I've been investing for a while, and have some long investments that will incur capital gains tax. It started to make me think about how to avoid getting taxed and I came up with a solution that I'm not sure works. Capital gains in the U.S. are based off your ordinary income tax bracket. If you are in the 10%-15% tax bracket you will effectively pay 0% in capital gains.
See here for capital gains rates: http://www.moneychimp.com/features/capgain.htm
Assuming you can afford to not have any ordinary income for a year, say you have a decent chunk in savings. Your tax bracket would now fall into the the lowest, making your capital gains rate for that year 0%.
Knowing this, if you sold your assets during a year where you had ordinary income in the lowest bracket, you could avoid all capital gains.
Am I missing something? Or is this a real solution?