Tax Lawyer's Blog

Yesterday President Bush signed into law the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. HERA contains several significant tax cuts designed to help troubled homeowners and the equally troubled home mortgage market. The major tax provisions are:

• An additional standard deduction for real property taxes of those who do not itemize their taxes (those who do can deduct the full amount of their real property taxes) of $1,000.00 for joint filers and $500.00 for single filers.
• A refundable (you get money back even if you paid nothing in) tax credit for first time home buyers equal to 10% of the purchase price, up to a maximum credit of $7,500.
• The expansion of Gulf Opportunity Zone incentives.
• A temporary increase in the low-income housing tax credit.

We will be blogging more about HERA (the tax title is The Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008)  in the coming weeks so stay tuned while we wade through the 260 pages of the Act.

For you tax nerds out there here is the full text of the Act.

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