I am thinking of selling some old stock I've had for over 20 years to pay off my house. I got laid off from my IT job in Sept 2016 after 38 years and have been living off my savings since then. The stock is valued at 205k and I paid very little for the shares a long time ago, so the actual stock profit is around 200k. I have no income this year so far but I'm thinking about doing some contract work.

I did a little research about this and it looks like if the tax base is 15% then there is no capital gains on stock held over 1 year. Not sure if this is correct or not, but assuming it is, my question is... would I be better off not making any money this year and selling the stock, or take on some contract work. If I take work, how much can I make before I get a tax hit on the stock sale?

it depends;I mean you get to subtract tax deductions and exemptions to determine your taxable income. So after you claim your rax deductions and exemptions , your taxable income rate is 15% or lower t hen no tax on your capital gain . However if you donot get to subtract deductions, then your LTCG of $200K'll increase your tax bracket and aslongas your tax rate is over 15% then yu willhave to pay 15% of tax on yur LTCG;

You may or may not have to pay estimated taxes, depending on your situation.Since these are long term capital gains, taxed at favorable rates, the income tax impact my not be as big as you might think Most dividend and capital-gains distributions occur at year-end, so making a sufficient 4th quarter estimated payment by the Jan 15 2017 deadline will eliminate the possibility of a penalty that might otherwise result from these year-end distributions. In other words, make a 4th quarter estimated payment sufficient to cover your overall tax liaibility when combined with your other tax withholding and estimated payments. However, you might need to annualize income on Form 2210 to avoid an underpayment penalty for the earlier quarters of the year. So hard to tell as you said, the actual stock profit is around 200k then you need to report $200K on your 1040 line 13,22 and on 37 as part of your AGI; US has a progressive federal tax system, you?re going to land in one of these seven federal income tax brackets in 2016: 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33%, 35% or 39.6% But no matter which bracket you?re in, you won?t pay that rate on your entire 2016 income. There are two reasons: First, you get to subtract tax deductions and exemptions to determine your taxable income. Second, the government divides your taxable income into chunks based on these tax brackets, and each chunk gets taxed at the corresponding rate