Will capital gains affect my tax bracket?
I think you're misunderstanding how tax brackets work. If you make $1 more and that bumps you into a higher bracket, only THAT particular dollar will be taxed at the higher tax bracket rate... Not your entire income.  Short term capital gains are treated as income.  Long term capital gains have a special tax rate currently. I'm not sure where you are, but in the United States capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than other types of income. On the 1040, captial gains income is separated from earned income, and income tax is calculated just on earned income. Then capital gains tax is calculated on capital gains income, and then added to income tax afterward.
"Many individual states, counties, and cities have their own income taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc., you will need to consult your state and local government websites for information about additional taxes that apply based on your locale. Wages, Salaries, Tips, Cash bonuses and other taxable employee pay, Strike benefits, Long-term disability, Earnings from self employment Earned income is subject to payroll taxes such as: Earned income is also subject to income taxes which are progressively higher depending on the amount earned minus tax credits, exemptions, and/or deductions depending on how you file. There are 7 tax rates that get progressively larger as your income rises but only applies to the income in each bracket. 10% for the first 18,650 (2017) through 39.6% for any income above 470,700. The full list of rates is in the above linked article about payroll taxes. Earned income is required for contributions to an IRA. You cannot contribute more to an IRA than you have earned in a given year. Interest, Ordinary Dividends, Short-term Capital Gains, Retirement income (pensions, distributions from tax deferred accounts, social security), Unemployment benefits, Worker's Compensation, Alimony/Child support, Income earned while in prison, Non-taxable military pay, most rental income, and S-Corp passthrough income Ordinary income is taxed the same as earned income with the exception that social security taxes do not apply. This is the ""pure taxable income"" referred to in the other linked question. Dividends paid by US Corporations and qualified foreign corporations to stock-holders (that are held for a certain period of time before the dividend is paid) are taxed at the Long-term Capital Gains rate explained below. Ordinary dividends like the interest earned in your bank account are included with ordinary income.  Stocks, Bonds, Real estate, Carried interest -- Held for more than a year Income from assets that increase in value while being held for over a year. Long term capital gains justified by the idea that they encourage people to hold stock and make long term investments rather than buying and then quickly reselling for a short-term profit.  The lower tax rates also reflect the fact that many of these assets are already taxed as they are appreciating in value. Real-estate is usually taxed through local property taxes. Equity in US corporations realized by rising stock prices and dividends that are returned to stock holders reflect earnings from a corporation that are already taxed at the 35% Corporate tax rate. Taxing Capital gains as ordinary income would be a second tax on those same profits. Another problem with Long-term capital gains tax is that a big portion of the gains for assets held for multiple decades are not real gains. Inflation increases the price of assets held for longer periods, but you are still taxed on the full gain even if it would be a loss when inflation is calculated. Capital gains are also taxed differently depending on your income level. If you are in the 10% or 15% brackets then Long-term capital gains are assessed at 0%. If you are in the 25%, 28%, 33%, or 35% brackets, they are assessed at 15%. Only those in the 39.6% bracket pay 20%. Capital assets sold at a profit held for less than a year Income from buying and selling any assets such as real-estate, stock, bonds, etc., that you hold for less than a year before selling. After adding up all gains and losses during the year, the net gain is taxed as ordinary income. Collectibles held for more than a year are not considered capital assets and are still taxed at ordinary income rates." "If the investments are in a non-retirement, taxable account, there's not much you can do to avoid short-term capital gains if you sell now. Ways to limit short-term capital gains taxes: Donate -- you can donate some of the stock to charity (before selling it). Transfer -- you can give some of the stock to, say, a family member in a lower tax bracket. But there are tons of rules, gift limits, and won't work for little kids or full time students. They would still pay taxes at their own rate. Protect your gains by buying puts. Wait it out until the long-term capital gains rate kicks in. This allows you to lock in your gains now (but you won't benefit from potential future appreciation.) Buying puts also costs $, so do the ROI calculation. (You could also sell a call and buy a put at the same time and lock in your gains for certain, but the IRS often looks at that as locking in the short-term capital gain, so be careful and talk to a tax professional if you