Proactive Tax Strategies, LLP

09/13/2026

Disturbing to say the least!!

Sen. Joni Ernst has revealed that IRS EMPLOYEES OWE ~$50,000,000 IN UNPAID TAXES.

Yes.

The people who enforce the tax laws… aren’t paying them.

Let that sink in.

Nearly 6,000 IRS employees, almost 10% of the agency, have significant unpaid tax balances.

Average amount owed? About $8,000 per employee.
These are not recent bills. Many are from prior years. Some didn’t even file.

This isn’t a clerical issue. It’s a credibility crisis.

These employees know exactly how the system works, what gets flagged, what doesn’t, and where enforcement is weak.

That’s not just hypocrisy.
That’s tax fraud risk inside the tax authority itself.

So here’s the real question: Should Scott Bessent put IRS employees with unpaid taxes on probation, just like any other federal worker?

Because, if the IRS won’t enforce the rules on itself, why should the public trust enforcement at all?

08/29/2026

🧱 Joint bank accounts typically default to joint tenancy with right of survivorship, so the surviving owner automatically inherits the full balance and the will never controls that account.

A joint owner has legal access to every dollar from day one, and the account can be exposed to that owner's creditors, divorce, or lawsuits.

Medicaid generally treats the full joint account as the parent's asset, and a child's withdrawals for their own use above $19,000 a year can require a federal gift tax return.

For bill-paying help, the usual tool is a durable financial power of attorney, and many banks want their own form on file, so set it up with the bank in advance and never leave the only signed copy in a safe deposit box.

A power of attorney ends at death, which is exactly the job a POD beneficiary takes over, transferring the account without probate, and it can name all your children equally.

A revocable trust does both jobs at once, keeping control with the parent and naming beneficiaries for any account titled into it.

One honest wrinkle: even with survivorship, a bank may briefly restrict the account until it receives a death certificate, and the details vary by state and by bank.

Is your name, or one of your children's, on a joint account right now?

P.S. Once a week, I email the best money article I read, with my take on this week's top Facebook posts and what's new on the Ways to Wealth blog. It's free, and you can sign up on the Ways to Wealth home page.

R.J. Weiss, CFP®



The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.

08/29/2026

Not one of them is wrong. But every one of them creates a tax consequence that most families do not find out about until the money has already changed hands.

Adding a child to a deed is the one I see most often. The parent thinks they are simplifying things. The child ends up with the parent's original cost basis on the gifted share instead of a stepped-up basis at death. On a home with $300K in appreciation, that is a potential $45,000+ capital gains tax bill that did not need to exist.

One precision point from last time: when a child is added as a joint owner, the parent's retained share can still receive a step-up at death. The full damage lands when the whole home is gifted during life, or when the child sells their gifted share.

The trust-as-IRA-beneficiary issue is less well known but arguably worse. In 2026, a non-grantor trust hits the top 37% federal bracket at just $16,000 of retained taxable income, and that is income, not assets, which was the most asked question in the thread. An individual does not reach that rate until $640,600. If IRA distributions flow into a trust that does not distribute them to beneficiaries, the tax rate can nearly double compared to a direct inheritance.

The exception worth naming: a special needs trust or a spendthrift trust often must hold that money, and paying the higher rate is the correct price for the protection. A trust drafted as a see-through with distributions to beneficiaries can also avoid the compressed brackets entirely.

On inherited Roth IRAs, the 10-year emptying rule still applies, but the withdrawals come out tax-free, which is exactly why item 5 exists.

None of these moves are bad in isolation. The problem is when estate planning and tax planning happen in separate conversations, with separate professionals, at separate times.

The fix is not complicated. It is one meeting where both sides of the plan are in the same room.

Which of the five have you already done, or been advised to do?



The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.

08/28/2026

A $30,000 income in 1990 and an $80,000+ income today might sound like progress until you look at what happened to housing, college, and healthcare.

That’s where the comparison starts getting ugly.

Income went up.

