3 New Tax Changes to Know Before You File

With April 15 looming, it’s time to think seriously about filling out your 2008 Form 1040. In January, we told you about five favorable changes that could affect your 2008 return. Here are a few more key changes to note.

Possible Delays for Forms 1099-B from Brokerage Firms:


If you sold securities from a taxable account in 2008, you may notice that your brokerage firm Form 1099-B is taking awhile to arrive. This form tells you (and the IRS) the amount of sales proceeds you collected last year from selling securities such as stocks, bonds, and mutual fund shares. In the past, brokers had to put Forms 1099-B in the mail by no later than Jan. 31. But a little-noticed provision in last year’s stimulus legislation extended the deadline to Feb. 15 for this year and beyond. This year’s deadline is actually Feb. 17, because the 15th is a Sunday and the 16th is President's Day. Once you finally receive your 1099-B, make sure the reported amount ties into the proceeds used to calculate your gains and losses on Schedule D.

More-Generous IRA Contribution Rules:

In previous years, your adjusted gross income (AGI) may have been too high to allow you to make deductible traditional IRA contributions or Roth IRA contributions. Things have changed for the better.

Traditional IRAs:

For 2008, you can contribute more to traditional IRAs than ever before, and you have a better chance of making a tax-saving deductible contribution.

For the 2008 tax year, you can contribute up to $5,000 to a traditional IRA, up from $4,000 for 2007. If you were age 50 or older on December 31, 2008, the contribution maximum is $6,000 (up from $5,000). If you’re married, the same contribution limits apply to your spouse if he or she wants to fund a separate IRA. The deadline for contributions for the 2008 tax year is April 15. So you still have time.

Here are the other traditional IRA contribution ground rules.

* Once you turn 70½, you can no longer contribute to a traditional IRA. However, Roth IRAs are still fair game.

* You (or, if you're married, you and your spouse), must have had 2008 earned income from salary or self-employment that at least equals the amount you contribute to IRAs for 2008. Note: Any alimony payments you received also count as earned income.

For those who were covered by retirement plans in 2008, the AGI restrictions on deductible contributions are considerably looser than just a few years ago. In each of the cases below, these AGI restrictions only affect your ability to make deductible contributions to traditional IRAs. (You can make nondeductible contributions to traditional IRAs no matter how high your income.) Here's the breakdown.

* If you’re unmarried, your eligibility to make a deductible 2008 contribution to a traditional IRA is phased out between AGI of $53,000 and $63,000.

* If you’re married and both you and your spouse were covered by retirement plans in 2008, your right to make deductible 2008 contributions to traditional IRAs is phased out between joint AGI of $85,000 and $105,000.

* If you’re married and only one spouse was covered by a retirement plan in 2008, the covered spouse’s eligibility to make a deductible 2008 contribution to a traditional IRA is phased out between joint AGI of $85,000 and $105,000. The noncovered spouse’s deductible contribution privilege is phased out between joint AGI of $159,000 and $169,000.

Roth IRAs:


The larger 2008 contribution limits for traditional IRAs (explained above) apply equally to Roth IRAs. After that, there are some important differences.

* If you’ve turned age 70½, you can no longer contribute to a traditional IRA, but you can still contribute to a Roth as long as you -- or you and your spouse if you’re married -- had earned income at least equal to what you contribute.

* The privilege of making Roth contributions for the 2008 tax year is phased out between AGI of $101,000 and $116,000 for unmarried taxpayers. For joint filers, the range is between $159,000 and $169,000. These ranges are considerably higher than just a few years ago.

* Being covered by a retirement plan (or not) has no impact on your eligibility to make Roth contributions.

Overall, for 2008, you have a better chance of being able to make the maximum Roth IRA contribution than ever before. Not only that, the maximum contribution amount is also larger than ever. The deadline to make a Roth contribution for the 2008 tax year is April 15.

New and Improved Alternative Minimum Tax Credit
As I explained in an earlier article (read the story here), you may be able to recover AMT amounts paid in prior years, thanks to liberalized AMT credit rules. If you’ve paid big AMT amounts in the past, this could be the single most important change for the 2008 tax year. To collect your rightful AMT credit, just complete Form 8801 (Credit for Prior-Year Minimum Tax) and attach it to your Form 1040.

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Lawmakers, White House Reach $790B Tentative Agreement on Economic Stimulus

Congressional leaders and the White House have crossed a first hurdle, tentatively agreeing to a $790 billion price tag on President Obama's economic stimulus bill.

The new price tag reflects a cut of nearly $50 billion from the Senate version.

Among the considered cuts to the bill, according to numerous Democratic aides involved in the talks, is a trim to Obama's tax credit -- $500 per worker and $1,000 per couple -- with a phase out beginning sooner than originally written: at about $70,000 per individual and $140,000 for couples.

Education construction, which was cut dramatically by the Senate compromise, has received a boost. But according to lead negotiator Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., the money would only go to "modernization, not new construction."

Negotiators are trying to fast-track a compromise over competing versions of the massive economic recovery package. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was hosting meetings Wednesday in the run-up to what is known as a conference committee, scheduled for 3 p.m. ET.