are considering that method.) Die. There's a ""step-up"" basis on capital gains for estates. source: http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/30/avoid-capital-gains-tax-anschutz-personal-finance-baldwin-tax-strategy.html" "You are not the only one with this problem. When Intuit changed their pricing and services structure in 2015 a lot of people got angry, facing larger fees and having to go through an annoying upgrade just to get the same functionality (such as Schedule D, capital gains). You have several options: (1) Forget Turbo Tax and just use paper forms. That is what I do. Paper is reliable. (2) Use forms mode in Turbo Tax. Of course, that may be even more complicated than simply filing out paper forms. (3) Use a different service. If your income is below $64,000 the IRS has a free electronic filing service. Other online vendors have full taxes services for less than Turbo Tax. (4) Add the amount to ordinary income. Technically, as long as you report the income, you cannot be penalized, so if you add the capital gain to your ordinary income, then you have paid taxes on the income. Even if they send you a letter, you can send an answer that you added it to ordinary income and that will satisfy them. Of course you pay a higher rate on your $26 if you do that. (5) If you are in the 15% or below income bracket you are exempt from capital gains, and you can omit it. Don't believe the nervous Nellies who say the IRS will burn your house down if you don't report $26 in capital gains. Penalties are assessed on the percentage of TAXES you did not pay (0.5% penalty per month). Since 0.5% of $0 is $0 your penalty is $0. The IRS knows this. The IRS does not send out assessment letters for $0. (6) Even if you are above the 15% bracket, there is likelihood it is still a no-tax situation (see 5 above). (7) Worst case scenario: you are making a million dollars per year and you omit your $26 capital gains from your return. The IRS will send you an assessment letter for about $10. You can then send them a separate check or money order to pay it. In all honesty I have omitted documented tax items, like taxable interest, that the IRS knows about many times and never gotten an assessment letter. Once I made a serious math error on my return and they sent me an assessment letter, which I just paid, end of story. And that was for a lot more than $26. The technical verbiage for something like this in IRS lingo is CP-2000, underreported income. As you can see from this official IRS web page, basically what they do is guess how much they think you owe and send you a bill. Then you pay it. If you do so in time, you don't even get a 0.5% interest penalty on your $6.75 owed or whatever it is. (8) Go hog wild. As long as you are risking an assessment on your $26, why not go hog wild and just let the IRS compute all your taxes for you? Make a copy of your income statements, then mail them to the IRS with a letter that says, ""Hi, I am Mr. Odinson, my SSN is XXX-XX-XXXX. My address is XYZ. I am unable to compute my taxes due to a confused state of mind. I am hereby requesting a tax assessment for the 2016 tax year."" Make sure you sign and date the letter. In all probability they will compute the full assessment and send you a bill (or refund)." what I'm saying is my meager 1600 gain could have incurred an extra $170 in taxes if there was no capital gains tax.  It's basic math, not rocket science.  that's just the numbers at my current tax bracket(25%) which isn't that high.  I seriously don't get how you can't understand basic numbers and the fact that the capital gains tax is a huge advantage for a small time investor like me. "You uncle is liable to pay ""Capital-Gains"" tax. Essentially the sale price less of cost would be treated as gains. The gains are taxed at 10% without indexation and 20% with Indexation.  The capital gains tax can be avoided if your uncle invests the gains into specified ""Infrastructure bonds"" or buys another property within a period of 3 years. The funds need to be kept in a separate ""Capital Gains"" account and not a regular savings account till you buy another property within 3 years." Outside of a tax sheltered IRA or 401(k) type of account your transactions may trigger tax liability.  However, transactions are not taxed immediately at the time of the transaction; and up to a certain limits capital gains can be offset by capital losses which can mitigate your liability at tax time.  Also, remember that dividend receipts are taxable income as well. As others have said, this has nothing to do with whether or not money has been moved out of the account. Without more information about what tax bracket you are in, I cannot make a recommendation about what your best option is, but here are a few things to consider: If you're a non resident then you owe no capital gains tax to Canada. Most banks won't let you make trades if you're a non-resident.  They may not have your correct address on file so they don't realize this.  This is not tax law but just OSC (or equivalent) regulations. You do have to fill out paperwork for withholding tax on OAS/CPP payments.  This is something you probably already do but here's a link .  It's complicated and depends on the country you live in. Of course you may owe tax in Thailand, I don't know their laws.