Taxes Blog

You know all about the housing bubble bursting. How folks got loans they shouldn’t have. How all these new buyers spurred a run-up in home values. How these unqualified homeowners soon defaulted on their mortgages. Now many of these folks are homeless and banks are left with properties worth much less than the original loans.

If your post-Thanksgiving Black Friday shopping list includes firearms and you live in (or near) South Carolina, then you’re in for a treat. South Carolina’s annual gun sales tax holiday begins at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 26, and runs through midnight on Saturday, Nov. 27. During these two days, no state or local sales taxes

Need a little extra cash this holiday season? The Internal Revenue Service might be able to help. The U.S. Treasury has $164.6 million in tax refund checks that were returned this year as undeliverable. The average check amount comes to $1,471. That sure would go a long way toward making merry. Unfortunately, not everyone is eligible for the cash.

Most tax watchers expect Congress, during its lame duck session that began this week, to continue the Bush tax cuts for at least a little while. Such predictions have prompted a rush to Roth IRA conversions. A Roth retirement account doesn’t offer an immediate tax deduction for any contributions, but there is no tax on the money

Representatives and senators return to work today facing a lot of pending tax legislation and not much time to pass any of it. Most attention is on the expiring Bush tax cuts. But before anything is decided — on whose tax rates get increased or stay the same in 2011 – Congress is likely to deal first

Citing the tough choices that individual Americans have had to make during the recent recession, the bipartisan chairmen of the president’s debt reduction panel called for the country’s lawmakers to make the same difficult decisions on Wednesday. “The American people are counting on us to put politics aside, pull together not pull apart, and agree

Brace yourselves, America. Congress is going back to work next week. I kid, sort of. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that the House and Senate will convene for a lame duck session on Nov. 15. And there’s a chance representatives and senators will actually accomplish some things. But just how much work they do,

Do you live in North Carolina? Do you need a new appliance? Then this is your lucky weekend. North Carolina’s Energy Star sales tax holiday began just after midnight Friday, Nov. 5 and runs through 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 7. During these three days, shoppers won’t have to pay the Tar Heel State’s 5.75 percent

All tax eyes are on what will happen with the expiring Bush tax cuts – specifically, what tax rates will you and I owe in 2011 and beyond? However, another part of the former president’s tax-law changes was the death in 2010 of the estate tax. The removal of this tax from the Internal Revenue Code, however, is

As millions of us head to the polls today, we’ll decide not only which individuals will represent us in Washington, D.C., but also, in many cases what our state taxes will look like. Ballot initiatives are a popular way to change local laws. Regular readers know that I’m not a big fan of this process, but,