Don't Mess With Taxes

Is your NFL team losing? Simply bored with the games on in your area?

Then it's the perfect time to watch National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson discuss the fiscal cliff and what it means to taxpayers.

Olson's remarks were made last week when she was a guest on C-SPAN's Washington Journal.

As part of the discussion, Olson discussed three fiscal cliff components:

1. Higher individual tax rates and the effect on payroll withholding, both for taxpayers and employers;
2. Extenders, the tax laws that have expired (this last time at the end of 2011) but that are generally reauthorized, or extended (sometimes retroactively, as could/will be the case for the 2012 tax year), by Congress; and
3. The alternative minimum tax, or AMT.

Here's hoping this is the last weekend that we wonder whether we'll go over the cliff or head down the fiscal slope or whatever you want to call it -- remembering, of course, that this is a family-friendly tax blog! -- on Jan. 1, 2013.

• The Advocate and the AMT
• Obama says fiscal cliff deal depends on higher taxes on rich
• Payroll tax cut on its last legs