| "Like a con man luring an innocent into a game of three-card monte, the tax code is no stranger to now-you-see-it, now-you-don't sleight of hand. Many tax deductions, exemptions, and other breaks are highly visible when enacted but can disappear when it comes to filling out a tax return." " As the 2007 tax season moves into high gear, accountants say they are frequently forced to pass on the bad news that just because something is deductible doesn't mean it's deductible by you. People who do their own returns often learn that only after trudging through worksheets and dense IRS instructions." "What rankles are benefits that are portrayed as a tax cut but phase out once income passes a certain level. Phaseouts are mostly designed to curb benefits for upper-income people, but they sometimes begin to bite at middle-income levels--a 2006 deduction for student loan interest starts to vanish after a single filer's adjusted gross income tops $50,000." "Among other breaks with phaseouts are the child tax credit, exemptions for dependents, overall itemized deductions, credits for college tuition, and contributions to IRAs." "People who buy savings bonds in the expectation of earning tax-free interest to help fund a child's future education face no income limits when buying the bonds. But depending on their income, they could be hit with a phaseout of the tax exemption in the future when the bonds are redeemed." "Many phaseouts are indexed for inflation so the triggers can change each year. Two of them--one limiting the amount of itemized deductions, the other curtailing personal and dependent exemptions--have recently been modified by Congress to bite less starting in the 2006 tax year and are scheduled to disappear by 2010. But note that term "scheduled."" "Phaseouts
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