Business

Put Together a Professional Team to Help You Reach Your Goals

PASADENA JOURNAL — As you work toward achieving your goals in life, you will need to make moves that contain ﬁnancial, tax and legal elements.

Published

5 years ago

March 1, 2019

Oakland Post

By Arnetta Tolley, Edward Jones Financial Advisor

As you work toward achieving your goals in life, you will need to make moves that contain ﬁnancial, tax and legal elements, so you may want to get some help – from more than one source.

Speciﬁcally, you might want to put together a team comprised of your ﬁnancial advisor, your CPA or other tax professional, and your attorney. Together, this team can help you with many types of ﬁnancial/tax/legal connections.

For starters, you may decide, possibly upon the recommendation of your ﬁnancial advisor, to sell some investments and use the proceeds to buy others that may now be more appropriate for your needs. If you sell some investments you’ve held for a year or less and realize a capital gain on the sale, the gain generally will be considered short-term and be taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. But if you’ve held the investments for more than a year before selling, your gain will likely be considered long-term and taxed at the lower, long-term capital gains rate, which can be 0%, 15% or 20%, or a combination of those rates.

On the other hand, if you sell an investment and realize a capital loss, you may be able to apply the loss to offset gains realized by selling other, more proﬁ table investments and also potentially offset some of your ordinary income. So, as you can see, the questions potentially raised by investment sales – “Should I sell?” “If so, when?” “If I take some losses, how much will they beneﬁt me at tax time?” – may also be of importance to your tax advisor, who will need to account for sales in your overall tax picture. As such, it’s a good idea for your tax and ﬁnancial advisors to communicate about any investment sales you make.

Your tax and financial advisors also may want to be in touch on other issues, such as your contributions to a retirement plan. For example, if you are self-employed or own a small business, and you contribute to a SEP-IRA – which is funded with pre-tax dollars, so the more you contribute, the lower your taxable income – your ﬁnancial advisor can report to your tax advisor (with your permission) how much you’ve contributed at given points in a year, and your tax advisor can then let you know how much more you might need to add to move into a lower tax bracket, or at least avoid being bumped up to a higher one. Your ﬁnancial advisor will be the one to recommend the investments you use to fund your SEP-IRA.

Your ﬁnancial advisor can also help you choose the investment or insurance vehicles that can fund an estate-planning arrangement, such as an irrevocable living trust. But to establish that trust in the ﬁrst place, and to make sure it conforms to all applicable laws, you will want to work with an attorney experienced in planning estates. Your tax professional may also need to be brought in. Again, communication between your various advisors is essential.

These are but a few of the instances in which your ﬁnancial, tax and legal professionals should talk to each other. So, do what you can to open these lines of communication – because you’ll be one who ultimately beneﬁts from this teamwork.

[Arnetta Tolley, Financial Advisor, Edward Jones 626-744-2740 or Arnetta.tolley@edwardjones.com]

This article originally appeared in the Pasadena Journal.

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Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

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15 hours ago

April 19, 2024

Oakland Post

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V.P. Kamala Harris: Americans With Criminal Records Will Soon Be Eligible for SBA Loans

Speaking in Las Vegas on Jan. 27, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a forthcoming federal rule that will extend access to Small Business Administration (SBA) loans to Americans who have been convicted of felonies but have served their time. Small business owners typically apply for the SBA loans to start or sustain their businesses.

Published

3 days ago

April 16, 2024

Oakland Post

On her daylong trip, Harris was joined by Horford, SBA Administrator Isabella Guzman, Interim Under Secretary of Commerce for Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) Eric Morrissette, and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev).

By California Black Media

Small business owners typically apply for the SBA loans to start or sustain their businesses.

Harris thanked U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV-04), the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, for the work he has done in Washington to support small businesses and to invest in people.

“He and I spent some time this afternoon with business leaders and small business leaders here in Nevada. The work you have been doing to invest in community and to invest in the ambition and natural capacity of communities has been exceptional,” Harris said, speaking to a crowd of a few hundred people at the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Hall in East Las Vegas.

“Formerly incarcerated individuals face significant barriers to economic opportunity once they leave prison and return to the community, with an unemployment rate among the population of more than 27%,” the White House press release continued. “Today’s announcement builds on the Vice President’s work to increase access to capital. Research finds that entrepreneurship can reduce recidivism for unemployed formerly incarcerated individuals by as much as 30%.”

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G.O.P. Lawmakers: Repeal AB 5 and Resist Nationalization of “Disastrous” Contractor Law

Published

3 days ago

April 16, 2024

Oakland Post

File Photo: Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City)

By California Black Media

Republican lawmakers gathered outside of the Employee Development Department in Sacramento on Jan. 23 to call for the repeal of AB5, the five-year old California law that reclassified gig workers and other independent contractors as W-2 employees under the state’s labor code.
Organizers said they also held the rally to push back against current efforts in Washington to pass a similar federal law.

“We are here to talk about this very important issue – a battle we have fought for many years – to stop this disastrous AB 5 policy,” said Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City).
Now, that threat has gone national as we have seen this new rule being pushed out of the Biden administration,” Gallagher continued.

On Jan. 10, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a new rule providing guidance on “on how to analyze who is an employee or independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).”
“This final rule rescinds the Independent Contractor Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act rule (2021 IC Rule), that was published on January 7, 2021, and replaces it with an analysis for determining employee or independent contractor status that is more consistent with the FLSA as interpreted by longstanding judicial precedent,” a Department of Labor statement reads.
U.S. Congressmember Kevin Kiley (R-CA-3), who is a former California Assemblymember, spoke at the rally.

“We are here today to warn against the nationalization of one of the worst laws that has ever been passed in California, which has devastated the livelihoods of folks in over 600 professions,” said Kiley, adding that the law has led to a 10.5% decline in self-employment in California.

Kiley blamed U.S Acting Secretary of Labor, July Su, who was the former secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, for leading the effort to redefine “contract workers” at the federal level.
Kiley said two separate lawsuits have been filed against Su’s Rule – its constitutionality and the way it was enacted, respectively. He said he is also working on legislation in Congress that puts restrictions on the creation and implementation of executive branch decisions like Su’s.
Assemblymember Kate Sanchez (R-Rancho Santa Margarita) announced that she plans to introduce legislation to repeal AB 5 during the current legislative session.

“So many working moms like myself, who are also raising kids, managing households, were devastated by the effects of AB 5 because they lost access to hundreds of flexible professions,” Sanchez continued. “I’ve been told by many of these women that they have lost their livelihoods as bookkeepers, artists, family caregivers, designers, and hairstylists because of this destructive law.”