Estimated Tax Tip Savings: Depending on your tax rate and the value and composition of your stock portfolio, you can use these securities to cut your tax rate from a high of 43.4 percent down to as low as 23.8 percent, which can easily yield savings anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 (or much more).

To squeeze big tax savings from your stock portfolio, you’ll want to understand a few tax structure basics: essentially, you want to avoid the astronomically high taxes on short-term capital gains and ordinary income (up to 43.4 percent) and move your taxes down into the long-term capital gains and dividends rate of just 23.8 percent (or lower).

That 19.6 percent in tax savings really adds up if you can shift enough of your holdings from one tax bracket to another. For example, if you can move only $12,000 of stock appreciation from 43.4 percent to 23.8 percent, you’ll potentially save $2,352 in taxes, just like that.

To start putting these smart stock portfolio tax-reduction strategies to work, please keep in mind these five helpful “keys to the kingdom”:... Log in to view full article.