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Beware these bad tax eggs

March 23, 2008

By now on this Easter Sunday, the kids probably have already dived into their Easter baskets, consuming way too much chocolate, in the form of hollow-eared rabbits, and sugar, courtesy of those gooey little Peeps.

Easter_eggs_2
And, of course, there are the Easter eggs. There are many explanations as to why the thing of omelets came to be "hunted" on this special Christian holiday; you can read some of them in this Wikipedia entry.

Hunting for Easter eggs naturally brings to mind, for tax geeks anyway, our annual hunt for tax breaks. I’ll post more on these soon; in the meantime, Wells Fargo has compiled a good overview of common deductions.

Bad tax eggs: But the flip side of those beautifully decorated eggs is the occasional bad one that turns up and makes us turn up our noses. That happens in taxes, too.

Bad tax eggs also can be costly. So to help you avoid, or at least not be surprised by, these stinkers in the Internal Revenue Code, below are five rotten tax laws to watch out for. Specifically, these are instances of income on which you might find you owe taxes:

  1. Unemployment benefits,
  2. Alimony,
  3. Forgiven debt,
  4. Prize winnings, and
  5. Social Security retirement payments.

Details on each of these potentially taxable types of income can be found in this Bankrate story, 5 Terrible Tax Surprises.

Now I’m off to make egg salad for Easter lunch.

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The More Tax Posts tab at the top of this page will take you to, well, more tax posts. You also can search below for a tax topic. 

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TAX-SAVVY WAYS 
TO WRAP UP 2026

It’s over! With October’s extended filing deadline behind us, it is now time to focus on year-end moves to reduce your 2026 tax bill. 

You’ll find ways to do just that on the Tax Tips page (see the More Tax Posts drop-down menu at the top of the blog), as well as the separate tax tip pages for each month, notably October through December. If you’re on the Tax Tips page, you’ll find a monthly list at the end of this column. If you’re on another blog page, you can head straight to the October tips; at the bottom of that tips page you’ll find links to all the other 11 months’ collections of tax advice.

Not to spoil what you’ll find in that tax advice, but it does cover such things as tax deductions for charitable donations, investment moves that could reduce tax due, and ways to max out your tax-favored retirement savings. 

Finally, as the year winds down, things get hectic. There are lots of other things to occupy our time, like the much more fun upcoming holidays. But don’t lose sight of taxes, since timing is key. To be of use, most tax moves must be made by the end of the tax year. That’s Thursday, Dec. 31, which also is the last business day of the year. 

So that you don’t miss that final tax year deadline, also keep an eye on the countdown clock below. It will keep you on top of just how much time is left to make important, tax-saving moves. (Note: I’m in the Central Time Zone, so adjust accordingly for where you live.)

Credits/Deductions
Disasters
Family
Filing and Paying Taxes
Politics/Laws
Refunds
State Taxes
Tax Brackets/Inflation
Tax Tips
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