Many are already doing this, but I have only in the last year or so gotten serious about tax planning to get more of my money back. I just finally enrolled in my companies 401k (took them a while to figure out my account issues) so I can sock away 18K there each year. Also, I started using the IRA last year too, and got 2K back just from that! Of course there are the rentals, which gave me the income basically tax free AND I got 1K back for them as well. But the focus of this post is just merely putting money into these types of accounts I was able to get almost $550 a month worth of my money back (each month).
Because I was only able to enroll today, I had to allocate 100% of my December pay to the 401K. It still won't max out this year, only about half, but the machine is in place for future years. Will have to live off rental income and savings in December, but that's OK.
Also, I had setup an HSA a few months ago, saving me $980 a year on top of the above. Basically, my income is about 162K a year counting rental income, and with deductions, I am paying only about 32K a year in taxes with this strategy. Still not perfect but a lot better than before!
