With yesterday’s victory of Barrack Obama, one thing is certain:  Taxes will rise.  Whether you like him or not, Obama has no history whatsoever of cutting taxes (despite his promises).  Expect more of the same.

That’s the reason for this post.  I want to begin a discussion about best ways to minimize your own tax burden.

(Note - President-Elect Barrack Obama has flatly stated that you are selfish if you want to minimize your taxes.  So if you’re a supporter of Mr. Obama, please disregard this content, as Obama does not support it.  But reasonable people certainly do.)

This post is not going to be highly detailed.  All I’m going to do right now is give you a few topics to research and begin to consider.  Further, I will do further research on these topics and provide more information to you as I discover it.

A few general ideas for you to think about for minimizing (or at least, delay) your tax burden are as follows:

• Sell any appreciated assets right now, before tax increases are instituted
• Use proper corporate structuring enabling shifting of profit from one tax year to the next
• Use of self-directed IRA’s and Solo 401k’s for tax-advantaged transactions
• Use 1031 exchanges when selling qualified real estate and defer taxation until more favorable taxation environments exist
• Convert as much of your income into lease-based (and other passive) income rather than active income

Clearly this list is far from complete, and there are no details included yet.  I’ll work with you to provide more details in the near future.  In the mean time:

Please share your thoughts below about general tax reduction strategies with which you are familiar.  Please don’t bother sharing the details yet - just give us an idea of how your strategy works.  I’ll use your comments as source material for finding further details and provide the information to my entire readership.

Again:  please share your tax-reduction tips below…

Thanks for reading RealEstate.BryanEllis.com.

One of the primary keys of paying the least possible in taxes is to have a serious, hard-core tax accountant on your team.

Unfortunately, I find myself in the position of having to find a new accountant, and I have decided that this would be a great opportunity to solicit the input of my fine readers all over the country so that we can all gain some benefits.

What I’m hoping is that some of you out there will be willing to share the name and contact info of your accountants.  The ideal qualifications I’m looking for are:

• The accountant must be as aggressively opposed to the payment of taxes as the law will allow, including the use of corporate entities in multiple states/tax jurisdictions
• The accountant should be able to give advice and service both to corporations and to the individual owners of the corporation
• The accountant should be specifically familiar with real estate, real estate investing and specifically creative real estate investing
• The accountant should ideally have significant personal experience in interacting with the IRS in the context of corporate and personal audits
• The accountant should be as easy to communicate with as possible
• The accountant should be able to prepare corporate and personal returns for federal and state tax filings

Does your accountant meet most or all of these qualifications?  If so, tell us as much about him/her as possible, including:

• Name
• Company name
• Phone
• Website

If you have any specific experiences with your accountant that you’d like tell us about, please feel free to do so!  Furthermore, while I can’t make any promises, if I do manage to find a really great accountant/tax advisor, then I’ll see if I can get that person to come on a teleseminar that I’ll offer to you for free so you can learn some great tax reduction tips.

So please, don’t be shy:  Let us know which accountants/tax advisors you use/recommend, and let us know why.  Also, if there are any qualifications/criteria I should have included above, let me know!  Thanks so much, and thank you for reading FreeRealEstateTraining.com!

Note:  If there are no responses below at the time you read this, that means you saw this post pretty early before the responses came in and/or were approved.  If that’s the case, please check back in a few hours.  This will be really useful information, so please take advantage of it!

There’s not a whole lot that’s good about declining property values - but there is one opportunity that it presents: Property Tax Reductions.

As any property owner or investor knows, the government makes an income on every inch of real estate in this country by assessing property taxes. Generally done at the local level, property taxes are ostensibly to pay for local urgent needs such as public education.

In some places, property taxes reach into the stratosphere and become a very significant part of the expense of property ownership. But there is good news:

Since property taxes are generally based on property values, the declining property market appears to give property owners an opportunity to save some money on property taxes. However, local governments will not merely reduce your property tax bill. Instead, there’s a process that must be followed to make this happen.

I’m not an expert on property tax reduction. But I will share a few points with you (and a great resource) that my research has uncovered:

• Get Your Most Recent Property Tax Assessment and check it for errors. Does the number of bedrooms and bathrooms match your actual property? Is the square footage accurate? Errors in property tax assessments are very common, and an error can be a great basis for requesting a re-assessment.
• Compare To Your Neighbors. Property tax assessments are public information, and you should confirm that neighbors with similar properties are paying similar taxes. If they are paying less than you, you should seek a re-assessment.
• Ask for Reassessment. To make this successful, you’ll need legitimate evidence such as the information you’ve collected above. Additionally, a certified appraisal could help to drop your property value analysis and therefore your property taxes.

Property taxes are the life blood of most local governments, so don’t expect the property assessment people to willingly cut your tax rate. You do need to be armed with proper evidence, and frankly some knowledge about the process wouldn’t hurt you.

The information I’ve provided above will give you a good starting point. You can also call a local attorney or real estate appraiser for additional advice. Finally, a good e-Book about property tax reductions is here.

Thank you for visiting FreeRealEstateTraining.com!