Untangling The Tax Code: What You Need To Know

Now that tinkering with the tax code has become a favorite congressional pastime, the annual filing season is more of an ordeal than ever, with laws kicking in and phasing out virtually every year.

This time around there are new breaks for songwriters, homeowners and onetime dot-com millionaires whose shares turned to dust. There are new hurdles for children with income, people who donate cash to charity and buyers of hybrid cars. A variety of income thresholds have been indexed to inflation, giving some a chance to claim breaks they might otherwise have missed. As always, there are a handful of nagging challenges when it comes to claiming breaks that aren't specifically noted on tax forms.

And for millions of Americans, filing season has only just started, because last-minute changes by Congress made it all but impossible for the Internal Revenue Service to process certain forms before Monday of last week.

Ready? Here's what you need to know about the work-in-progress tax code:

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