Hotel Near Dolphin Mall - This Year, More Taxpayers Are Waiting To File Their Returns

Source - http://www.kansascity.com/
By - MARK DAVIS
Category - Hotel Near Dolphin Mall
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

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More Americans than usual have waited until the last two weeks to send their tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service. The latest IRS data showed there were about 4.5 million more taxpayers still waiting to file as of March 22 than was the case on that day last year.

Plus, the IRS expects about 2 million more returns this year than last.

Even catching up some ground with late-night number crunching during April’s home stretch probably will still leave several million filers staring at the deadline.

“Everybody’s got to file eventually,” said Mark Steber, chief tax officer for Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc. “This year’s like no year we’ve ever seen.”

You can blame the tax season’s delayed start for this year’s filer-packed finish. Congress rewrote so many tax laws at the last minute — to avoid the fiscal cliff — that the IRS was forced to start accepting tax returns two weeks later than normal.

Heck, Kansas City even can blame the snow for the large number of taxpayers who still need to file.

“Our delays were compounded by the weather around here,” said Maggie Doedtman, program director for KC Cash Coalition, which works with the United Way to provide free tax preparation services to area residents.

More than 80 million taxpayers have filed returns as of March 22. While that’s the vast majority, that’s still down 5.2 percent from the same time a year earlier, the IRS said. For those who haven’t filed, nearly every tax professional offers the same advice. File. No matter what.

“We have two weeks left. By all means, use (your time to get organized whether you’re a do-it-yourselfer or you go into a tax office,” said Jackie Perlman, principal tax research analyst for the Tax Institute at H&R Block.

File, because you probably are due a refund. About three out of every four filers are. This year, the average refund at this stage is $2,827, down 1.2 percent from this time a year ago.

Refunds seem to be running later than usual this year too, said Bret Willoughby of Tax911.com Inc. in Olathe. The company, which moved here from Wisconsin last summer, specializes in taxes for Americans living overseas.

Willoughby said that a few years ago clients were getting their refunds less than a week after filing electronically.

Refunds do take longer, acknowledged Michael Devine, an IRS spokesman in St. Louis. Those checks now have to pass through a number of tests before heading out the door.

“We’re being more careful to catch tax fraud,” he said.

The promise at IRS is 21 days for your refund.

File, experts say, even if you don’t have all the papers you need from others. For example, some mutual funds and other investment companies have been late sending out 1099 forms that taxpayers need to report gains.

“With a phone call, you may not get the document but you can get the amount,” said Steber at Jackson Hewitt.

File, say tax professionals, even if you owe money but can’t pay what you still owe. The IRS penalties for failing to file are 10 times bigger than the penalties for paying too little.

Skip the April 15 deadline and Uncle Sam will add 5 percent to your unpaid tax amount every month you are late. Pay too little and the underpayment penalty is 0.5 percent each month until you make up the shortfall.

Besides, the IRS will let you work out a payment plan if you have a financial hardship. Use the online payment agreement at www.irs.gov or include IRS Form 9465-FS Installment Agreement Request with your tax return.

File, experts say, even if you can’t get your tax return finished in time. Send in Form 4868 to get an automatic six-month extension of time to file.

Note, the extension gives you more time to file. You still have to pay by April 15 any taxes you owe.

So how can you tell how much you owe if you haven’t done your taxes yet?

“You make a reasonable effort” to get the amount right, Block’s Perlman said. In other words, it’s an estimate.

There are a couple of safeguards for filers who don’t figure it out by April 15 and file an extension.

The IRS will waive its underpayment penalty if what you have paid in — from withholdings, estimated payments and any last-minute check to Uncle Sam — equals at least 90 percent of what your 2012 taxes end up totaling. That’s the total 2012 tax bill, not what you still owe on April 15.

If what you still owe come April 15 turns out to be less than $1,000, you also are safe from an underpayment penalty. But if you don’t file, that big penalty for failing to file still hits.

Another safeguard against the underpayment penalty is that you’ve paid in at least as much as your 2011 taxes had totaled.

File either your taxes or an extension by midnight April 15, because the tax season is ending on schedule even if it started late.

Neither the IRS nor Congress is offering to move the deadline.

“It’s not even being discussed,” Steber said.

