TAXPAYER RELIEF ACT OF 1997 TRA’97

Deductible contributions will be allowed for 1998 and later tax years, although they are phased out for taxpayers with an AGI of more than $150,000. Long-term capital losses are first used to offset long-term capital gains in the same tax rate group. If there is a net long-term capital loss in a rate group, it is used tax relief act of 1997 to offset gains in the next highest rate group. Any net short-term capital loss would first offset long-term capital gain from the highest rate group with remaining net loss being applied to the next highest rate. As under previous law, annual deductibility of net capital losses is limited to $3,000 for individuals.

1. Several other factors — a relaxation of lending standards, a failure by regulators to intervene, a sharp decline in interest rates and a collective belief that house prices could never fall — probably played larger roles.
2. This paper uses all three sources of variation to identify the effect of TRA97 on home sales.
3. During this period of time, house prices in the studied area experienced steep increases.
4. Later, in Notice 97-13, the IRS allowed producers to follow previous procedures for the 1996 tax year but would have required AMT income adjustments in the 1997 to 2000 tax years.

She has worked in multiple cities covering breaking news, politics, education, and more. Three weeks after Mr. Dole’s speech, with support from top Treasury officials, the proposal made it into Mr. Clinton’s speech at the Democratic convention. During the presidential debates that followed, he used it to parry Mr. Dole’s calls for a big tax cut.

Other provisions

The top marginal long term capital gains rate fell from 28% to 20%, subject to certain phase-in rules. If you have paid over $600 to Texas A&M University in interest on your covered student loan/loans during the tax year, you will receive a Form 1098-E (Student Loan Interest Statement). A 1098-E supplement statement will be sent to those individuals who have paid any amount of interest on a qualified student loan.

The tax elasticity is identified by comparing houses with similar real capital gains in different years, as arguably exogenous legislative changes cause tax rates to differ across years. Panel B of Table 11 shows that the estimated tax elasticity of home sales, λ̂, is negative and statistically significant. Its magnitude implies that a $10,000 increase in capital gains taxes reduces the semiannual home sales rate by 0.1 percentage points, or 6% from the average sales rate in the post-TRA97 sample.

Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) Definition

In column (4), I use the full sample but interact the four capital gains categories with a 1998–2000 dummy and a 2001–08 dummy separately. In the short run, TRA97 released the lock-in effect of capital gains taxation for houses with all levels of capital gains. In the long run, the effect became smaller on houses with low or moderate capital gains, and the effect disappeared on houses with very large capital gains. 23Estimating the tax elasticity of home sales for the pre-TRA97 period is very difficult because capital gains taxes depended on age of the seller and value of the replacement home before 1997, neither of which is observed in my data. 14Although the majority of homeowners in the 26 ZIP codes are married couples, there are non-trivial numbers of homeowners who are not married couples. According to the 2000 Census, between 19 and 51% of owner-occupied units are not owned by married couples in these ZIP codes.

Internal Revenue Code

Remember, consulting a professional tax advisor or financial planner is always recommended to ensure you make the most of the tax incentives and provisions introduced by the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. When it comes to understanding your finances, staying informed about the ever-changing tax laws is crucial. As a taxpayer, you need to know how certain legislation can have an impact on your financial situation. One significant tax law that shaped the modern tax landscape is the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. I am also very disappointed that the tax incentives for renewable fuels were not extended in this budget.

For assets held more than five years, the tax rates will be even lower beginning in 2001. For individuals in the 28 percent or higher regular tax bracket, the 20 percent capital gains tax rate drops to 18 percent for assets acquired on or after January 1, 2001 and held for five years. An asset owned on January 1, 2001 can qualify for the reduced rate if an individual pays the tax due on the gain as of the end of the year 2000 and then holds the asset for five years or more. For individuals in the 15 percent regular tax bracket, treatment is more favorable. First, the 10 percent capital gain rate drops to 8 percent for assets held for five years or more as of January 1, 2001. Second, an individual in the 15 percent regular tax bracket does not have to pay tax on the gain as of the end the year 2000 to qualify for the reduced capital gain tax rate.

