Individual Taxation: Digest of Recent Developments

The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 extended the current individual income tax rates on ordinary income and the rates on qualified dividend and capital gains income for two years through 2012. * The IRS, changing its long-standing position, ruled that debt on a mortgage loan used to acquire, construct, or substantially improve a qualified residence, to the extent it exceeds $1 million, qualifies as home equity indebtedness, and thus the interest on up to $100,000 of that debt is deductible as an itemized deduction. * The Tax Court held that the Sec. 121 exclusion of gain from the sale of a principal residence applied only to the home that the taxpayer used as a principal residence and not to a replacement home built on the site of the home that was used as a principal residence. * In two cases, the Tax Court held that a taxpayer was not entitled to a charitable deduction for the donation of a home to a fire department for use in live fire-training exercises