The Senate Finance Committee passed a tax extenders bill with a bipartisan vote of 23 to 3 that extends over 50 tax breaks for two years.
The bill would extend dozens of tax breaks that expired at the end of last year. Last December, Congress only managed to extend the tax breaks for an extra two weeks through the end of the year and retroactively for the rest of 2014, allowing tax season to proceed this past tax season without new forms needing to be created by the IRS.
The bipartisan tax extenders package includes provisions to assist families, individuals and small businesses. Among the more popular provisions are the $250 above-the-line tax deduction for teachers and other school professionals for expenses paid or incurred for books and supplies, mortgage debt relief, the deduction for mortgage insurance premiums, the deduction for state and local general sales taxes, the above-the-line deduction for higher education expenses, tax-free distributions from individual retirement plan for charitable purposes, and the research and experimentation tax credit.