Fellow tax blogger taxgirl recently got an interesting, and alarmed, e-mail about a proposed tax on windfall retirement earnings.
Don’t panic. It’s not true.
And while I usually wouldn’t share tax info that is wrong, what with the way rumors travel, especially regarding politicians and their proposals during an election year, I wanted to preemptively get the word out to ease the minds of anyone else who might have had heard this.
Taxgirl did a great job of tracking down the mixed messages that led to this rumor. Apparently, this nasty falsehood has been around for a while, appearing in 2006 as a tax on stock market profits and most recently getting mixed up with the true, but not yet passed, proposal to tax the windfall profits of oil companies.
But, to quote taxgirl, this tax rumor, like too many others that thrive online, is crap. Check out her detective and debunking work here.
Mark
Thank you for doing the homework for us.
It is much appreciated.
Cheers,
Mark