Hotel Near Dolphin Mall - European Leaders Stick To Austerity Course

Source - http://www.nytimes.com/
By - JAMES KANTER and ANDREW HIGGINS
Category - Hotel Near Dolphin Mall
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

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 Jeered by angry protesters demanding an end to austerity and shaken by a resounding rejection of their economic strategy from Italian voters, European leaders gathered for an economic summit meeting Thursday amid few signs that the bloc’s policies were healing the twin blights of rising unemployment and recession.

Instead of bowing to a rising anti-austerity tide, however, leaders seemed determined to stay the course, insisting that only budget cuts and other measures to restore financial stability could return the continent to economic growth and create jobs.

Speaking as thousands of protesters gathered just out of earshot in a nearby Brussels park, Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, the body that organizes the leaders’ summit meetings, emphasized “green shoots” of recovery and said growth was returning, albeit slowly.

Officials of the European Union have repeatedly predicted a return to growth, only to be disappointed by data showing rising unemployment and continuing recession in the euro area.

The economy of the 17-member euro zone is expected to shrink for a second consecutive year in 2013, and growth for the whole of the 27-nation European Union is forecast to be about 0.1 percent. Unemployment in Spain and Greece, the hardest-hit countries, has soared above 25 percent.

Mr. Van Rompuy acknowledged “social distress” and said the success of anti-austerity and anti-establishment parties in the recent Italian elections was something that the leaders needed to consider. But he insisted that the departing Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, who was roundly defeated in the elections last month, had done “an excellent job” and that Italy and the European Union should “stick to the same general direction of the last 12 months.”

Italy is effectively without a functioning government after the Five Star Movement, led by Beppe Grillo, a comedian turned activist, made stunning gains in both houses of Parliament in the elections. Five Star has rejected an appeal by the Democratic Party to work together to lead the country. Without an alliance, the Italian government could limp along for as long as a year, political analysts say, before a likely collapse would force new elections.

The Brussels meeting is meant to focus on the tougher budgetary oversight agreed upon over the last two years to combat the kinds of extreme debt and deficit problems in many countries that nearly brought down the euro currency union. Leaders were also expected to endorse a strategy that should give France, Spain and Portugal more time to meet their deficit-reduction goals, on condition that they stick to a path of cutting debt.

Protesters, even if they were aware of such concessions, were clearly unconvinced.

“All they do is cut, but we need jobs,” said Michael Mercier, a worker at a Belgian prison for juveniles who took part in an anti-austerity rally organized by trade union groups in Parc du Cinquantenaire, near the site of the summit meeting and the headquarters of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm.

“This is all the fault of the E.U.,” said Mr. Mercier, who added that the way the bloc was run mixed “too many different things in the same big pot, and this causes problems for everyone.”

One group of demonstrators managed to enter an annex of the European Union’s principal economic policy-making arm, the European Commission’s Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs, and staged a protest meeting in the cafeteria.

“We occupied their building to denounce the misery they are imposing on millions of Europeans,” said Michel Vanderopoulos, a spokesman for the group, which organized the protest, called “For a European Spring.” He said those who took part came from Belgium, Germany, Italy and Denmark.

The annex houses some of the officials who form part of the “troika” of international lenders detested by many people in countries like Greece and Portugal for its role in demanding painful belt-tightening in exchange for bailouts.

A spokesman for the commission said the protest lasted about 15 minutes and did not involve any violent confrontations. “The Belgian police arrived on scene, and the protesters left of their own accord,” the spokesman said.

At the meeting, the increasingly acrimonious dispute over austerity pitted those who favor budget discipline — the European authorities and leaders of countries like Germany and Finland — against countries like France and Spain and groups like trade unions, which favor more government spending to promote growth.

The cracks were visible at the same news conference where Mr. Van Rompuy spoke, after a “social summit” of European officials, business groups and trade unions ahead of the main meeting.

“The doubt about the benefit of the European Union is showing more and more,” said Bernadette Ségol, the general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation. “The burden is being put on the people. Unemployment is up and up and up every month. When is the growth going to come? What are we going to do to get it?”

Ms. Ségol called for the political will to increase investment and halt the focus on reducing deficits. She implored the leaders gathering in Brussels to recall that “we are dealing with people; they have feelings, and they also have the right to vote, and this is something that maybe cannot be explained in tables or figures.”

The dour forecasts have served to sharpen the debate over whether the emphasis on austerity has generated a painful cycle in which government cuts sap tax revenues and consumer demand, worsening an already bleak outlook.

