
Short answer: It’s complicated and you should get help.
Certain small businesses structured as sole proprietors, S corporations and partnerships can deduct up to 20 percent of their qualified business income. But that percentage can be reduced after your taxable income reaches $157,500 (or $315,000 as a married couple filing jointly).
The amount of the reduction depends partly on the amount of wages paid and property acquired by your business during the year. Another complicating factor is that certain service industries including health, law, consulting, athletics, financial services and accounting are treated slightly differently.
The IRS is expected to issue more clarification on how these rules are applied, such as when your business is a mix of one of those service industries and some other kind of business.
3. What are the new rules about dependents and caregiving?
There are a few things that have changed regarding dependents and caregiving:
Deductions. Standard deductions are nearly doubled to $12,000 for single filers and $24,000 for married joint filers. The code still says dependents can claim a standard deduction limited to the greater of $1,050 or $350 plus unearned income.
Kiddie Tax. Unearned income of children under age 19 (or 24 for full-time students) above a threshold of $2,100 is now taxed at a special rate for estates and trusts, rather than the parents’ top tax rate.
Family credit. If you have dependents who aren’t children under age 17 (and thus eligible for the Child Tax Credit), you can now claim $500 for each qualified dependent member of your household for whom you provide more than half of their financial support.
Medical expenses. You can now deduct medical expenses higher than 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income. You can claim this for medical expenses you pay for a relative even if they aren’t a dependent (i.e., they live outside your household) as long as you provide more than half of their financial support.
Stay tuned for more guidance from the IRS on the new tax laws, and reach out if you’d like to set up a tax planning consultation for your 2018 tax year.
If you’re a business owner, one of the first questions to ask yourself is whether you should incorporate or not.
The biggest advantage of incorporating is that it limits your legal liability. Your responsibility for debts and other liabilities incurred by a corporation is generally limited to the assets of the business. Your personal assets are not usually at risk, although there can be exceptions to this general rule. The trade off is that there is a cost to incorporate and, in some cases, tax consequences.
So, should you incorporate or not?
Truth be told, you might not need to incorporate. Depending on the size and type of your business, liability may not be an issue or can be covered by insurance. If so, you could join millions of other business owners and operate as an unincorporated sole proprietor.
If you do decide to incorporate, you’ll face a choice of corporate forms. All offer limitation of your liability, but there are differences in tax and other issues. Take a look at the options:
C corporations. The traditional form of corporation is the C corporation. This type of corporation has the most flexibility in structuring ownership and benefits. Most large companies operate in this form. The biggest drawback is double taxation. First the corporation pays tax on its profits; then the profits are taxed again as they’re paid to individual shareholders as dividends.
S corporations and LLCs. These forms of corporations avoid this double taxation. Both are called “pass-through” entities because there’s no taxation at the corporate level. Instead, profits or losses are passed through to the shareholders and reported on their individual tax returns. S corporations have some ownership limitations. There can only be one class of stock and there can’t be more than 100 shareholders who are U.S. citizens or U.S. residents according to tax law. State registered LLCs have become a popular choice for many businesses. They offer more flexible ownership rules than S corporations, as well as certain tax advantages.
Whether you’re already in business or just starting out, choosing the right form of business is important. Even established businesses change from one form to another during their lifetime.
Call our office (and your attorney) for guidance in selecting the form that is best for your business.
Most Americans get a tax refund every year, with the average check weighing in at $2,895 last year. Even though it’s really money that they earned, many people are tempted to treat it like a windfall and splurge. If you can resist that temptation, here are some of the best ways to put your tax refund to good use:
Pay off debt. If you have debt, part of your tax refund could be used to reduce or eliminate it. Paying off high-interest credit card or auto loan debt means freeing up the money you had been paying in interest for other uses. And making extra payments on your mortgage can put more money in your pocket over the long haul.
Save for retirement. Saving for retirement allows the power of compound interest to work for you. Consider depositing some of your refund check into a traditional or Roth IRA. You can contribute a total of $5,500 every year, plus an extra $1,000 if you are at least 50 years old.
Save for a home. Home ownership can be a source of wealth and stability for many people. If you dream of owning a home, consider adding your refund to a down payment fund.
Invest in yourself. Sometimes the best investment isn’t financial, it’s personal. A course of study or conference that improves your skills or knowledge could be the best use of your money.
Give to charity. Giving your tax refund to a charity helps others and gives you a deduction for your next tax return.
Don’t give to scammers! Scammers are using a new tactic to separate people from their tax refunds. First, they file fraudulent refunds on behalf of their victims. Then, after a refund check arrives at the taxpayer’s address, they impersonate an IRS agent over the phone and demand to be sent the refund because it was sent in error. Remember, real IRS agents will never call over the phone and demand immediate payment for any reason.
If you use some of your refund for one of the ideas here, you can also feel good about setting a little aside for yourself to have some fun!
The tax law changes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed at the end of December 2017, enacted some of the most sweeping changes taxpayers have seen in 30 years. Here are a few big changes to come out of the new act — and what you can do about it.
The medical expense deduction threshold was lowered to 7.5 percent.
The tax reform bill retroactively lowers the threshold to deduct medical expenses in 2017 to 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income. The previous threshold was 10 percent. This new 7.5 percent threshold remains in place for 2018, but reverts back to 10 percent in the following years.
What this means: You may want to consider using the medical expense deduction this year. If there are any qualified medical expenses you can make (drug purchases, medical equipment, etc.) to push you over the new, lower threshold, consider doing so in 2018.
The healthcare individual mandate penalty stays in place until 2019.
The shared responsibility penalty (also known as the individual mandate) in the Affordable Care Act is effectively repealed by the tax reform legislation, but not right away. The penalty is set to zero in 2019, but remains in place for 2018.
What this means:You still need to retain your Forms 1095 this year in order to provide evidence of your healthcare coverage. Without proof of coverage, you may have to pay the higher of $695 or 2.5 percent of your income. Unless there are further changes coming, 2018 may be the last year you’ll need to worry about the individual mandate penalty.
More changes to consider for 2018 tax planning
We’re experiencing some of most significant tax law changes since the 1980s. There will be a lot of things to consider for tax planning this year. Here are some of the most significant:
Reduced income tax rates
Doubled standard deductions
Suspension of personal exemptions
New limits on itemized deductions, including:
Combined state and local income, property and sales tax deduction limited to $10,000
Casualty losses limited to federally declared disaster areas
Elimination of miscellaneous deductions subject to the 2 percent of adjusted gross income threshold
Boosts to:
The child tax credit ($2,000 in 2018)
A new $500 family tax credit
529 education savings plan expansion for K-12 private school education
The estate tax exemption (doubled)
Stay tuned
There will surely be more details on the tax reform changes and how they are implemented by the IRS in the weeks to come. In the meantime, contact us if you have urgent questions regarding your situation.
