Filing 2012 income taxes? Five changes to watch for.

Here are new income tax provisions to watch for as you work through your 1040 form:

4. Donations from an Individual Retirement Account

Margaret Bowles/AP Images for PetSmart Charities/File
Elizabeth Pratt, 9, and Jessi Hayes welcome Dawn as the 50,000th dog transported through the PetSmart Charities' Rescue Waggin' Program in 2011 in Boulder, Colo. Seniors who make a charitable donation directly from their IRA won't be taxed for 2012 or 2013.

For 2012 and 2013, taxpayers age 70-1/2 and older who make charitable donations directly from an IRA won't be taxed for a withdrawal up to $100,000. Also, if a direct transfer was made in January 2013, the rules allow the transfer to be treated as though it happened in 2012. Normally, withdrawals from a non-Roth IRA are included as taxable income, even if the money goes to a charity.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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