Three weeks remain for end-of-year tax dodges. This review suggests strategies that might work for you and tells you how to find out if they will work.

Some of these schemes are, or should be, familiar, such as harvesting tax losses in your portfolio. Some are less so, such as choosing Roth for a last-minute contribution to a self-employed retirement plan. All have the potential for creating surprises.

Surprises? Selling a depreciated stock might make your college tax credit go up. Sticking with pretax retirement contributions over the aftertax (Roth) kind might damage the 20% pass-through deduction for the self-employed. A Roth conversion could easily make your dividend taxes go up. Any of these things can produce weird effects on your foreign tax credit.

For such surprises you can thank the convoluted ways in which different tax rules are connected. Instead of a flat tax, Congress has created a system of benefits and phase-outs, credits and surtaxes, goodies and grab-backs, all wrapped around rewards for favored behavior or favored constituencies. Unspoken platform element of both political parties: “Let’s curry votes by making the tax code more complicated.”

Don’t throw up your hands. Do this instead: Buy software. Buy it now, not in February when you were going to start work on your taxes. It won’t cost more to buy early. Updates, which stream in constantly during the tax season, are free.

What if you have a pro do your taxes? Try to get an appointment in the next week for advice on tax strategies. If that is not available, buy the software and play with it.

For $100, more or less, you can acquire top-of-the-line desktop tax software from either TurboTax or H&R Block. This is for the “business” edition; people without self-employment income can usually get by with cheaper versions.

With either vendor you get the right to create an unlimited number of test files. Use those to experiment.

Start a dummy return using correct ages and marital status. Assuming your circumstances haven’t changed, you can fill in estimates for income and deduction items by copying them from the 2023 tax returns you filed in April, perhaps kicking the numbers up by a few percent if they are likely to rise with inflation. Save this file as Dummy 1.

Precision is not required. You just have to get close enough to land you in the right brackets. Observe the federal and state taxes calculated by the........

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