[QuarterReptile]

I am not an accountant nor someone who benefits from these deductions, but I'm casually interested. From what I've seen, a few: 1. Charity can be meaningfully different from chipping in $200 to something if you can afford to pay for large parts of a program, meaning things can have your name on them, or you can get events that you care about hosted at your church while saving on your taxes. 2. Tax advantaged accounts everywhere. Max out all retirement of course, but also education accounts for your four kids. Then I think there's some interesting tax advantages to whole life insurance, but I don't know which end those come on. 3. Structuring more of your life as a business. For example, I use my affordable car almost exclusively for work but it's not worth the trouble to track it for deductions because I still do best with standard deduction. Once you pass that, may as well track everything. And you should buy a large SUV instead of a minivan for your family so you can use the more favorable depreciation schedule that encourages SUV use over minivan and car use. Deduct your laptop and phone and phone plan because if you're making a lot of money, there's almost no chance you're using those for personal stuff more than for business. Probably some travel and dining fit as deductions too. Clothing, maybe? This is all completely legitimate (well, maybe it's not because of my ignorance on particular applications, but the spirit is consistent with how deductions work.)

You also may have the ability to structure some of your income as business appreciation so as to not pay taxes yet. True, it's still trapped until you pay taxes, but it's still resources you have available to you that haven't yet caused you to suffer tax expenditures. As a rule, you should never volunteer taxes that you can legally defer.

It'll all add up, though probably not to an overwhelming amount. My impression is that a lot of the exaggerations of low tax rates come from very slimy accounting driven by agendas (to say nothing of expressing taxes in a given year as a fraction of total accumulated wealth.)

[DenisM]

> For example, I use my affordable car almost exclusively for work but it's not worth the trouble to track it for deductions because I still do best with standard deduction

That's not how business expenses work. Talk to an accountant, you're leaving money on the table.