amt

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.

Thanks to yet another lapse by Congress, more than 20 million taxpayers may pay a tax in 2012 that was originally designed to hit only the ultra-rich. It may not happen -- but you should plan ahead for it in case it does.

Lawmakers have gotten in the habit of waiting until the last minute to extend many tax breaks, but last year, they ran out of time. Now, unless Congress acts soon, millions of Americans are face changes that could leave them sending thousands of dollars a year more to the IRS.

The good news for taxpayers this year is that Congress finally got around to patching the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) for 2010. With just a couple of weeks left in the year, Congress increased the exemption for the AMT as part of the new tax deal signed into law on Dec. 17, 2010. Under the new...

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...

Taxpayers love deductions and credits -- and why not? The deductions and credits in the Tax Code allow you to reduce your taxable income, and the amount of tax due. But what if you could deduct everything? What if your super-pricey home meant your home mortgage interest deduction was sky high? Or...

Imagine having to calculate your federal income taxes twice. That's actually what will happen to more than 20 million taxpayers in 2011 if Congress doesn't take steps to fix the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, before the end of the year. When it was enacted in 1969, the AMT was intended to ensure...

Tax Day 2010 has come and gone, much to the relief of many taxpayers. But it's never too early to start planning for the next tax year. Given all of the government's moves to stimulate the economy -- and the debt it has acquired doing so -- can you expect to pay more or less in taxes in 2011?...

The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) was introduced in 1969 as a way to ensure that extremely high-income taxpayers paid their fair share. For the 1967 tax year, just before the tax was first enacted, 155 taxpayers with incomes of more than $200,000 (indexed for inflation, that's roughly $1.3 million...

If it seems like tax laws are changing every time you time around, it's not your imagination. Over the past eight years, changes to the Tax Code have been made at a rate of more than one a day. According to the office of the National Taxpayer Advocate, there were 500 changes in 2008 alone, many of...