There have been some very significant changes made to the tax codes that are effective this year, 2018. In this episode Monica is joined by Dale Carlton, Jr., who has worked in real estate since the mid 1990s and has been an attorney since 2001, about how the new tax laws affect: real estate professionals, their businesses, and their clients. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 provides the opportunity for people who made the same money in 2018 that they made in 2017 to see a reduction in the amount of tax they will have to pay. Currently, we all pay according to marginal tax rates — everyone falls in a tax bracket. Each of these tax brackets is going to be reduced. There will be some differences in deductions, and there is also something called qualified business income deduction — a deduction on profits. The first thing to note is that the marginal tax rates have been lowered, and overall the amount of tax you pay on your taxable income will be a few percentage points less. Dale talks about some of the implications of this as well — there will likely be a decrease in the number of itemized deductions filed. What this means for real estate agents is that people will no longer have an advantage by owning real property as a home, because the standard deduction will exceed the amount of their mortgage interest and their other taxes owed. This corresponds to Section A on the 1040 form. By raising the standard deduction, they removed some of the deductions we had previously. In the loss of the standard deduction, we lose of some of the aspects of the deduction regarding living in the same residence for two of the past five years. They also maximized the amount you could deduct of state and local income taxes along with real estate taxes and maximized the amount you could deduct from those groups to $10,000. There are essentially four deductions that are still allowed: charitable contributions, home mortgage interest deduction, state and local income tax and real estate taxes combined, and then any medical expenses above 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. The $10,000 max of the state/local income tax and real estate can be added to charitable contributions, home mortgage interest, and medical expenses; if all of those added together are less than $24,000, you’ll want to take the standard deduction. If they are more, you would keep them itemized. The home mortgage interest deduction includes your primary residence and a second home. You could write off the interest for these two as long as it was acquisition indebtedness. The two changes that most agents need to be aware of is that they did away with personal exemptions. In 2018, there are no exemptions for any person, all are removed. They have, however, amended the rules regarding the child tax credit. They have doubled the child tax credit and increased the phase-out limit to start at $200,000 for single filers and $400,000 for married filing jointly. For further clarification on the deduction for people who had owned a home for two out of the last five years, this is still intact in the way that we’re used to it. This is the profit of a sale on a principal residence. As long as you’ve lived in it for two of the previous five years, you could take up to $500,000 worth of gain and not have to pay tax on that gain. This was advantageous for real estate agents and investors. Qualified Business Income Deduction: if you have a minor that can work for you in your business, they can get paid up to $12,000 without having to pay taxes. This is also a business expense you won’t have to pay taxes on. There are some rules with this deduction that will affect how we take our money. Everything changed in August — a lot of smaller business owners went to bat to protect them with these new tools. Instead of a tax bridge, you get 20% off your taxable profit, with up to a 25% qualified business deduction. If your taxable income is below the new thresholds, you will still qualify for this qualified