'Taxmaggedon:' Average Family Will Pay $4K More

The average American family will be hit by a $3,800 increase in their taxes come the New Year unless Congress acts to extend a series of breaks.

Several different tax “holidays’ expire at the end of the year, Fox News reports, and put all together would rake in an extra $500 billion to the national coffers.
January 1, 2013 even has a name – Taxmageddon.

Among those tax holidays due to run out are the Bush-era cuts that would push the bottom rate of income tax from 10 to 15 percent and the top rate from 35 to 39.6 percent.

But that’s not all, Fox says. The child tax credit will be halved from $1,000 to $500, the marriage penalty will return, the tax on dividends will go up nearly threefold and the alternative minimum tax will hit around 34 million taxpayers.

"Almost the entire tax code has been put on a year-to-year lease, and in some cases, month-to-month lease, which is no way to run a tax system," Scott Hodge of the Tax Foundation told Fox. “No American will be unscathed.”