#tax-advisory

#tax-advisory

7 On Your Side and a team of tax experts will answer your questions about changes to the tax law, new deductions, deadlines, and much more.

The family is faced with the challenge of appointing a decision-making representative for their mother, who has dementia, without a prior power of attorney in place.

Trump Accounts are designed to be tax-advantaged, long-term savings vehicles for families to leverage on behalf of children born in the US between 2025 and 2028. These accounts include a $1,000 government deposit when they're opened. Families can also make annual contributions of up to $5,000, which can be invested until the child turns 18.

The key to selling underperforming holdings at a loss and using those losses to cancel out capital gains on a dollar-for-dollar basis is to bring one's capital gains level down as close as possible to zero. Additionally, it's possible to use $3,000 of capital losses per year to offset other ordinary income, so there's the potential here with such a strategy to actually lower one's overall tax burden by selling the right securities at the correct time.

The rich have made an art of avoiding taxes and making sure their wealth passes down effortlessly to the next generation. But the tricks they use - to expedite payouts to heirs and avoid handing money to the government - can also work for people with far more modest estates. "It's a strategic game of chess played over decades," says Mark Bosler, an estate planning attorney in Troy, Michigan, and legal adviser to Real Estate Bees.

A new year brings a new tax filing season. With many cash-strapped Americans worried about their finances, many can't wait to file their returns. The sooner you file, the sooner your chances of getting your refund, after all. But just when can you begin submitting your tax return to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)? That depends. Here's what you need to know about the 2026 tax filing season.

"We are still in the early days of the so-called great wealth transfer," says the lawyer Pierre Valentin, the joint head of art law at Fieldfisher. "The wave started in the US with the sale of collections such as those of Sydell Miller, Mica Ertegun and more recently, Leonard Lauder. The wave is coming to Europe, for example with the auction of the collection of Pauline Karpidas [last] September. I expect that there will be many more of those 'white glove' sales in the next 10 to 15 years because younger collectors collect differently from their parents and grandparents."

Tax filing season officially begins on Monday, January 26. If you missed the news last year, the IRS has ended its Direct File Service. My home state joined the program in 2025, and while it wasn't the only free option for filing taxes, I can attest it was absolutely the easiest -- especially if your tax situation goes beyond basic W-2 forms. (I was surprised to learn that fewer than 300,000 people used the service last year.)

Days before the 2026 tax filing season begins, the head of the IRS announced a shake-up Tuesday, saying the personnel and operational changes are intended to improve taxpayer service and modernize the agency. The timing of the announcement coincides with a critical moment for the agency, as the IRS prepares to process millions of tax returns while simultaneously implementing major tax law changes under the tax and spending package President Donald Trump signed into law last summer.