The Internal Revenue Service is giving the Mega Millions jackpot some serious competition, with tax refunds totaling $760 million ready to be handed over to an estimated 918,600 taxpayers who did not file a federal income tax return for 2010.

Laws were passed a couple of years ago that permanently set the federal tax exclusion amount on estates at $5,000,000. The law also stipulated the exclusion amount should be indexed for inflation each year. The exclusion amount for 2014 is $5,340,000. This means there is no federal estates taxes if the deceased has an estate less than $5,340,000 and no federal estate tax return needs to be filed.

Last week we looked at the new 3.8% Medicare Surtax that was ushered in as a result of the ObamaCare tax package that was passed in 2010.

Several months ago (TTW # 216) we discussed the ruling by the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service that same-sex couples, legally married in states that recognize their marriage, will be treated as married for federal tax purposes.

The Social Security Administration’s (SSA) requirements for issuing social security number (SSN) printouts are less stringent than the requirements for issuing replacement SSN cards.

A taxpayer we will call Clint, decided to do his daughter a favor. She was attempting to purchase a home that was in foreclosure. Part of the qualification to buy the home was having a substantial amount of funds on deposit. Clint took an IRA distribution and deposited part of it in a non-IRA escrow account. He intended to rollover the distribution back into the IRA upon the completed purchase of his daughter's home.