J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2013: For Preparing Your 2012 Tax Return

22.3 Tax Computation Worksheet

If your taxable income is $100,000 or more and you do not have net capital gain or qualified dividends (22.4), or claim the foreign earned income or housing exclusion (22.5), you must figure your 2012 regular tax liability on the IRS’s Tax Computation Worksheet. The Tax Computation Worksheet provides the same amount of tax as the IRS tax rate schedules.

When this book went to press, the Tax Computation Worksheet was not available. The Worksheet will be in the e-Supplement at jklasser.com and in the Form 1040 instructions.

Since the Tax Computation Worksheet is used only by taxpayers with taxable incomes of $100,000 or more, it only shows the tax rate brackets that a taxpayer with taxable income of at least $100,000 can be subject to. These brackets vary with each filing status. To figure your regular income tax liability using the Tax Computation Worksheet, follow the column-by-column instructions. First go to the section corresponding to your filing status and find the (horizontal) row that includes your taxable income from Line 43 of Form 1040. In column (a) of that row, enter your taxable income. Multiply your taxable income by your top tax rate shown in column (b), enter the result in column (c), and then reduce it by the subtraction amount shown in column (d) to obtain the regular tax liability that you enter on Form 1040.