I am thinking about retiring before the end of the year. Have a lot of RSUs that I need sell.

Is there any impactful reason to wait to sell next year when my ordinary income is 0?

Or am I pretty much paying 15% on long term capital gains regardless? Thanks!

There is a 0% tax bracket for long term capital gains and and qualified dividends for $49450 single or $98900 married filing jointly for 2026.

It is likely you will have some regular dividends and interest and then the rest of that bracket you can fill up with long term capital gains at 0%. Its also not a cliff, so if you realize so much you go over those thresholds, only the gains above the threshold will be taxed at 15%. If your MAGI for 2026 goes over $200k single or $250k married filing jointly, capital gains above that threshold will have an additional 3.8% Net Investment Income (NII) tax on the amounts over that. Its much more likely you hit NII thresholds before you retire so it might make more sense to wait until next year.

Thank you!

Make sure you are familiar with NUA - Net unrealized appreciation, if it fits your particular situation.

Also unlike realizing capital losses, when you realize capital gains you can immediately buy back into the exact same security (no 30 day requirement, you can literally sell and repurchase a second later as long as you are selling for a gain). So if your income is below the 0% LTCG bracket in early retirement it might make sense to sell stocks and immediately buy them back in your after tax account every year to keep resetting your cost basis and capture that gain at 0%.

Realizing these gains counts as income even though it's taxed at 0% so it could potentially impact healthcare subsidies if that is a concern.

I'd sell next year when you have no wage income. If you make a decent to above decent salary, long term capital gains in this year will likely be taxed at 15% (since your wage income for 2025 will be for pretty much the entire year meaning you won't get the benefit of the 0% rate on the long term capital gains). If sold in 2026, a fairly large amount of the gains will be taxed at 0%

How volatile is your company stock?

I'd wait unless the stock is extremely volatile

AggiEE said:

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How volatile is your company stock?

I'd wait unless the stock is extremely volatile

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AAPL

I also have a lot of appreciated RSUs to sell in my personal account. I'll probably wait until the new year and sell some and immediately diversify into a spread of stocks I currently owned in my IRA. Then in December, I'll sell whatever losers I have to harvest the loss and see how much of this offsets the long term gains I'm sitting on. Lowers my taxes due and hopefully I've seen enough decent appreciation on some others do rinse and repeat in 2027. Tax man cometh....