[yieldcrv]

there is very little that a W-2 employee can do if thats the only thing they do, aside from depreciating real estate and mortgage interest

if your goal is to earn and park money in a bank account, the government is trying to tell you to do literally anything else by taxing that the heaviest. their aggregate goal is for velocity within the economy because that is more useful for the government than its tax revenue, and so that is rewarded.

so its not really useful for me to write tax deductions that likely don't apply to you

[bombcar]

In pursuit, they can go to the 1040 schedule 1 and read it: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf - specifically look at lines 11-23, 25: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040s1.pdf

"Normies" can probably take advantage of 20 pretty easily, if you don't already.

The "normal" way to adjust AGI down is to be a business and just not pay yourself as much and cycle everything back into the business.

But, remember, the goal is to maximize after-tax gains/revenue, not minimize taxes. You can minimize taxes by minimizing income!

[yieldcrv]

> But, remember, the goal is to maximize after-tax gains/revenue, not minimize taxes.

yep. most of the things I like to do will satisfy that. people generally don't understand that the IRS is not this adversary that's waiting to be offended because they didn't get anything, when a lot of offices of the IRS basically helps you not pay them. Have to know how it functions and that requires education.

[rurp]

Your earlier post would have been more helpful if you'd specified that you're only talking about a tiny minority of the working population. "Lower your agi" sounds like you're making a general recommendation.

[yieldcrv]

it is a general recommendation as the observation is that if more of the population educated themselves in this field and structured their life accordingly, more of the population could have the same flexibility in lowering their agi at their discretion

right now, it is a tiny minority of the working population that does anything preemptively for tax purposes, it doesn't have to be that way.