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Last year, the IRS provided an automated AMT Assistant to help individuals slog through the worksheet to see if you need to file Form 6251 (AMT) with your Form 1040 (see coverage here). The IRS has updated the assistant for the 2006 filing season.
To use the tool, you will have to have a completed draft [...]

Tax return procrastinators will have not one, but two extra days this year! Because of an arcane Federal law, the IRS has to allow you until April 17th to file your return because DC created a new holiday on April 16th.
Since the 15th is on a Sunday it defaults to the next business day (the [...]

Last year, my first post was yelling at people not to get a refund anticipation loan (RAL). The basic reason is that the annualized interest rate on such loans can be as high as 250%. Well, it seems that Jackson Hewitt has decided that RALs just aren’t the end-all-be-all. On my home from work, I spied a [...]

This is a repost of an article that ran in April. With only a month left before the final estimates are due for individuals, I thought I would repost to remind people to do the calculation. 
Yes, yes, I know. You just filed your taxes and you don’t want to hear another dang word about it. Well, [...]

The Wandering Tax Pro had some excellent advice on what to do with a notice from the IRS or state agency of your choice.  
Basically, the advice is don’t ignore the notice, but don’t assume it is correct either. If you use a preparer, give the notice to the preparer immediately. If you don’t follow these [...]

Banks, just off their victory in Congress on the Visa/Mastercard Protection Act new bankruptcy law, have gotten their lobbyists to insert a provision in yet another rushed tax bill that puts about 1 billion new provisions in the tax bill that was only supposed to extend existing provisions.
This time, PMI will be deductible for loans [...]

Welcome to the December 11, 2006 edition of The Carnival of Personal Finance.
With the end of the year coming up, I decided to highlight the posts that deal with tax planning strategies for the end of year. There are a lot of great submissions, so read all of the posts to find out about managing [...]

On Monday, I wrote about the IRS reminding taxpayers what is and is not deductible when it comes to automobile expenses. Today, the IRS released the standard rates for 2007:

Business- $.485 per mile
Charity- $.14 per mile
Medical- $.20 per mile

It represents an increase of $.04 per mile for business travel and $.02 per mile for Medical [...]

Public Citizen (the group founded by Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader) has filed a complaint with the IRS that says that the US Chamber has been, uh, forgetting about its political activities.
Living in a border city, I can attest that the US Chamber has at least been running ads for the past few years in Illinois [...]