Uncertainty in Washington Is Creating Confusion for Investors Trying to Minimize Their Tax Burden. Here’s What You Need to Know—and Do. By Laura Saunders – Wall Street Journal There are plenty of reasons for taxpayers to scream. Here it is, year-end tax-planning time, when investors must decide whether to take gains or harvest losses and [...]

Big Employers Estimate Health-Care Costs Will Rise 8.9% in 2011 By Katherine Hobson – Wall Street Journal A survey of big employers finds they expect their health-care costs to rise nearly 9% next year and plan to share some of that burden with employees via higher premiums and higher out-of-pocket limits. The survey included responses [...]

Survivors given checkbook accounts, while carriers retain the assets in their corporate accounts; ‘turning death claims into a profit center’ By Bloomberg News July 28, 2010 The package arrived at Cindy Lohman’s home in Great Mills, Maryland, just two weeks after she learned that her son, Ryan, a 24-year-old Army sergeant, had been killed by [...]

No, You Can’t Keep Your Health Plan Insurers and doctors are already consolidating their businesses in the wake of ObamaCare’s passage. By SCOTT GOTTLIEB – Wall Street Journal President Obama guaranteed Americans that after health reform became law they could keep their insurance plans and their doctors. It’s clear that this promise cannot be kept. [...]

by Neil deMause, contributing writer NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork. Section 9006 of the health care bill — just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document — mandates that beginning in 2012 all companies [...]

By Brett Ferguson and Jonathan Nicholson Publication date: 04/29/2010 – from the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. The Senate Budget Committee-approved budget resolution does not make room for dividends tax rates to continue to be tied to capital gains rates after 2010, raising questions among some lawmakers about whether Democrats intend to allow the top [...]

How To Not Get Audited By The IRS With increased computer power and more money for staff from the Obama administration, the IRS is gearing up to intensify its audits of individual taxpayers. High income alone is far from the only factor triggering an audit: Last year only 6.4% of the nation’s 440,000 highest-income filers [...]

April 1, 2010 by Bob Veres Economic forecasters sometimes describe the investment markets as a leading indicator, which means that they believe returns can anticipate good or bad economic news.  Share prices fall when investors expect a recession, and rise when a recovery is expected–and last year’s stock market growth seems to fit that pattern.  [...]

The IRS issued its 2010 “dirty dozen” tax scams, including return preparer fraud, hiding offshore income and phishing.

“Merrill Lynch, with Wal-Mart’s blessing, was choosing mutual funds based on payments that the funds would make to Merrill Lynch,” says Braden attorney Derek Loeser of Keller Rohrback in Seattle, Wash. “This explains the anomaly of a $10 billion plan ending up with off-the-shelf retail funds that just so happen to share revenue.” Forbes magazine [...]