Do I need to memorize all the threshold/phase out numbers?

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  • #189696
    phson01
    Participant

    For example for taking deductions on education loan interests, it starts to phase out when your income over certain amount…will those phase out numbers be given on exam? or you have to memorize all of them (even though I don’t see the point of doing that since those thresholds may change from year to year) ?

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  • #615920
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I didn't memorize the vast majority of those numbers. there are a select few that seemed important to me, which happened to be the ones that don't really change year to year. section 179 expense, passive rental real estate loss, corporate AMT exemption are a few I can think of.

    you kind of get a feel for which limits you should bother remembering by doing practice MCQs. a couple will come up again and again, like the passive real estate loss one, and you'll know that's an important one to remember. but, basically, if they change year to year, you probably don't need to remember them. if they're weird numbers like $9,375-$12,345 or something, you probably don't need to remember them (because that means they're indexed numbers that change year to year). if they're nice, flat, round numbers, like $25,000, and they phase out from income of $100,000-$150,000, you probably need to know them.

    #615921
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I say do a bunch of homework problems for individual tax and keep a list on the side noting what phaseouts popped up (e.g. Mom and Pop phaseout, IRA phaseout if your spouse is in a plan, but you're not, etc).

    Then just focus on those.

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