Monday, August 6, 2012

Another typical tax season on the calendar.....

Shock of shocks, there is another post to this blog. This blog may not receive much attention, but it does have better days coming.

Bloomberg reports that there are only 13 days between today and the election when both the Senate and House are in session. They also surmise what was obvious to me months ago - nothing related to our taxes, debt, etc. will happen until after the election. Both parties are hopeful that there negotiating position will be improved after the election.

So here's the scenario that we will live in a few months:

  • Congress will extend some tax breaks for some group of people in December.
  • The IRS will need to redesign multiple forms to conform to the legal changes. That will take much of December (if they get an early start) and part of January.
  • Tax return processing software will need to be updated to match the new forms. That will likely not start until sometime in January.
  • The 2013 filing season for 2012 taxes will begin with only the most simple of returns. Returns with many of the common but affected forms or schedules will not be able to be filed until sometime in February. (Wasn't it February 14 last year? Or was that the year before?)
Will the December changes solve our problems? No. It will only band-aid the situation, continuing to kick the can down the street. We cannot solve our fiscal issues without some combination of increased taxes and decreased benefits. And that does not lead to re-election. Thus there are few with the character to do what the country really needs.

Looks like it is going to be yet another typical year.....