74 • RUBY, WILDING & SWANSBURG All of this leads me to believe tax bracket rates wi ll rever t to their older , higher rates i n 2026—and savers need to be prepared f or that. #2 | Changes to your deductions. Brackets get most of the attention when it comes to taxes, but th ey’re not th e o nly way y our t axes can r ise . Deductions are another popular way the government controls how much revenue the IRS can generate. And, there are lots of deductions for the government to play with: credits for having children, paying your mortgage, medical expenses, and charitable d onations. Deductions can really impact how much you pay in taxes. Think about it this way: If you make $100,000 a year and can deduct $20,000, you essentiall y have $80,000 of taxabl e income. So, you pay your t ax es based on t hat $80,000. But, nex t year , Congress changes the rules . No w, yo u c an onl y deduct $10,000. Suddenl y you ha ve $90,000 of taxabl e income, not $80,000. Did you r bracket change? Nop e! Did you en d up paying more in taxes? Absolutely. We saw an elimination and consolidation of some deductions in the 2017 tax refor m bill, and I believe we’ll see more adjustments in the years to come. #3 | New taxes. New taxes, or as I like to call them, “stealth taxes,” are the wave of the future . These are essentially ne w, creative ways the go vernment can tax your money. Here’s a good example. Yo u do n’t pay Soci al Securi ty taxes o n ever y dollar yo u make. There’s a limit, called the “maximu m taxable earnings.”
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