NPR Podcast Planet Money has a recent episode called My favorite tax loophole. It is fun and educational. It’s mainly about audience’s favorite tax “loopholes” that allows individuals and companies to lower tax liability. Legally of course. This makes perfect sense because if the tax code says you can do things, you definitely can.

There is a difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. The former means that you categorize your expenses according to the tax provisions to reduce the tax as much as possible. The latter means that you owe taxes but fail to pay, which is illegal. The following is a summary of some of the audience’s good tax avoidance tips that I didn’t know before.

For instance, if you can qualify your large estate as a farm, you can get huge tax breaks. This is actually not that difficult to achieve, depending on the state you live in. Or if you have a Mercedes G wagon and it’s so heavy that under certain circumstances it can be considered heavy machinery, you can enjoy certain tax benefits. Plus, you get tax breaks if you hunt giant marine mammals for a living. What?

Yes. An economist submitted this as one of his favorite gem tax provision, the charitable deduction for whaling — not for the whales, but for the whaling, should be considered charitable contributions if they are personally recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission as engaging in such activities during the tax year. The original tax code goes like this –

170(n)(1)In General
In the case of an individual who is recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission as a whaling captain charged with the responsibility of maintaining and carrying out sanctioned whaling activities and who engages in such activities during the taxable year, the amount described in paragraph (2) (to the extent such amount does not exceed $10,000 for the taxable year) shall be treated for purposes of this section as a charitable contribution.

Some listeners say that they are able to offset the cost of cat food. How did they do it? The family claimed it as a business expense because they operated a garbage dump. And every garbage dump needs a group of cats to scare away snakes and mice, so these cats are commercial cats, and cat food naturally becomes a commercial expense. The IRS does allow this.

Then there is tax code 1031. If you sell a house and generate a profit, but plan to invest in a new house, the profit does not need to be taxed. Of course there are some conditions. For instance, the money from selling the house cannot go to your account, and needs to stay in an escrow account before going into the purchase of a new house. This tax code was originally created to allow farmers to exchange agricultural property such as cows, but has since been changed to applying only to real estate, saving billions of dollars for landowners and real estate investors.

Here is an ultimate one, called buy, borrow and die strategy. Most Americans are honest taxpayers, either because they are patriotic, or because they can already save enough money just by following the rules, one of which is this buy, borrow and die strategy. It takes advantage of how we tax income from buying and selling assets such as real estate and stocks. Tax law requires investors to pay taxes only when they sell the investment. So you don’t have to pay if you are not selling. But you also want to spend your profits. So how to do it? You can actually go to the bank and borrow some money against your asset. For instance, if you are holding a million dollar stock portfolio, you can borrow $500,000 against it. If you have enough, you can get a new loan, or ask the bank to extend your old loan. So using this method you can live on borrowed money for the rest of your life without actually selling your asset. And there’s the best part – all taxes on your stock market profits are wiped out when you die. So whoever inherits your asset don’t have to pay any federal income tax on all your stock market profit.

Some of the other tax avoidance tips worth mentioning are: there is also a tax law provision that is beneficial to US citizens living abroad, called Form 2555; In addition, they also mentioned the FSA account, which is actually similar to the HSA account we elaborated before in terms of tax benefits. The biggest difference between FSA and HSA is that money invested in HSA will accumulate, while money in FSA will be lost if you don’t use it. If all of your income is generated while you are living abroad, you may be able to pay no or less U.S. federal tax; Lastly, if you rent out your home for less than 15 days per year, you do not need to report any rental income.

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最近Planet Money出了一期，叫我最喜欢的税法“漏洞”，挺有意思的。里面总结了听众朋友们反馈来的他们个人最喜欢的税法里的“漏洞”条款，来帮助人们避免缴纳他们实际上不必缴纳的税款。这完全是合理的，因为如果税法规定你可以做事情，你就可以做。

避税和逃税之间是有区别的，前者是你根据税务条款合理规划自己的开支以尽可能降低税收，后者是你欠税但不缴税，那是不合法的。听众参与都很积极，下面总结了他们反馈的一些我也是第一次听到的避税条款。

如果你能把你的大庄园定性为一个农场，你就可以获得巨大的税收减免。这件事其实没那么难实现，取决于你所在的州。或者，如果你有一个奔驰G wagon的话，它很重有时候可以认为是重型机械，从而提供税收优惠。另外，如果你以捕杀巨型海洋哺乳动物为生的话，你可以享受税收减免。什么？

是的。一位经济学家研究了 IRS 税法中的数据，发现了他最喜欢的一个宝石条款，就是捕鲸有慈善抵扣 – 不是鲸鱼，而是捕鲸。如果捕鲸个人被阿拉斯加爱斯基摩捕鲸委员会认可为在纳税年度从事此类活动，应被视为慈善捐款。税法中具体是这么描述的 –

170(n)(1)In General
In the case of an individual who is recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission as a whaling captain charged with the responsibility of maintaining and carrying out sanctioned whaling activities and who engages in such activities during the taxable year, the amount described in paragraph (2) (to the extent such amount does not exceed $10,000 for the taxable year) shall be treated for purposes of this section as a charitable contribution.

还有听众发信来说，他们抵消了猫粮成本，怎么做的呢？他们家庭称这是一项业务支出，因为他们经营着一个垃圾场。而每个垃圾场都需要一群猫吓跑蛇和老鼠，所以这群猫是商业猫，猫粮自然就成了商业开销。IRS确实也允许这一点。

然后是税法1031条，如果你卖了房子产生了利润，但准备用这笔钱购买一个新房子，那利润并不需要缴税。当然有一些条件，比如卖房子的钱不能到你的账户，而需要放在托管账户，然后直接用于新房子的购买。这条税法最初是为了方便农民交换生产资料而产生的，比如奶牛。但后来变成只适用于房地产，为土地买卖者和房地产投资者节省了数十亿美元。　

还有一条终极避税策略，叫购买，借用，死亡。大多数美国人都是诚实的纳税人。也许除了纯粹的爱国主义情怀之外，还因为你只需遵守规则就可以节省很多钱。其中之一就是通过购买、借用、死亡这条，利用美国如何对买卖资产（如房地产和股票）的收入征税。税法规则是只有在出售东西后才纳税。比如说你买了一些股票，它们上涨了。在您实际出售股票之前，您不必为这些利润纳税。但你也想花你的利润。该怎么做呢？你可以去银行，说我想借点钱。我拥有价值一百万美元的股票投资组合，我愿意把它作为抵押品，借五十万美元。如果你有足够的投资，你就可以得到新贷款，或者让银行延长你的旧贷款。所以按这个方法，你可以一辈子靠借钱过日子。还有最好的一点就是，你死后所有对你股票的利润征收的税都会被抹去。所以继承你财产的人不必为你的股票市场利润支付任何联邦所得税。

其他还有一些值得提的避税小技巧是，有一条对居住在国外的美国公民有利的税法条款，叫2555表格。如果你的收入都是在你居住在国外的时候产生的话，你可能可以不用或者少缴美国联邦税；另外，播客还提到了FSA账户，其实这跟我们之前介绍过的HSA有点类似，除了免税等一系列好处之外，FSA和HSA最大的区别是，HSA里的钱可以积累顺延，而FSA里面的钱不用就会归零；最后，如果你每年出租你的房子少于 15 天，你不需要报告任何租金收入。