This is not just a come-on TV pitch.  This now applies to taxes, too. If you have interest income of $10 or more, you will get a Form 1099 INT showing you the interest you earned during the last year.  If you made less than $10 of interest income, you will not get a 1099 INT. Your total interest earned for the year will be shown on your last bank statement of the year. Bank tellers will tell you correctly, that if your interest is less than $10 you will not get a 1099…that is true.  What is NOT true is “Don’t worry about it, It’s not taxable.” Americans are taxed on their WORLD-WIDE income. Every dollar is taxable unless it is specifically excluded by law. Remember, bank tellers are in the banking business, NOT the tax business. If you own stocks in companies that pay dividends to their shareholders, and you have dividend income of $10 or more during the last year, you should get a Form 1099 DIV.  This 1099 will show many things and that is why your tax preparer will want to see the actual form. You may not have received any actual cash – your dividend may have been used to purchase additional stock. That is still dividend income that needs to be reported on your tax return. You may have interest income or dividend income from tax-exempt sources. While these may be exempt from federal income tax, they may be taxable on your state tax return AND you must still report this on your federal 1040 tax return. Income tax is not the only tax that is collected from the Form 1040. Some taxpayers must also pay what is called Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).  Tax-exempt investment income is used to help calculate this AMT. Most taxpayers pay a regular tax that is above the minimum. They just don’t know that their regular tax is more than the minimum tax This is not because the tax is figured incorrectly. When a taxpayer has a large amount of itemized deductions, and may have tax exempt income, and perhaps has other tax-favorable events on a tax return, that person may have taken their income below the minimum tax level. That is when the AMT will kick in and raise the lowered tax up to the minimum regular tax. When I started this article I said, “Wait, There’s More”.  If you are an investor with a brokerage account that contains mutual funds. you may not have the final income picture when your 1099B is issued. Originally these forms were to be issued on January 31st. Brokerage accounts were rarely able to meet this deadline so the IRS allowed them until February 15th. Why did they get this extra time? Because the IRS understood that the mutual fund companies needed to finalize their number crunching. The mutual fund companies are invested in multiple different stock companies and if every company waited until January 31 to file their reports, there was no way the brokerage account could also meet that January 31 deadline. But wait, there is even more. When you get your 1099B in mid-February for the year before, they may tell you to expect an amended 1099. They are letting you know that the companies they are invested in also may need more time to finalize their numbers. What a vicious cycle! Be prepared to delay the completion of your tax return until after mid-March. If there are changes to the income reported on your 1099B, it is often better to wait a few weeks, than to file your tax return in February and then have to amend it later for the corrected amounts.