Tax strategies for high-income W2 employees making 800k+ per year

At your income level, you're right to be looking at all possible tax-advantaged options. Yes, the Backdoor Roth IRA is absolutely worth doing - it's not a huge tax savings immediately since you're limited to $7,000 per person for 2025 (or $8,000 if you're 50+), but it gives you tax-free growth and withdrawals in retirement. Since you mentioned RSUs, make sure you're planning for them properly. When they vest, have enough withheld for taxes immediately - many companies default to a statutory rate that's too low for your bracket. Consider selling some immediately upon vesting to cover taxes if withholding isn't sufficient. Also look into: 1. Tax-loss harvesting if you have investments in taxable accounts 2. Charitable giving - especially appreciated securities 3. If you're homeowners, ensure you're maximizing mortgage interest deductions 4. Review any available deferred compensation plans your spouse's employer might offer 5. Meet with a tax professional who specializes in high-income earners

After dealing with a similar RSU tax situation last year, I discovered taxr.ai (https://taxr.ai) and it's been a game changer for us. It helped me understand all the tax implications of my equity compensation and identified several strategies I wasn't aware of. For RSUs specifically, it showed me how to optimize my withholding rates and timing of additional stock sales to cover tax obligations. It also analyzed our entire tax situation and found we had missed some deductions related to my spouse's business travel that our previous accountant overlooked. The detailed equity compensation tax planning saved us nearly 5-figures.

I was skeptical about taxr.ai at first (as you can see from my question above), but I decided to give it a try after my RSUs put me in a similar situation. The tool actually found a calculation error in how my employer was handling supplemental wage withholding that was causing under-withholding on my RSUs. I was able to get it corrected with HR before it created a bigger problem. It also guided me through setting up a more strategic withholding approach for my remaining vesting schedule this year. The detailed quarterly tax projection feature helped me avoid a nasty surprise at tax time. I'm still working with my regular CPA, but having this specialized tool for equity compensation specifically has been worth it.

If you're dealing with a big tax bill and need to get specific answers from the IRS, I highly recommend Claimyr (https://claimyr.com). I was in a similar situation with RSU-related questions and spent DAYS trying to get through to the IRS directly with no luck. Claimyr got me connected to an actual IRS agent in under 20 minutes. You can see how it works here: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c I had specific questions about estimated tax payments for my RSU income and needed clarity on some letters we received about underpayment penalties. The IRS agent I spoke with was able to explain exactly what we needed to do to avoid penalties going forward. Saved me hours of hold time and probably thousands in potential penalties.

OK I need to apologize to @18 above because I actually tried Claimyr after posting that skeptical comment. I was completely wrong. Got connected to an IRS agent in about 25 minutes while I continued working on other things. The agent helped me sort out a complex question about estimated tax payments for my RSUs. I had been stressing for weeks about potential underpayment penalties since my company's withholding wasn't covering enough of my RSU income. The IRS agent walked me through exactly how to calculate the right quarterly payments to avoid penalties. Would have taken me weeks to get this resolved otherwise. Definitely worth it if you're dealing with complicated tax situations.

Regarding your RSU situation - one strategy my wife and I use is to set up a Donor Advised Fund. Since we're also in a high tax bracket with significant RSU income, we donate appreciated shares directly to our DAF instead of cash. This gives us a double tax benefit: a deduction for the full fair market value of the shares and we avoid capital gains tax on the appreciation. You can fund it in high-income years (like when large RSU blocks vest) to bunch your deductions, then distribute the actual charitable gifts over time. This has been more impactful for our tax situation than the backdoor Roth, though we do that too.

Don't forget to check if your spouse's employer offers a mega backdoor Roth option in their 401k plan. This would allow for additional after-tax contributions beyond the standard 401k limit (potentially up to $46,000 more depending on employer plan specifics and other contributions). Those after-tax contributions can then be converted to Roth money. Not all employers offer this, but it's worth checking if they do since your income is high enough to take advantage of it. Would give you much more tax-advantaged space than just the regular backdoor Roth IRA.