Republicans on both sides of Congress, though, are complaining that they've been left out of the talks. House Appropriations Ranking Republican Jerry Lewis claims the stimulus bill was cut in the "dead of night" to "bypass open conference negotiations on the 'stimulus' legislation and jam the massive bill through Congress."

The mix of measures intended to stimulate the economy is different in both pieces of legislation.

The Senate bill is about 42 percent tax cuts, while the House has about one-third tax cuts.

The three Republican senators who helped pull the Senate version over the finish line want their bill to prevail.

But that appears unlikely now with the smaller price tag being attached to bill.

Negotiators, who are hoping to reach an agreement as early as Wednesday, worked until nearly midnight Tuesday to find common ground between the House and Senate versions of the legislation.

Reid and other negotiators have said they want a first-draft compromise on the table for the lead-off meeting Wednesday afternoon. The plan is to wrap up the conference by the end of the day and bring it to the House floor Thursday.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was optimistic.

"I'm hopeful and believe that we'll try to come to agreement on the differences that exist and have a bill by the end of the day that both houses can vote on," he told FOX News Wednesday morning.

But he criticized the Senate for passing a bill that costs about $20 billion more than the House version. The Senate passed an $838 billion spending and tax cut package Wednesday. The House passed an $819 billion version two weeks ago.

"The Senate bill will spend more money than the House bill. In addition to that, the Senate bill has the unfortunate status of creating less jobs than the House bill," he said. "The whole point of this bill is to create jobs, to get our economy moving."

He said there are "significant differences in some ways," but that the bills are still mostly similar.

Democratic officials say that while numerous details remain to be worked out, a major expansion of an existing tax break for homebuyers, approved in the Senate last week, would likely be jettisoned. There was also pressure to scale back a Senate-passed tax break for new car buyers, according to these officials, and to drop a provision limiting compensation for top executives of companies receiving federal bailout assistance.

Obama's negotiating team was insisting on restoring some lost funding for school construction projects as talks began Tuesday in hopes of striking a quick agreement, but by late in the day it appeared resigned to losing up to $40 billion in aid to state governments.

House Democratic leaders, though, promised to fight to restore some of $16 billion for school construction cut by the Senate.

The GOP moderates also want the final bill to retain a $70 billion Senate plan to patch the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, for one year. The provision would make sure 24 million families won't get socked with unexpected tax bills during the 2010 filing season.

The AMT was designed 40 years ago to make sure wealthy people pay at least some tax, but it is updated for inflation each year to avoid tax increases averaging $2,300 a year. Fixing the annual problems now allows lawmakers to avoid difficult battles down the road, but economists say the move won't do much to lift the economy.

House leaders are tempering expectations that they'll restore many of the cuts.

"You cannot allow the perfect to be the enemy of the effective and of the necessary, and we will not," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Republican continue to oppose the stimulus package, almost unanimously.

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, Okla., told FOX News that the bloated the measure would pass no matter what.

"I don't think they'll vote against it even if it is significantly changed," he said.

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Professor Beaten to Death By Son

As we think we know how peoples thoughts operate... from babies, toddlers, pre-teens, teens, young adults, adults, middle aged adults, elders, ect) starting as young as 11 then ongoing into their later years.

The the most humble point to make is that ..... we just don't know how people truely think because we are our own person with our own thoughts. These days more and more childern and young adults are doing things that we as humans thought couldn't not happen, such as crimes of a so-called adult nature. This is being played out like a video game... all over the world.

Something is going on with the youth as our time passes toward the future and whatever it is we as people need to take the time out of ours semi-selfish lives and see where as a society have we fallin' short.

In this piece of news this young man is 18 but what-do-you-bet, that the issues started awhole lot younger than that and who says that the news that provided this source doesn't have the entire story, "which is usally the case".......

Getrude Steuernagel was devoted to her son, nonetheless, even when their world shrank as Walker's severe autism seemingly cut them off from many aspects of a normal life. Now, Walker, 18, is sitting in a jail cell, accused of beating his mother to death, while her friends and family members struggle to understand why -- an answer that may never come. "There really weren't any clues in the house," Molly Merryman, a friend and Kent State University associate professor, told ABCNews.com. "I think it's always something we'll wonder about and never know." Steuernagel, a political science professor who had penned opinion pieces on her son's autism for the university's Daily Kent Stater, was found severely beaten in their Kent, Ohio, home Jan. 29 after university employees called police when she failed to show up for work. Portage County Sheriff's Office Major Dennis Missimi said Steuernagel, 60, was found on the kitchen floor. Walker was in his room. "They approached him. There was a slight scuffle that ensued when he was taken into custody," Missimi said of Walker's arrest. Errol Can, an attorney in Kent who has been hired to represent Walker, said he had no comment on his client's case. Rushed to the hospital, Steuernagel died Friday without regaining consciousness. Summit County Medical Examiner Investigator Gary Guenther told ABCNews.com that the office was still waiting for medical records and tests on tissue samples before ruling on Steuernagel's cause of death. But Monday's autopsy revealed "multiple bruising" on her head and chest as well as brain trauma. Initially charged with attempted murder along with assault on a police officer, Missimi said he expects Walker's charge to be upgraded to murder. The police officer he allegedly assaulted was kicked in the face and has returned to work.

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