The Latest Installment

No, this is not an allusion to whether you can keep your health plan if you want it to keep it. "Who Gots It Don’t Want It" was the name given—by a grammatically challenged boy in my seventh-grade class—to a game we boys invented, as a variation on football.

The rules weren’t complicated. The game consisted of two teams. One team was whichever guy had the football, and the other team consisted of everyone else. The objective for the first "team" was to be able to get as far as possible before getting crushed. The objective for the other team was not to let him get anywhere at all. Then someone else would take the ball, and the teams shifted accordingly. The point of the game was violence, but then, we were boys, after all, so what else was there?

"Who Gots It Don’t Want It" came back to mind as more and more people have cried out in pain about the tax load that dumps on them whenever they receive income that is reportable on IRS Form 1099-MISC or on their Schedule D as capital gains. If anything, the cry is louder about the ordinary-income tax on 1099-MISC income such as commissions, royalties, rents, and "Other Income".

If you are in that situation, you don’t have to carry the ball all by yourself. If you speak up, there is a good probability that much of the tax on that 1099-MISC income or Schedule D capital gains can be deferred into the future, and that at the same time you can achieve important non-tax financial goals.

Don’t stay stuck in the seventh grade.—Stan Crow