If you are one of those people who do their own taxes this may be the year to hire an accountant. By now you have probably gotten all of your 1099 forms in the mail from your brokerage accounts and now you need to make sense of it all. There are two major changes to the tax laws for 2003 that could have a large impact on your tax bill and how you manage your money going forward.

Capital Gains

The first change is to capital gains taxes, that is taxes you pay on your gains from selling a stock or mutual fund. Short term capital gains, that is any gain on an investment you sold that you held for less than a year is still taxed as ordinary income. Which means rates can be as high as 35%. Long term gains, gains on investments you held for more than a year are where it gets interesting. Any gain on an investment you held for more than a year and sold before May 5 of 2003 is taxed at 20%. However, if you sold the investment after May 5 it’s only taxed at 15%. Why they chose May 5th I have no idea, obviously somebody up there wants to complicate your life. This makes tax planning quite difficult because short term losses offset short term gains before they offset long term gains and long term losses offset long term gains before they offset short term gains. Confused yet? Because short term gains can be taxed as high as 35% and long term gains are only 15% you want to do a couple of things, first if you can avoid selling something for 12 months do it. Second, if you anticipate short term gains during the year and have long term losses avoid taking long term gains until the next year. Alright, if you weren’t confused before you are now. Because the tax rates are so wide now you need to consider taxes on any sell decision you are making. Bottom line, you can’t do your tax planning on April 14 when your accountant tells you how much you owe, you need to sit down with your accountant and investment advisor in October or November this year to plan this out for 2004.

Dividends

Dividends are also taxed differently now. In the past dividends were ordinary income which could be taxed as high as 35%. For most people the maximum tax rate on dividends that qualify is now 15% but just like capital gains it’s not so simple. First you need to hold onto the stock on which dividends where paid for more than 60 days. The holding period is actually much more complicated than this but I don’t want to confuse you too much more. If you are a buy and hold investor you probably don’t have to worry, if you are an active trader however you will have a tougher time with this. The other key point is that not all dividends qualify but it is up to you to determine if yours do or not. The key ones that don’t are dividends from mutual funds that are actually short term capital gains or bond interest. Another thing you need to know is that if your brokerage firm lends your shares out (which they can do if you have a margin account) your dividends won’t qualify either. You need to call your broker to find out about this. This also brings up an important planning point. If you are like most people you have some stocks and some bonds. Your stocks might pay dividends and you may sell them generating long term capital gains, all taxed at 15%. Your bonds pay interest that can be taxed as high as 35%. You need to figure this in when you decide how to hold these different investments. If you have 401k’s or IRAs these accounts grow tax deferred so they are the perfect place to put your bonds. If you have other accounts that are taxable, like joint accounts or individual accounts you can put your stocks in those. This allows you to take maximum advantage of the tax law changes.

All told these changes give investors some great way to save some money but you need to know how to take advantage of them for maximum effect.