Donating stock - The Best Kept Secret in Personal Finance!

Last week Lynnley Browning at Financial Planning sat down with our own Steve Latham to discuss the little-known advantages of charitable stock gifting that are described in her timely article:

Among the biggest benefits: avoiding capital gains tax of up to 23.8% for federal tax and up to 13.3% in state taxes! Taxpayers also benefit from deducting the fair market value of donated stock held for more than 12 months.

As Lynnley points out, high net worth households have been donating stock to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. However, also noted is only 2% of taxpayers earning $200k or more made a stock donation in 2018. What an incredible opportunity for the masses to learn from what savvy investors already know and use charitable stock gifting to support the causes they care about while maximizing tax savings.

Most importantly, this isn’t just a benefit for the investor but a huge win for nonprofit recipients that see larger donations in the form of pre-tax stock gifts. Thank you Lynnley for shining a light on this well-kept secret!