The amount of tax paid on an additional dollar of income. As income rises, so does the tax rate. Many believe this discourages business investment by removing the incentive to work harder.
A term used by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to define the home a taxpayer has lived in most of the time during a given taxation year, or the only home a taxpayer owns. The classification of a taxpayer's main home is important when considering gains resulting from the sale of a main home. When you sell your home, you may be able to exclude the gains from your income for tax purposes if you pass the ownership and use tests. If over the previous five years you have owned the home for more than two years, and it was your main home for more than two years, then you can exclude up to $250,000 ($500,000 for joint filers) in a given tax year.Losses resulting from the sale of your main home cannot be deducted.
A tax placed on products or services that are deemed to be unnecessary or non-essential. This type of tax is an indirect tax in that the tax increases the price of the good or service and is only incurred by those who purchase or use the product.The term has remained even though many of the products that are assessed with luxury taxes today are no longer seen as "luxuries" in the literal sense. Today's definition leans more toward "sinful" items, such as tobacco, alcohol, jewelry and high-end automobiles. They are implemented as much in an attempt to change consumption patterns as to collect tax revenues. Luxury taxes can also be called "excise taxes" or "sin taxes". Luxury taxes were often imposed during times of war to increase government revenues, or as a way to get more tax revenue from the ultra-wealthy. Even though some people complain about the preservation of luxury taxes today, the vast majority of people and lawmakers don't mind charging extra fees for the use of these ancillary-type products consumed by a minority of the population. There is much debate over whether levying luxury taxes does more harm than good. For example, who is most harmed by a luxury tax placed on an expensive car - the buyer, who presumably has money to spare, or the middle-class worker who builds the car only to see sales fall when the luxury tax curbs demand? In the late 1980s, Canada attempted a large luxury tax on cigarettes, only to find that a substantial and violent black market soon formed to supply smokers. Legal sales (and tax revenues) fell, while more money had to be re-routed to stop the criminal activity.
Any cost incurred in the prevention or treatment of injury or disease. Medical expenses include health and dental insurance premiums, doctor and hospital visits, co-pays, prescription and over-the-counter drugs, glasses and contacts, crutches and wheelchairs, to name a few. Medical expenses that are not reimbursed are deductible within certain limits (see below). Taxpayers with access to group health insurance coverage are seldom able to deduct medical expenses that are not reimbursed on their taxes. only those who itemize their deductions are eligible to claim any medical expenses on the Schedule A. Furthermore, only those expenses that exceed 7.5% of the taxpayer's adjusted gross income can be deducted.
A set of criteria that determines whether a taxpayer is a material participant in a business venture. The material participation test will determine whether business income received by the taxpayer is active or passive. According to the IRS, if the taxpayer participates in a business activity on a regular, continuous and substantial basis, then the taxpayer materially participates in the business. There are seven tests the IRS uses to determine whether participation in a business activity is material or not. Two of the criteria that they use are the amount of time spent participating in the business activity and how much control the taxpayer has over the activity. only one of the tests must be passed in order for the taxpayer to be considered materially involved with the production of income, which would then be deemed active income.
A filing status for married couples who choose to record their respective incomes, exemptions and deductions on separate tax returns. In most cases, married filing jointly offers the most tax savings, especially when the spouses have different income levels. However, there is a potential tax advantage to filing separately when one spouse has significant medical expenses or miscellaneous itemized deductions. According to the IRS, if you and your spouse file separate returns and one of you itemizes deductions, the other spouse will have a standard deduction of zero. Therefore, the other spouse should also itemize deductions. Some credits cannot be used at all if you file separately; these include the child and dependent care credit, hope and lifetime learning credits, and adoption expense credit. If you live in community property states including Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington or Wisconsin, you may need to see a tax professional because the rules about separate incomes can be tricky.
A law that requires that a minimum rate of interest be charged on any loan transaction between two parties. The minimum-interest rules mandate that even if no rate is charged by the lender, an arbitrary rate shall be automatically imposed upon the loan. The minimum-interest rules are at least partly intended to prevent excess gifting between taxpayers via intra-family loans with no or below-market interest rates. Minimum-interest rules are fairly complex and have been subject to numerous changes and modifications. There are separate rules for personal and commercial loans and sales of property that are financed by the seller. For more information, consult Sections 7872, 1274 and 483 of the Internal Revenue Code.
The amount per $1,000 that is used to calculate taxes on property. Millage rates are most often found in personal property taxes, where the expressed millage rate is multiplied by the total taxable value of the property to arrive at the property taxes due. Millage rates are also used by school boards to calculate local school taxes to be collected, based on a derivation of the total property value within school district boundaries. The term is derived from the root word mill, which means "thousand". Millage rates are often expressed mathematically with the symbol %o, as in 1%o, which is one part per thousand, or 0.1%. Millage rates for individual properties are usually found on the property deed itself.