federal income tax Archives - Page 2 of 2

Alternative Minimum Tax Bomb Exploded 1/1/10

The Alternative Minimum Tax bomb exploded January 1, 2010, because Congress failed to pass legislation that would have prevented the tax from affecting millions of taxpayers. The number of taxpayers affected by the AMT will jump from 4 million in calendar year 2009 to 27 million in 2010. As the reach of the AMT grows under current law, many taxpayers will face a fundamentally altered tax structure. If nothing is changed this year, one in six taxpayers will be affected by the AMT, paying on average an additional $3,900 in tax, and nearly every married taxpayer with income between $100,000 and $500,000 will owe some alternative tax. Because of the particular tax preferences and exemptions disallowed under the AMT, that tax structure is more likely to affect married couples, large families, and taxpayers in states with high state and local taxes. See the Congressional Budget Office’s January 15, 2010, report called “The Individual Alternative Minimum Tax.”

12 IRS Non-Filer Enforcement Stories

The Tax Lawyer’s Blog: “Each year the IRS publishes examples of its non-filer enforcement actions. Below are the examples for fiscal year 2010. They are excerpts from public record documents on file in the court records in the judicial district in which the cases were prosecuted.”

Is The IRS Coming To Audit You?

Forbes.com: “High-income taxpayers, even those without offshore accounts, are now targets. Here’s how to protect yourself. If you’ve picked up a newspaper lately, you’re probably aware that the Internal Revenue Service has created a new enforcement unit to target high-net-worth individuals with complex financial holdings. To read these accounts, you might be led to believe that this Global High Wealth Industry group (GHWI), as it’s called, is a kind of financial SWAT team, poised to pounce on you and your assets at any moment.”

Holy Tax the Rich Batman: Top 1% of Taxpayers Pay More Federal Taxes than Bottom 95%

The Enterprise Blog: “The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.42 percent of all income taxes collected in 2007 ($451 billion), the highest share in modern history for that group, and more for the first time ever than the entire bottom 95 percent of taxpayers, who paid $439 billion, or 39.4 percent of the total. . . . the tax burden on ‘the rich’—the top 1 percent of taxpayers—reached a record high in 2007 of more than 40 percent, and was higher after the Bush tax cuts than before.”