Posts tagged with "capital-loss"


  • Tax Loss Harvesting

    There are lots of legitimate ways to reduce taxes and tax loss harvesting is one of them. However, in practice, it is much harder to execute. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let me explain what tax loss harvesting is in case you don’t know. Tax loss harvesting is nothing but selling your investments for a loss when the value is below your invested amount. Then use the losses to offset any other capital gains or income that you might have. Generally tax loss harvesting works well with equity markets because there is a possibility that the markets fall and your investments could be worth less than what you invested.

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  • Downside Risks And Consequences

    For every decision we make, there is a possibility of some upside and downside risk. Take for example the decision to eat that yummy cake. Well, the downside risk is clogged arteries and heart attack perhaps. Or may be there is an increased chance of becoming diabetic. These are all long term risks right? So who cares. What about the upside? Well you get to enjoy the food and put your mind in a blissful state and you are in good mood perhaps for the rest of day at best. The upside is really short term. Now the question is whether I should have the cake or not. How do we go about it? One way is to consider the short term and long term consequences. But is so hard to visualize something that will happen far into the future. Why can’t I enjoy now? May be I won’t live that long to see the ill effects of my actions. That is one aspect of risk.

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  • Short-term And Long-term Gains Harvesting

    Everybody agrees that long-term gains are almost always preferable to short-term gains. I tend to agree in general. But there are exceptions too for example if you are a retired person like me :). Long term capital gains taxes are lower than the short-term counterparts. For example, short-term capital gains tax on equity is 15% vs 10% on long-term gains. Likewise, debt short-term capital gains are taxed at your applicable tax rate as opposed to 20% on indexed long-term capital gains.

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