It’s that time of year – tax time. There have been some important changes to the 2013 tax return that you must be aware of. Here are a few of them:

New 3.8% Medicare surtax. If you are single with an AGI over $200k, married filing joint AGI over $250k, you will have to pay an additional 3.8% surtax on capital gain for Medicare purposes. This brings the long term capital gains rate to 23.8% vs. 15% for those to whom this will apply.

New Medicare surtax for those of us who are self-employed. If your salary and/or Self Employment income is over $200k single, $250k married filing joint, you will now pay and additional .9% on top of the 2.9% we are currently paying.

Itemized deductions have a new threshold. If, for example, your medical expenses exceeded 7.5% of your AGI, you were good to deduct. Now, that threshold is 10%. That is a 25% increase in what you have to spend in order to deduct those expenses.

These are just a few of the big changes to the 2013 tax return. If you do your own taxes, please make sure you are up to date on all of the changes.

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