Required minimum distributions for IRA owners, plan participants and beneficiaries are waived for 2009.  While this might have been a little more helpful in 2008 with the large decline in balances this does add some flexibility in 2009.
Increased flexibility for investing in 529 plans.  Under the existing rules for 529 plans, account owners can only [...]

Under the Housing Law signed on June 30th, if you decide not to itemize you can increase your standard deduction by the amount of real property tax you could have claimed if you did itemize, up to $500 ($1,000 on a joint return). This originally only applied to 2008 tax returns, but the Emergency Economic [...]

Two issues immediately jumped out at me in this legislation.

Homeowners now have an above the line deduction for property taxes (maximum $500 single, $1000 joint).  This is great for retirees who don’t itemize.
Starting in 2009, a rental unit that is converted to a personal residence will have its percentage of time as a rental unit [...]

The IRS has posted the mileage rates for businesses and charities for the second half of 2008.

The “Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007″ allows a surviving spouse to exclude from gross income up to $500,000 of the gain from the sale or exchange of a principal residence owned jointly with a deceased spouse if the sale or exchange occurs within two years of the death of the spouse and other [...]

The IRS has announced the 2008 mileage rates for businesses and charities.

With the increase in home prices over the last decade a lot of people have taken out home equity loans or refinanced.  What many people may not be aware of is if their new loan balance (primary and home equity combined) is more than $100K over their original loan amount (right before any refinancing), only the [...]

Natalie gives a great primer on 72(t) payments.  The one piece she didn’t cover was the ability for a person using the amortization or annuity method to step down their withdrawals to the RMD method (although you can’t go back once you make the change).

Effective Jan 1, 2008 the kiddie tax will apply to children age 18 and younger as well as college students under the age of 24.
Troy Onink of Forbes provides some strategies to deal with the new law.

Lawrence Starr has been hitting the press with his viewpoint that Roth 401Ks are a bad idea for most people. I’m not as big a pessimist as he is because I believe in tax regime diversification. Since most people have much more money in their tax deferred savings than in their tax [...]