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Jalen Brunson scores 30 and Knicks finish on 11-0 run, steal Game 1 from Spurs with 105-95 win AP NewsBrunson keys late surge as Knicks steal Game 1 in San Antonio ESPNJalen Brunson takes over as Knicks surge past Spurs in Game 1 of NBA Finals The New York TimesWhere to Watch Knicks vs. Spurs in 2026 NBA Finals Live Online The Hollywood ReporterKristian Winfield: The Knicks
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Plenty of retirees like to give back to their communities through charitable donations, but questions often arise over the best way to do that.
What approach is efficient, provides the tax benefits you're after, and also is advantageous for the charity that's on the receiving end?
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One possibility is a qualified charitable distribution (QCD), a tax-savvy way to reduce your taxable income and maximize your donations whether you itemize deductions on your tax return or not. An added bonus is that the benefits can be large for both the donor and the charity.
Here's How QCDs Work
A QCD is a distribution from an IRA that is paid directly from that retirement account to a qualified charity. QCDs lower your adjusted gross income (AGI) and therefore lower your tax bill. They can also offset required minimum distributions (RMDs), those withdrawals you must take from your IRA each year once you reach age 72. An RMD adds to your income, raising the amount of taxes you pay, but a QCD is excluded from your income. So, for example, if you withdrew $50,000 from your IRA as an RMD, you would pay taxes on that money. But if that same $50,000 was used as a QCD instead, you avoid the taxes while helping a charity at the same time.
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Taxpayers can benefit from QCDs even when they take the standard deduction and do not itemize their deductions. Meanwhile, even though a QCD doesn't count as an itemized deduction, tax
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The Federal Reserve served up a widely expected third consecutive jumbo rate hike when it concluded its regularly scheduled two-day meeting on Wednesday. Chair Jerome Powell and the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) raised the federal funds rate by 75 basis points. (A basis point equals 0.01%.)
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Although the move matched consensus expectations, a significant portion of the bond market - and plenty of traders and tacticians, for that matter - were bracing for a whopping 100 bp rate hike. Uncertainty over just how hawkish the Fed would reveal itself to be has cast a pall on equities over the preceding weeks, and so a rate hike of "only" three-quarters of a percentage point was actually met with some relief. Stocks sold off sharply when the Fed released its statement at 2 p.m. Eastern, but then drifted back into positive territory during Powell's press conference, which began a half-hour later.
Ultimately, however, the major indexes finished in the red. That's because the Fed's bottom line is that inflation is by no means under control. And while there might be ample anecdotal and emotional evidence pointing to the contrary, the economy is simply running too hot. An imbalance in supply and demand in the labor market and related strong real wage growth, snarled supply chains and a rising dollar are just some of the factors confounding monetary policymakers - not to mention corporate revenues and profit margins.
As we've
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