The first is the direct reversal of the lock-in effect of capital gains taxation. Put simply, when the cost of selling a house is reduced, homeowners are more likely to sell their homes. The second is the capitalization of TRA97 into house prices which in turn affect home sales. However, I can conduct simple simulation exercises to bound the relative importance of the capitalization effect by recognizing that the capitalization effect should only cause a one-time change in house prices at the time of the tax law change. To study the lock-in effect of capital gains taxation, I need to know homeowners’ accumulated capital gains at each point of time. However, the sales records only contain price information when there is a transaction.

If the education IRA has not been used for qualified educational expenses by the time the beneficiary reaches 30 years of age, it must be distributed and is subject to a 10 percent penalty tax in addition to regular income tax. However, a rollover of the education IRA from one beneficiary to another is allowed, provided the new beneficiary is a member of the family of the old beneficiary. This paper complements the existing literature on TRA97 and brings new evidence on the lock-in effect of capital gains taxation in housing markets. However, it is worth emphasizing that we need to be cautious in generalizing the findings of this paper. The homeowners analyzed in this paper are not representative of the U.S. population.

Over the next five years Americans can expect taxes to be $95.3 billion lower than they otherwise would have been as a result of this legislation. This translates to approximately $764 in tax savings for every individual income taxAn individual income tax (or personal income tax) is levied on the wages, salaries, investments, or other forms of income an individual or household earns. The Federal Income Tax was established in 1913 with the ratification of the 16th Amendment. Though barely 100 years old, individual income taxes are the largest source of tax revenue in the U.S.
filer. Over 10 years these savings will climb to $275.4 billion, or roughly $2,136 for every filer. By itself, the change in the tax law did not cause the housing bubble, economists say.

The credit applies only to the first two years of the student’s post-secondary education in a degree or certificate program. The HOPE credit is available only for the tax-payer, spouse, or individuals who may be claimed as dependents, who are pursuing a course of study on at least a half time basis, and have not been convicted of a felony drug offense. The credit is 100 percent of the first $1,000 of qualified tuition and fees, and 50 percent of the next$1,000 of such qualified expenses.

The semiannual home sales rate of houses with capital gains above $500K increased by 1.25 percent points, or 51% from the pre-TRA97 baseline level. These results suggest that there were many homeowners who were locked-in before 1997. As soon as TRA97 was signed into law, these homeowners took advantage of the newly provided capital gains exclusions and sold their homes. The capital gains measure used in this paper https://turbo-tax.org/ is constructed using the purchase price of the house and the ZIP code level house price indices. According to these indices, nominal single-family house prices in the sample ZIP codes increased on average by about 10 percent from 1994 to 1996, 24 percent from 1996 to 1998, and 32 percent from 1998 to 2000. Presumably, an unknown fraction of the 24 percent appreciation between 1996 and 1998 was related to TRA97.

The amount of enacted tax relief, therefore, represents about 1.4 percent of the taxes that would have been collected during this period. In addition, the act created the Hope Tax Credit and the Lifetime Learning Credit for college students. The Hope Credit is now known as the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which provides tax credits up to $2,500 each year per eligible student. The 1997 act also established a deduction for the first $2,500 of student loan interest paid each year for federal loans.

More specifically, I construct a panel of single-family houses using the 1982–2008 sales records and ZIP code level house price indices in 16 affluent cities and towns within the Boston metropolitan area. The data set does not have information on individual characteristics such as age, income, and marital status, but it has accurate information on the dates and prices of home sales. To identify the effect of capital gains taxation on home sales, I exploit the cross-sectional variation in accumulated capital gains and the arguably exogenous change in exclusion levels introduced by TRA97. I also exploit legislative changes in capital gains tax rates in 2001 and 2003 to estimate the tax elasticity of home sales during the post-TRA97 period. This paper contributes to the existing literature by using a unique data set and exploiting sources of variation different from previous research. Since 1997, homeowners can exclude $500,000 of capital gains when they sell their houses.

This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging, Grant Number P01-AG05842. The findings and conclusions expressed are solely those of the author and do not represent views of the Board of Governors, the staff of the Federal Reserve System, or the National Institute on Aging. 2014 omits a number of my important initiatives, including my proposal to protect the rights of disabled persons by extending the time such people are allowed to claim a tax refund to include the period during which they are mentally or physically impaired. 2014, the “Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997.” Together with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, this legislation implements the bipartisan budget agreement. Most recently, the credit returned to $2,000 in 2022, though the refundable portion has undergone changes.