The Garden State Tax Trap: Why Long-Term Capital Gains Aren’t Always King
Long-term capital gains are more tax-efficient than ordinary income—right? We’ve all sat around the Thanksgiving dinner table and heard this from our finance-savvy cousin. For decades, investors have been conditioned to chase that preferential federal tax rate (0%, 15%, or 20%), treating any transition from a paycheck to a stock sale as an automatic victory. But if you are a married couple filing jointly in New Jersey, that conventional wisdom is incomplete—and often unnecessarily expensive.