But the cost of some of the biggest things families actually have to pay for went up a whole lot faster.

Homes became dramatically more expensive relative to income.

College costs climbed.

Healthcare costs exploded.

So when people say, “We made less back then and still figured it out,” they’re missing the part where the entire financial landscape changed.

It’s not that younger families suddenly forgot how to budget.

The numbers they’re dealing with are just a lot harder.

08/25/2026

📊 The current projection for the 2027 Social Security COLA is 3.6%, which would be the largest increase since 2023.

On a $2,000 monthly benefit, 3.6% works out to about $72 more a month.

That number is still an estimate, and it can move: the official COLA is built from July, August, and September inflation, and two of those three months are not in yet.

August inflation data arrives September 11, when the Senior Citizens League is expected to update its projection, and Social Security announces the real number on October 14.

One catch to plan around: Medicare Part B premiums come out of most Social Security payments, and the Trustees project the 2027 premium at $209.50, up $6.60 from this year.

If both projections hold and you pay the standard Part B premium, roughly $65 of that $72 increase actually reaches your check.

Your personal 2027 amount arrives in December, by mail and in your my Social Security account, and shows up in your January payment.

Which date are you circling on the calendar, October 14 or the December notice?

P.S. Once a week, I email the best money article I read, with my take on this week's top Facebook posts and what's new on the Ways to Wealth blog. It's free, and you can sign up on the Ways to Wealth home page.

R.J. Weiss, CFP®



The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.

08/14/2026

It’s not simple math as most would assume - it’s facts and circumstances that are different for all of us.

📊 Claiming Social Security at 62 with a full retirement age of 67 locks in 70% of your full benefit, while waiting to 70 pays 124%, a permanent gap of 77%.

Each rule of thumb works somewhere and breaks somewhere, which is why the deciding variable matters more than the slogan.

Taking it at 62 fits poor health, thin savings, or a single filer with no survivor relying on the record, but a married higher earner is also choosing the check a widow or widower may live on, since the survivor generally keeps the larger of the two.

Delaying to 70 fits a healthy couple with savings to bridge the gap, and breaks with no bridge money, a serious diagnosis, or selling investments in a down market just to wait.

Break-even math around age 80 grades longevity insurance like an investment, and the larger check pays off in the one scenario where savings run out, which is a long life.

A man who has already reached 65 lives to about 84 on average, a woman to about 87, and roughly 1 in 4 people who reach 65 will live past 90.

Claiming age and retirement age are separate decisions, so you can stop working at 62 and still delay the benefit by spending from savings first.

Did you claim early, wait, or land somewhere in between, and would you make the same call again?



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*

08/14/2026

📋 The senior deduction adds up to $6,000 per person 65 or older on top of the regular standard deduction, but it phases out above $75,000 single and $150,000 joint.

Long-term capital gains stay at 0% up to $98,900 of taxable income for joint filers, which is income after deductions, not your gross pay.

Starting in 2026, anyone 50 or older who earned more than $150,000 in 2025 wages has to make 401(k) catch-up contributions as Roth, not pre-tax.

The SALT deduction cap jumps to $40,400, but it phases back down to $10,000 once income passes $505,000.

529 plans can now pay up to $20,000 a year for K-12 costs, including tutoring, double the old $10,000 cap.

The ACA subsidy cliff is back for 2026: cross 400% of the federal poverty line by one dollar and the premium credit disappears completely.

In 2027, the Saver's Credit becomes the Saver's Match, a direct deposit worth up to $1,000 into your retirement account, though the match itself cannot land in a Roth IRA.

Which of these changes affects your return the most this year?



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*

08/06/2026

The most interesting thing about tax statistics is that two people can look at the same dataset and walk away with completely different conclusions.

That's because tax debates are rarely about arithmetic alone. They're about what we believe a fair tax system should accomplish.

