MSNBC, Election Year Dilemma: Tax Hikes for Whom?, by Tom Curry:

Will you be toasting to low taxes in 2011? Or drowning your sorrows, knowing that you’re about to get hit with a higher bill from Uncle Sam? Sometime before New Year’s Eve, Congress will need to answer those questions. That’s because many provisions of the 2001 tax law, which lowered income tax rates, expire on Dec. 31. …

“The expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts is the most significant event in tax policy in generations,” said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation. “I’m hard pressed to think of another moment in the history of the tax code in which we have had so many provisions expire at the same time impacting so many Americans all at once.” …

“It would not shock me that they would not be able to get their act together” to extend some of the 2001 tax rates, said veteran tax lawyer and lobbyist Ken Kies, who formerly served as the chief of staff to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. …

Len Burman, a respected tax policy wonk who served as a Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration, told Baucus’s committee last week that “it is a good idea to extend most of the expiring tax cuts,” but not the ones for upper-income people. He said, “I think there would be relatively little cost to letting the high-end tax cuts sunset as scheduled.” …

“An under-reported story is the economic havoc that will occur if the tax on dividends increases from 15 percent to 36 percent (for those earning less than $250,000) and 39.6 percent (for those earning more than $250,000),” said Paul Caron, who publishes the TaxProf blog and teaches tax law at the University of Cincinnati law school. “Many Americans, not just the wealthy, receive dividends, such as through mutual funds,” he said.