"Fiscal Cliff" yo

  What is a fiscal cliff? A fiscal cliff is an automatic $500 billion tax increase and across the US spending cuts scheduled to take effect after Jan. 1st. This means taxes would rise for nearly every taxpayer and numerous businesses. Federal program financing would be cut as well as military and domestic programs. Economists say that a quick, sharp cut to the economy would create a weak economy. The unemployment compensation program is expiring, and this would save the US $26 billion, but this would end all payments/benefits to unemployed US citizens. Medicare payments to physicians would also be reduced to 27%. 
  In addition to the fiscal cliff, what is a payroll tax holiday? A payroll tax holiday is a tax cut that reduces social security tax by 2% as well as creates the benefit to working citizens by lowering their tax payments. For example, a person who makes $50,000 the payroll tax holiday works out to be about $20 a week. The more money one has, the more they can purchase necessary item such as: food, clothes, water, housing. This payroll tax holiday is beneficiary to the economy because of the increase in spending money each week. 
  What is the AMT? Alternative minimum tax is an extra amount of money that is placed on top of the original income tax. The intentions of this idea was to prevent the wealthy class from paying little to no tax, and claiming special tax benefits. However, everyone is now a potential target for this tax. The AMT provides an alternative set of rules for calculating one's income tax. If you're already paying regular tax, you do not have to pay AMT tax.
  What is the sequester? The sequester is a package of automatic spending cuts that total up to $1.2 trillion. These cuts evenly split up between defense spending and discretionary domestic spending. According to the New White house report, the US is expected to have $109 billion in cuts, for the 2013 year. Why is the sequester hated upon by most US citizens? Well, these cuts are intended to hit all affected programs equally. This aggravates legislators because they have make budget deals in order to avoid the cuts. The sequester can be avoided, but only if Congress passes another budget deal that would achieve at least $1.2 trillion.