The U.S. federal income tax is intentionally progressive. Higher-income households earn a disproportionately large share of total taxable income, so they also pay a disproportionately large share of federal income taxes. That's not an accident—it's how the tax code is designed. As income rises, marginal tax rates generally increase, and because income itself is highly concentrated at the top, the share of taxes paid becomes concentrated too.

But this is also where many conversations become incomplete.

When people argue that wealthy Americans should pay a greater "fair share," they're often talking about far more than federal income taxes. They may be referring to payroll taxes, which fall more heavily on wage earners, capital gains that receive different tax treatment than ordinary income, unrealized appreciation that can grow for years without being taxed, corporate taxes, estate taxes, tax deductions, credits, and the role of wealth inequality itself. Those are different questions with different answers.

Another overlooked point is that federal income tax is only one piece of the overall tax system. State income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, excise taxes, and business taxes all affect households differently depending on how they earn, spend, save, and invest. Looking at one tax in isolation can create an accurate statistic while still providing an incomplete picture.

Behavioral economics adds another layer. People naturally compare tax bills in dollars, while economists often compare effective tax rates, lifetime tax burdens, or tax incidence. Those are not interchangeable. A household paying the largest dollar amount isn't necessarily paying the highest percentage of its economic resources, and a lower-income family may feel a heavier financial burden even if it pays less in federal income tax.

History also reminds us that tax systems evolve alongside economic conditions. As the economy changes, so do debates over efficiency, incentives, inequality, and government revenue. That's why reasonable economists can agree on the data yet disagree on the policy.

One statistic can be completely accurate while still leaving out the broader economic story.

So when you hear claims about who pays their "fair share," are we discussing federal income taxes, the entire tax system, or the distribution of wealth itself?

08/05/2026

The goal isn’t to hide income from the IRS.

It’s to understand which dollars the tax code already allows you to receive tax-free.

That distinction matters because “tax-free” rarely means every dollar in the category automatically escapes taxation.

Life insurance death benefits paid directly to beneficiaries are generally excluded from federal income, but any interest added to the proceeds may be taxable.

Gifts and inheritances are usually not taxable income to the recipient, but income produced by inherited assets, inherited retirement accounts, or future capital gains may still create a tax bill.

Qualified Roth IRA withdrawals can come out tax-free, but the rules surrounding contributions, earnings, age, and the five-year holding period still matter.

Home-sale gains may qualify for an exclusion of up to $250,000 for an eligible single filer or $500,000 for an eligible married couple filing jointly. That exclusion applies to the gain, not the full sale price.

Municipal-bond interest is often exempt from federal income tax, while workers’ compensation, certain VA benefits, qualified HSA withdrawals, and child-support payments may also receive favorable federal tax treatment.

Even the newer rules involving overtime pay and qualified tips generally operate through deductions with eligibility limits, not by making every dollar completely tax-free.

After more than 20 years as a CFP®, I’ve learned that good tax planning isn’t about chasing questionable loopholes.

It’s about knowing the rules, documenting everything correctly, and making sure you aren’t paying tax on money the law already excludes.

07/29/2026

A raise can look like it lands you in a scarier tax bracket. In the federal income tax system, that fear does not hold up.

Each bracket only taxes the income inside it. Moving into a new bracket does not touch the tax rate on the dollars you already earned below it.

Take a raise from $65,000 to $70,000 for a single filer taking the 2026 standard deduction. Taxable income moves from $48,900 to $53,900.

Of that $5,000 raise, $1,500 stays in the 12% bracket and only $3,500 crosses into the 22% bracket.

The federal tax on the raise comes to $950, which means $4,050 of it remains after federal income tax, and roughly $3,668 after payroll tax too.

A bonus can look different. Employers often withhold bonuses at a flat 22 percent, which is a prepayment, not your final tax bill.

Tax brackets phase in gradually, but some benefits do not. The 2026 ACA marketplace premium tax credit cuts off entirely above 400 percent of the federal poverty level, and Medicaid, CHIP, and childcare assistance carry their own income limits.

Has a raise or bonus ever left you double-checking your paycheck math?



The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.