By Greg Barr Senior Reporter - Houston Business Journal
Most personal tax rate brackets and various tax benefits will remain unchanged or be tweaked only slightly in 2010.
Among the new provisions released by the
Internal Revenue Service on Thursday that affect taxpayers 2010 tax returns:
• The value of each personal and dependency exemption available to most taxpayers is $3650 unchanged from 2009.
• The new standard deduction for heads of household is $8400 up from $8350 in 2009.
• The standard deduction remains unchanged at $11400 for married couples filing a joint return and $5700 for singles and married individuals filing separately. Nearly two out of three taxpayers take the standard deduction rather than itemizing deductions such as mortgage interest charitable contributions and state and local taxes the IRS said in a statement.
• Various tax bracket thresholds will see minor adjustments. For example for a married couple filing a joint return the taxable income threshold separating the 15 percent bracket from the 25 percent bracket is $68000 up from $67900 in 2009.
By law the dollar amounts for a variety of tax provisions must be revised each year to keep pace with inflation. As a result more than three dozen tax benefits are subject to inflation adjustments each year but because recent inflation factors have been minimal many of these benefits will remain unchanged or change only slightly for 2010.
Click here to download a copy of the new provisions.
