The following is an excerpt from the ABA Journal article “Tax Relief at Every Milestone“, authored by Sam Braunstein and published in November 2001.
Changes in the federal tax laws are usually greeted with trepidation rather than anticipation. All too often, the changes result in higher tax bills for individuals and businesses. And sometimes even benefits produced by new tax legislation passed by Congress or regulations issued by the Internal Revenue Service are accompanied by complex reporting requirements or complicated forms that make the tax breaks hardly seem worth the trouble.
In some ways, though, 2001 has been an exception to that pattern. The past year has produced generally good news for taxpayers, much (but not all) of it contained in provisions of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, an early priority of President Bush that Congress passed at the beginning of the summer.