WE ARE BAILED OUT!

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As you know the House has passed and George W has signed into law the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, with a cornucopia of extraneous tax measures – thankfully including the annual AMT fix and a 2-year extension of popular expired tax breaks.

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There is some good news for us preparers - the Act "fixes" the return preparer standard, retroactive to the effective date of the offending Small Business and Work Opportunity Tax Act of 2007, and requires that brokers report the adjusted basis of publicly-traded securities and indicate whether long or short term on Form 1099-B, beginning with stock acquired in 2011, mutual funds acquired in 2012, and other securities acquired in 2013 (unfortunately too long a time to wait for this to begin - they should have begun with all investments purchased in 2009 or at the latest 2010).

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CCH has published a “Tax Briefing” on the Act. Click here to go to the Tax Briefing home page – where you can download a free copy of the Briefing in “pdf” format.

TAFN