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Social Security myths abound. We're here to help you dispel some fact from fiction when it comes to your financial future. Be sure to stay well informed when it comes to your retirement and the future of your income.
While your tax privacy may not necessarily be the highest priority of paid tax preparers, surely the IRS would never share your tax info with other parties. Right? or wrong.
As we outlined in Part I of this article, your tax privacy may no longer be secure in the hands of paid tax preparers, especially those associated with the larger tax preparation services. It may not even be safe if you use tax-filing software. But surely you can expect your privacy to be ironclad when it comes to the IRS...?
That seems a reasonable part of your social contract with the government, but a recent measure may have thrown that promise right out the window -- albeit unintentionally. In this article, we'll tell you more about how private your tax information really is over at the Internal Revenue Service.
Everybody's favorite retirement fund is often on our minds and in the news, but be careful what you believe. Not all the myths about Social Security are true.
One of the most popular myths about Social Security is that it's facing bankruptcy. But in fact, Social Security is actually running a surplus. It has enough money to last through 2028 before it even starts redeeming the $2 trillion (yes, that's trillion, with a T) worth of bonds in its backup fund.
Even then, Social Security will have sufficient money to keep paying 100% benefits until 2042. Assuming Congress does nothing about it, that's when it'll run into trouble. So as you can see, the truth here is somewhat different from the myth -- and that's the case for most of what we think we know about the topic.
Just how secure is your tax privacy these days? Probably not as secure as you'd like.
We Americans tend to take tax privacy for granted. Paying taxes may be annoying, but most of us realize it's necessary if we want to maintain our schools, police forces, the military, and decent roads. The unstated assumption is that the IRS, and our paid preparers, will keep our tax information confidential.
That's no longer as safe an assumption as it used to be, given recent technological advancements and changes in tax law. While it's not our place to comment on government policy, in this two-part article we'll tell you how the privacy of your tax information can easily be breached these days.
You never want to tangle with the Internal Revenue Service; they're relentless. Avoid these tax myths if you want to keep your nose clean.
Tax myths are right up there with urban legends for persistence in American popular culture, and they tend to have just as much truth to them -- in other words, not much. Also like urban legends, they may seem scary but harmless...until the IRS comes out of the woodwork to take a bite out of you.
