The beauty of tax planning your year-end stock portfolio is that it might cost you pennies in commissions but allow you to pocket real money.

Here’s the basic strategy:

Avoid the high taxes on short-term capital gains and ordinary income (up to 43.4 percent).

Lower the taxes to zero, or if you can’t do that, then lower them to 23.8 percent or less by making the profits subject to long-term capital gains.

Think of this: You pay taxes at an 82 percent higher rate when you are paying taxes at the 43.4 percent rate rather than the tax-favored 23.8 percent rate. And if you can avoid that higher rate with some easy adjustments in your stock portfolio, doesn’t it make sense to do that now?

Here are five basic tax rules to know in order to understand and apply the tax savings to your stock portfolio: ... Log in to view full article.