Identifying Shares Sold
Before selling shares, decide which shares will minimize your capital gain or maximize your loss. To minimize gain, you should sell the shares with the highest basis. To maximize loss, you should sell the shares with the lowest basis.
If you don’t identify the shares you sell in writing before selling them, the IRS assumes you used the first-in, first-out method.
Related Resources
Learn more about receiving a short-term mutual funds loss, from the tax experts at H&R Block.
Learn more about social security tax and how it affects your income and benefits from the tax experts at H&R Block.
Generally, paying gift tax is not an issue for the person receiving the gift. The giver, however, will generally only file a gift tax return when the gift exceeds the annual gift tax exclusion amount, which is $15,000 per person for 2018. The giver may also not owe gift tax due to their lifetime exemption.
Form 709 is the IRS tax form that’s required in certain gift giving situations. Let the experts at H&R Block help you determine when Form 709 should be filed.
