Stock Investing Guide

From time to time, knowledgeable sources from around the personal finance industry send us timely information, hoping to use Wallet Blog to better reach the general public. The following information about hurricane recovery tax benefits was sent to us by the California Society of CPAs, and we thought it would be both useful and of interest to our readers:

Hurricane Irene has done an estimated $7 -13 billion in damage over 10 East Coast states. Wind and flood damage alone could total about $5 billion and $2 billion, respectively, according to the Consumer Federation of America.

Given the widespread devastation, many of you reading this were likely affected in one way or another. The following five steps can help you minimize financial loss and expedite recovery:

Step 1: Get in touch with your insurer.Its important that you contact your insurance provider as soon as you can because some policies have time limits for the filing of claims, and these limits vary by state.  

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Montana mining operators are affected by new legislation. The new law, which is named, HB 533, authorizes the Board of Land Commissioners to decide whether or not a surety bond will be required of mining operators to guarantee the payment of royalties to the Board. The previous law always required the surety bond.

Tags: Bond, Reclamation Bond

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A pair of Democratic senators who chair influential committees have introduced legislation aimed at closing a variety of tax loopholes to reduce the budget deficit.

The Cut Unjustified Tax Loopholes Act, or CUT Loopholes Act, was introduced Tuesday by Carl Levin, D-Mich., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Kent Conrad, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee. The bill, S.2075, would crack down on offshore tax abuses, close tax loopholes that encourage corporations to move jobs offshore and end a corporate tax loophole that allows corporations to claim a stock option tax deduction that is greater than the stock option expense shown on their books.

The portion of the bill aimed at closing offshore tax havens is based primarily on the earlier Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, S. 1346, which was authored by Levin and co-sponsored by Conrad and six others. President Obama, as a senator, supported a similar measure.

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Tags: Loopholes, Tax Loopholes

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Determining Your Federal & State Withholding

Marital Status

People who qualify under the claim of married generally have a lower withholding rate. If you are not married then you must take your withholding at the increased single rate, head of household or the highest tax bracket, married filing jointly.

• If you are single, divorced, or separated from your partner by order of court and law

• If you are married but your spouse is not an American citizen

• If you and your spouse are both legal U.S. Citizens. If your spouse dies during the current tax year you are still considered married for that tax year.

• Either you or your spouse is considered a resident alien. You can find the details on resident aliens on IRS Publication 519.

If you are married but still withholding at a single rate. If you and

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Last week I had the opportunity to attend an IMF conference (organized by Olivier Blanchard, Krishna Srinivasan, and Hamid Faruqee) focusing on the critical issue of assessing the sources of the pre-crisis imbalances in systemically key countries. The proceedings also had a forward looking component, highlighting the difficulties of determining when external imbalances are problematic. The conference proceedings are here.

To place the topic in perspective, here is the graph of current account imbalances, from the September 2011 World Economic Outlook:

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Here is the conference agenda, with links to the presentations.

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Tags: Conference, Conference Analyzing

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