'Tax on a Tax' Slams Middle Class

Fox News ^ | Monday, April 08, 2002 | By Steve Centanni

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WASHINGTON

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...TImely alert.

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[Destructor]

Do any of you Status Quo Junkies still want to defend our current System of Taxation?

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[shaggy eel]

ping

[Dialup Llama]

The hard and fast rule is- if you exercise an option, sell the stock. The two things should go together. Many people didn't realize how important that is.

[freeper12]

Maybe its just me, but I just don't feel sorry for all those whinny-yuppies whom didn't bother to get any tax advice on their multi-million dollar stock option grants from the comapny and now want everyone to feel sorry for them now that the stock did not continue to go skyward for them. Except in a very few cases, were employees were granted options and not allowed to sell them were these problems anyones but their own. Too bad I say...I lost money in the stock market too; I ain't looking for a handout from the government to make me whole again...

[Dialup Llama]

Congress has introduced several bills to fix or repeal the AMT, but the legislation is going nowhere because, some say, it would simply cost the government too much. Over the next decade, the AMT is expected to rake in more than a half a trillion dollars for the U.S. Treasury.

It appears that Hugo Chavez is the head of this govt as well. Repealing the AMT is a no-brainer. Congress has the heart of a thief. It a tax increase already laid in.

[hsmomx3]

Here's a question. Our brokerage firm is now charging $20 each quarter for "inactivity." This means that if we either have below $5,000 in our account, or if we have less than four trades per quarter, we are charged $20. I saw nothing on Turbo Tax about this. This year, our inactivity fee will be much larger than the interest earned. Is this deductible?

[Night Hides Not]

There was a big to-do over this in Silicon Valley in 2001. There were hundreds of techsters that exercised their stock during 2000, and then held on to it. Their brilliant strategy was to hold it for a year and a day, and turn their gains into long-term gains at 20%, and use the extra cash to pay their tax bill.

We all know how that turned out! Zoe Lofgren had her photo opps with teary-eyed techsters. Once she realized that she could no longer get any more campaign contributions from these folks, she disappeared from the scene, fast!!!

[olivia3boys]

I figured out (from another newspaper article about this) that in a few years my husband and I will be hit with the AMT. In our case, it has nothing to do with stock (we buy stock but so far have never sold it), but actually because we are now expecting our 3rd child. I always thought having more children was GOOD for tax purposes.

[TheCPA]

Investment expenses other than interest are deductible as a miscellaneous itemized deduction subject to a reduction for total miscellaneous itemized deductions of two percent of adjusted gross income (Code Secs 212 and 67). Investment interest is deductible to the extent of net investment income, with any excess carried forward to the next tax year (Code Sec. 163).

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