Year-End Government Spending Bill Contains Many Tax Provisions

The president recently signed a spending bill into law that makes many changes to retirement plan rules, provides disaster tax relief, and repeals the provision that taxed exempt organizations when they provided parking to their employees. A couple of the important changes below:

• Repealed certain healthcare taxes including Sec. 4980I excise tax on certain high-cost employer health plans, popularly called the Cadillac tax; the Sec. 4191 medical device excise tax; and the annual fee on health insurance providers contained in Section 9010 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act• Increases the age after which required minimum distributions from certain retirement accounts must begin to 72 (from 70½);• Modifies requirements for multiple-employer plans to make it easier for small businesses to offer such plans to their employees by allowing otherwise completely unrelated employers to join in the same plan• Allows penalty-free distributions from qualified retirement plans and IRAs for births and adoptions• Repeals the maximum age for IRA contributionsThe bill also extended a few expired tax provisions through 2020:• Excluding from gross income the discharge of qualified principal residence indebtedness income• Treating mortgage insurance premiums as qualified residence interest, which permits a taxpayer whose income is below certain thresholds to deduct the cost of premiums on mortgage insurance purchased in connection with acquisition indebtedness on the taxpayer’s principal residence• 7.5% (instead of 10%) adjusted-gross-income floor for medical expense deductions• Above-the-line deductions available for qualified tuition and related expensesSee the above and other relevant changes here:Year-end government spending bill contains many tax provisions