There's no denying it -- paying taxes just plain stinks! Even if the money is being used for the common good, it's still a big chunk of your hard-earned dollars being spent by someone else. It's understandable that people seek to minimize their annual tax bills.

Before contributing to a traditional IRA (individual retirement account) simply to reduce your current taxable income, however, you might want to take a step back and consider a Roth IRA instead. Although it doesn't provide any sort of tax break right now, it does offer a huge break once you start taking money out of Roth accounts when you retire. A little personalized number-crunching may be in order.

You're probably familiar with traditional IRAs. Introduced in 1974, these accounts not only facilitate untaxed gains within the account itself, but your contributions to them are also tax-deductible. Assuming you're eligible to make this year's maximum contribution to a traditional IRA, you could reduce your taxable income by up to $6,500 (or $7,500 if you're 50 years old, or older).

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Source Fool.com