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It's 15% if you are in a 25% or higher tax bracket and only 5% if you are in the 15% or lower tax bracket. Profits from stocks held for less than a year are taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. Ordinary dividends earned on your stock holdings are taxed at regular income tax rates, not at capital gains rates.
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If you put a $100 into an index find and pulled it out a year later and there was no profit or there was a loss, you'd have no tax liability. Now if you have a stock that had a profit and you sold it, you could apply that loss from the index fund and lessen the tax liability.
You put $100 in an index fund A and sold it a year later for $90. = 10 dollar loss.
You put $100 in an index fund B and sold it a year later for $110. = 10 dollar gain.
Your tax liability would be zero.