Maximizing Your Investment Returns: Understanding Tax-Loss Harvesting

Investing can be a great way to grow your wealth, but it can also come with tax liabilities. Fortunately, there are strategies that you can use to reduce your tax bill, such as tax-loss harvesting. In this blog, we’ll cover what tax-loss harvesting is and how it works, as well as some key considerations for anyone looking to implement the strategy. To see how tax-loss harvesting could impact your situation, check out our free Tax-Loss Harvesting guide!

What is Tax-Loss Harvesting?

Tax-loss harvesting is a tax strategy that can be used to reduce your tax liability by selling investments that have decreased in value and realizing capital losses. The losses from these investments can then be used to offset capital gains from other investments or to reduce your taxable income.

How Does Tax-Loss Harvesting Work?

To successfully implement tax-loss harvesting, it’s important to understand how the strategy works and follow a few key steps to maximize your potential savings.

1. Identify Investments with Losses: The first step is to identify investments in your portfolio that have decreased in value. You can then sell these investments to realize the capital losses.
2. Offset Gains: Once you have realized the capital losses, you can use them to offset capital gains from other investments. For example, if you sold another investment that had increased in value and realized a capital gain of $5,000, you could use the $5,000 in capital losses to offset the gain, reducing your overall tax liability.
3. Reduce Taxable Income: If your capital losses exceed your capital gains for the year, you can use up to $3,000 of the losses to reduce your taxable income for the year. Any additional losses can be carried forward to future years.
4. Reinvest in Similar Investments: To maintain the overall asset allocation and investment strategy of your portfolio, you can reinvest the proceeds from the sold investments in similar investments. This will help you avoid missing out on potential future gains.

Benefits of Tax-Loss Harvesting:

The primary benefit of tax-loss harvesting is that it can help you reduce your tax liability, which can improve your overall investment returns. Additionally, tax-loss harvesting can be used to rebalance a portfolio, which can help you stay on track with your long-term investment goals. 

Considerations for Implementing 

While tax-loss harvesting can be a valuable strategy for investors, there are a few key considerations to keep in mind:

• Timing: To be effective, tax-loss harvesting needs to be done before the end of the tax year. Additionally, it’s important to wait at least 30 days before buying back the same investment to avoid running afoul of the “wash sale” rule.
• Limits: There are limits to how much you can deduct in capital losses each year. It’s important to understand these limits and work with a tax professional to ensure that you’re using the strategy in a way that makes sense for your individual tax situation.
• Strategy: Tax-loss harvesting is just one of many tax strategies that investors can use to reduce their tax liability. It’s important to work with a wealth manager to determine if tax-loss harvesting is the right strategy for your individual investment goals.

Ready to take control of your investments and reduce your tax bill? Schedule your free 10-minute guidance call or download our free guide to determine if this strategy is right for you and your investment goals!