sell stock to realize capital gains, then buy back?
I am becoming rather old, and have a lot of unrealized capital gains in stocks, but don't really need to sell them yet for income. My regular income is from pensions and dividends, quite low, 30K, but enough for all my normal expenses.
I am thinking I should sell some stock every year to get my taxable income increased to the 50K to 100K range. The tax rate at that level is tolerable. If I wait several more years before selling then I (or my estate when I die) will have to sell a lot more stock per year, or maybe all the stock, increasing my taxable income to several hundred thousand or more, where the tax rates becomes a lot higher.
So my idea is to sell a small amount of stock every year to get my income increased but taxed at reasonable rates, and then immediately buy back most of the sold stock, since the stocks remain good investments. I know this would be considered a "wash trade" in the case of taking a capital loss and disallowed for tax purposes, but I'm taking a capital gain and will be paying the proper tax. It is true however that I'm selling the stock every year for tax minimization purposes.
So is there anything about this strategy that seems to be a bad idea, or would seem questionable to CRA?
I am thinking I should sell some stock every year to get my taxable income increased to the 50K to 100K range. The tax rate at that level is tolerable. If I wait several more years before selling then I (or my estate when I die) will have to sell a lot more stock per year, or maybe all the stock, increasing my taxable income to several hundred thousand or more, where the tax rates becomes a lot higher.
So my idea is to sell a small amount of stock every year to get my income increased but taxed at reasonable rates, and then immediately buy back most of the sold stock, since the stocks remain good investments. I know this would be considered a "wash trade" in the case of taking a capital loss and disallowed for tax purposes, but I'm taking a capital gain and will be paying the proper tax. It is true however that I'm selling the stock every year for tax minimization purposes.
So is there anything about this strategy that seems to be a bad idea, or would seem questionable to CRA?