IRS Publication 523 Needs Updating

[Retired2021]

I'm not sure about the last update to IRS Publication 523, but the $250k/$500k capital gains exclusion hasn't changed in many years. Please reach out to your congress representatives to suggest this be updated to $500k/$1m on a bipartisan basis and it should also be indexed to inflation every 5 years or so.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p523.pdf

So often we enact tax laws with fixed dollar amounts that never get adjusted for inflation. For example, the Alternative Minimum Tax another part of the tax code was enacted in 1987 and has not be indexed for inflation.

[Gumby]

Not indexing for inflation is a way for Congress to raise taxes without provoking blowback from taxpayers. It works the same with the social security taxation threshold. No harm in asking, but I think you/we ultimately will be unsuccessful.

[jebmke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gumby Not indexing for inflation is a way for Congress to raise taxes without provoking blowback from taxpayers. It works the same with the social security taxation threshold. No harm in asking, but I think you/we ultimately will be unsuccessful.

I agree; and as far as I know, the publication is accurate.

[JoeWras]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gumby Not indexing for inflation is a way for Congress to raise taxes without provoking blowback from taxpayers. It works the same with the social security taxation threshold. No harm in asking, but I think you/we ultimately will be unsuccessful.

In my state, our taxes are based on the federal AGI. The state tax then adjusts the AGI to remove any automatic indexing in the fed tax, such as the year to year change in the standard deduction.

So, yeah, automatic tax increase each year.