Congress, the Senate, and President Obama agreed on a tax compromise for 2013 and 2014. I know everyone thought it was a tax decrease- but that was ONLY because the taxes had INCREASED automatically with the change of the calendar to 2013. For most of the US, those who earn money from salaries, they will see a tax INCREASE, since the payroll tax holiday that obtained for the past two years disappeared. (The Social Security tax on one’s pay was reduced from 6.2% to 4.2%. Unfortunately, that meant that the trust fund was not collecting enough money to keep solvent.)