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U.S Department of the Treasury recently just publishes the monthly data of the U.S. economy. The data shows a sign of uncertainty in the U.S. economy. Although there are growing trend in index of sale in auto, retail, and durable goods, unemployment rate continues to rise and stay at a record-high level. The housing market is still in the cloud due to uncertain financial bank regulation and increasing unemployment. Overall, the recovery will be on the way to come, but it just takes a longer time than we expected.

Warren Buffet just talks about the economy in an interview with CNBC. He believes the economy will take a long way to come back. You can click here to see his interview.

Under the Bank Secrecy Act, a United States person is required to file an annual report to the IRS If he has ownership or signature authority in a foreign bank accounts, including commercial bank account, brokerage account, mutual fund, unit trust or other types of financial accounts, and if the aggregate value of these accounts exceed $10,000 at any time during the calendar year.
A taxpayer is qualified as a “United States person” if the taxpayer is (1) a citizen or resident of the United States, (2) a domestic partnership, (3) a domestic corporation, or (4) a domestic estate or trust.” According the recent IRS notice IR-2009-58.
The name of the report is Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Account with a Form number TD F 90-22.1. As you see in my title of the post, the deadline is June 30, 2009. The failure of filing the forms would cost up to $10,000 penalty regardless of whether the lack of filing is willful or not.

Recently, the IRS announced that the new car tax deduction is available for taxpayers in states with no sales tax as long as the requirements of time period and income limitation meet. These states include Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon.
Taxpayers are entitled to deduct other fees or taxes imposed by the state or local government. The qualified fees or taxes must be assessed on the purchase of the vehicle and must be based on the vehicle’s sales price or as a per unit fee.
The deduction is available even if the taxpayer takes standard deduction instead of itemize deduction. However, taxpayer will lose the deduction if he takes state and local sale tax deduction in lieu of state and local income taxes. Also, keep in mind that the deduction can only be taken on 2009 tax returns but 2008 returns. Check out my last post to see the requirement for this new car sales tax deduction.