Elizabeth MacDonald
Elizabeth MacDonald
Prior to joining FBN, MacDonald was a senior editor at Forbes Magazine, where she covered stock market and earnings news and created "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" annual list. She was also a regular guest on the FOX News Channel (FNC), appearing on "Forbes on Fox," "Your World with Neil Cavuto" and "The O'Reilly Factor."
Before Forbes, MacDonald covered stock market, earnings and accounting abuses for The Wall Street Journal's Money & Investing section, with front page stories and Heard on the Street columns. MacDonald was one of the first journalists in the country to sound the alarm about the coming wave of accounting scandals in the mid-nineties, and also broke stories on, for example, Scientology's secret settlement with the IRS and the Kennedys' use of the IRS to target political enemies.
Prior to that, MacDonald was a financial editor for Worth magazine and covered the IRS and taxes for Money magazine. Members of Congress have noted an award-winning investigative series MacDonald reported on IRS abuses led to improved taxpayer rights and reforms at the agency. MacDonald was also called in to testify before Congress about IRS abuses.
Recognized as one of the top prize-winning business journalists in the country, MacDonald has received 14 awards, including the top prize in business journalism, the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business Journalism (and won a nomination in an ensuing year); the Society of Professional Journalists' Award for Outstanding Public Service reporting; and the Newswomen's Club of New York Front Page Award for Excellence in Investigative Journalism.
MacDonald is a native of Rockville Centre, New York.
FOX Translator
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These gains don't cause pain. A capital gain is the amount of money you pocket by selling one of your investments for more than you paid for it. Technically, capital gains only count for what's called a capital asset, but that's really just anything you own for investment purposes. Stocks and bonds obviously qualify, but your house and household furnishings can also count.
For tax purposes, capital gains are classified as either long-term (held for more than one year) or short-term (held for less than one year) and there are different tax implications for how long you hold onto a capital asset. For most long-term capital gains, you're taxed no more than 15% of the value of the asset. Short-term gains get taxed as regular income, so you pay the rate for the tax bracket you're in.
Capital gains can also be realized or unrealized. When you physically sell an asset like a stock, you've realized the capital gain. When you're holding the stock, and it has a value over its purchase price, but you're not selling it, you've got an unrealized gain, and you won't realize it until you sell.
In a perfect world, we'd all have capital gains. But no one¿s that smart or lucky. When the value of an asset at sale is below what you've paid for it, it's called a capital loss. The good news is that the government lets you count that loss against any gains you've had, lowering the taxes you pay. In fact, many people who sell a stock that has risen far over their purchase price tend to sell some stinkers, too, at the same time for the tax benefit. This is known as a capital-loss offset.
