TaxBrackets

Like it or not, the rules for filing your taxes change every year. Even experts have to relearn the ropes annually, with law changes, new forms, and other hurdles posing a constant challenge. Here's a gallery of some of the more important changes hitting taxpayers this year.

A lot of tax talk focuses on tax brackets. But in order to get the full picture of what you hand over to Uncle Sam, you need to consider not your bracket, but your effective tax rate -- and those are two very different numbers.

In the political battle over taxes, Warren Buffett has been cited often -- both as an example of the country's unbalanced tax code and for his popular plan to boost taxes on the rich. There's just one thing: His plan would leave many of them paying less.

Last week, Warren Buffett wrote an incredible opinion piece in The New York Times asking the government to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, himself included. "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress," he argued, and he's not alone in that view.

America has always had a love/hate relationship with its wealthiest citizens, and the Great Recession has only made it worse. The trouble is, while everybody knows that "the rich" are the enemy, it's hard to determine where exactly the line lies between salt-of-the-earth members of the middle class and the bloated plutocrats.

There's a lot you can be doing now to reduce the taxes you pay next year, based on tax changes for 2011. But did you know it's not too late to reduce the taxes you pay this year, when you file your 2010 return? Here are five changes affecting exclusions, deductions, credits or other tax breaks to...

By law, the thresholds for the marginal federal income tax brackets must change each year to keep pace with inflation. For 2009, those brackets are as follows: Taxpayers Filing as Single: 10% on taxable income between $0 and $8,350 15% on taxable income between $8,350 and $33,950; plus...