The concern about growth and jobs is also prompting a return to calls for Germany, with its strong economy, to do a good deal more to help its struggling neighbors.

That is a topic that Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has sought to avoid before national elections in September and amid continued concerns among voters that financial support for the euro area from German taxpayers could badly dent the nation’s resurgent prosperity.

Arriving at the meeting, Ms. Merkel sought to emphasize the efforts the European Union had already made to fight joblessness.

“We have decided on a growth pact in the summer of last year, and now this growth pact has to be filled with life,” Ms. Merkel said. “The money is there, but it has to reach the people, so the young people in Europe get jobs and we still do everything to become competitive and grow.”

Guntram B. Wolff, the deputy director of Bruegel, a research organization, wrote this week that it was critical to support efforts like programs to create jobs for youth. But in addition, he said, “Germany will have to play a role” to stimulate demand in the region and enable other members of the euro area, like Spain, to benefit from export-led growth.

“The euro area’s recession has deepened significantly according to all available indicators,” Mr. Wolff warned. “Urgent action is needed to prevent that the recession turns into an outright depression.”

Hotel Near Dolphin Mall - Breathe Easy: Frequent Flyer Health Tips

Source - http://edition.cnn.com/
By - Daisy Carrington
Category - Hotel Near Dolphin Mall
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Hotel Near Dolphin Mall

Ten years ago, international headlines were dominated by the shocking emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a new and quick-spreading deadly virus that began in Southern China and took just weeks to spread to 37 different countries.

Perhaps the illness's biggest legacy though is illustrating the speed and ease with which a disease can traverse the global travel network and how frequent flyers can often be in the front line.

"They're more exposed because they're in contact with a higher number of (potentially infected) individuals," says Yamir Moreno of University of Zaragoza, an expert in the spreading patterns of epidemics.

"While traveling, they remain confined in a relatively small space, where they interact with other passengers that, again, might already be infected."

Though passengers often consider a plane pumping recycled air as an incubator for disease, such a viewpoint is inaccurate, according to Martin Fendt, a spokesman from plane manufacturing company Airbus. Only a portion of the air inside a plane is recirculated; the rest is fresh air sourced from outside. The recycled air is passed through High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, which removes viruses, bacteria and dust.
"Because air is circulated vertically around each row and drawn out through under-seat floor vents, it cannot move forward or aft. So the ability of viruses to transfer beyond a seat row is almost zero," he adds.
Fortunately, many of the health risks faced by road warriors can be easily mitigated with a little education.

According to Gregory Hartl, a spokesman at the World Health Organization, "if frequent travelers are aware of the risks, and take the required precautions, they can minimize the risk of acquiring disease."

Phyllis Kozarsky, a medical consultant with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confirms that reading up on an area before setting off is one of the best ways to safeguard one's health.

"People need to be alert to pubic health messages and what's emerging, be it SARS or H1N1," she says.

She adds that disease prevention isn't too different abroad as it is on the ground.

"Do the same things you would at home to avoid illness, mainly, wash your hands frequently. You can pick things up on your hands that you can transfer by rubbing your eyes, or touching your face."

While epidemics attract the headlines sexually transmitted infections and vector- and food-borne illnesses still top the charts when it comes to mortality rates.

"Most of the diseases people contract abroad are preventable. In some instances, it's just a matter of getting the right vaccine, or wearing insecticide and sleeping under a bed net," he says.

"Truthfully, outbreaks like SARS and H1N1 can be more difficult to avoid, because they can hit a city before you even know it. Whereas you can lower the risks of diarrhoeal diseases (which are among the most prevalent) simply by being careful with drinking water and making sure all the food you eat is cooked."

Kozarsky reiterates the point, adding that many traveler afflictions are also self-treatable.

"If you have the right medication with you, you can feel better in a matter of minutes, instead of days," she notes. She advises consulting a good travel doctor for a list of recommended vaccines and medications (the International Society of Travel Medicine has a global directory online). She also recommends venturing out to the drug store prior to travel.

"Go to your favorite pharmacy and walk up and down the aisles, and take the things off the shelf you'd like to have at home," she advises, adding that Imodium and antibiotics are essential additions to any travel medical kit.

Really, though, the biggest suitcase essential is common sense, "which most people forget to pack when they travel," she says.