Tax Deduction | featured news

No one likes paying legal fees, but tax deductions can make them a lot less painful. With a 40% tax rate, $10,000 in deductible legal fees costs you only $6,000. But if your legal fees are to get divorced or because a family member sues you for slander, the legal fees are purely personal and non-deductible. See How To Make Divorce Less Taxing. Distinguish purely personal expenses from investment expenses.

The Tax Policy Center, analyzing that proposal, found that it would close only $1.3 trillion of Mr. Romney’s newly dug revenue hole. And no matter how many times the Romney campaign insists that independent studies “have demonstrated the Romney plan works,” that simply isn’t true — not with the parameters (revenue neutrality and no tax increases for those making less than $200,000) that Mr. Romney has set, and not unless you assume economic growth far greater than that predicted by Mr. Romney’s own advisers.

Continuing to embrace a more moderate political persona, Mitt Romney offered assurances on Tuesday that he would protect tax deductions for the middle class on home mortgages and charitable donations. And he also also said he had no plans to pursue new laws limiting abortion.

It's been around since 1913, but its time may be up. Such a change would generate billions of dollars in federal revenue that could be used to cut the deficit while inflicting little pain on most middle-class homeowners.

Playing upon a different court, Los Angeles Lakers basketball forward Lamar Odom has sued the Internal Revenue Service, which said he couldn’t take tax deductions for $12,000 in sports fines and another $178,000 spent getting himself in shape.

President Obama unveiled a new proposal that he says will create jobs and grow the economy... The proposal also companies to take immediate tax deductions for the full cost of new equipment. Those deductions hope to spur $50 billion in new investments through next year.

When taxpayers sit down to file their 2009 returns, they will find plenty new — some the result of adjusting for inflation, and other changes passed by Congress to fight the downturn.

The latest effort to scale back some tax deductions on mortgage interest, one of the nation's most-enduring tax breaks, is finding little support in Congress.