Good time to buy TSLA as I'm selling mine

Long term capital gains (LTCG) tax doesn't reach 20% until your taxable income is somewhere beyond $500,000. It doesn't seem that current thread participants are in that wealthy class.

For 2024, this tax is 0% for singles reporting taxable income less than $47,025, and for marrieds filing jointly (MFJ) reporting less than $94,050. And remember that your taxable income is what is left after subtracting your standard deduction, $14,600 for singles, $29,200 for MFJs, and a bit extra for senior citizens. See IRS Topic 409 (still not updated to 2024), and this item.

For incomes falling in between these thresholds, the basic LTCG tax is 15%.

But there is another snag: Net investment income tax (NIIT). This is a 3.8% surtax on investment earnings, kicking in at total taxable incomes of $125,000 for singles, $250,000 for MFJs.

So I believe that puts the effective LTCG tax brackets at 0%, 15%, 18.8%, and 23.8%. Essentially nobody pays right at 20%.

Marrieds filing separately, and heads of households, have different thresholds. And certain business and collectible gains are taxed at higher rates. Check with the IRS or your favorite tax advice outlet for additional details.

Short term capital gains are taxed as regular income, no special reduced rates.

 

Yowza. Evaluation dancing over $270 this morning. Not ready to sell but that's making the eyes bigger. Not as big as 2021 & 22 but still ....

 

Wait a month or two.....
I'm sure P47 is going to impact the price significantly!!

Your only challenge is determining polarity....

 

Less than one year.

For the shares purchased this year, gains and/or losses are clearly short term, thus taxed as ordinary income, which is a higher rate.

You ought to be able to drill down into the online account details and find all the cost basis information now. Though it can be difficult to find, buried deep on the websites. Waiting for the brokerage's 1099-B tax documents in January is far easier.

. . . unless one is doing careful tax planning, e.g. trying to accurately estimate taxes without quarterly underpayment penalties, or hit income & tax targets without going over significant costly thresholds, such as IRMAA. All the various 1099s are issued after the end of the tax year, too late to help with tax planning.

Back in the old days, brokerages and mutual fund companies didn't need to retain the cost basis details, just leaving all that necessary tracking and accounting for customers to do themselves. But the IRS wasn't happy with the results, between lack of customer diligence and understanding, and outright tax cheating. So now those companies must keep track of all the detail, and report it to both their customers and the IRS at tax time.

Cost basis reporting

I still have stock and mutual fund holdings from the old days, so still have to carry and maintain that cost basis detail myself. For the descendants of an employer's stock going back over 40 years, including multiple corporate spinoffs, mergers and acquisitions, and more spinoffs, it gets very messy. But if audited, I can solidly defend it.