When Planning Never Forget The Alternative Minimum Tax

You can do a lot more to affect your tax liability for the year in November and December than you can in April of the following year.  Often you will have enough information to do a pretty good mock-up of your return, which will then allow you to do some what-ifs.   It might be tempting to do planning based on the theory that your marginal tax rate is x percent, so that paying y dollars on a deductible item will save you xy dollars.  Don't do it.  Unless your life is very simple you really ...