Take note, Nevadans: If you own one of the estimated 100,000 homes that experts predict will be lost to foreclosure before the protracted housing crisis comes to an end, you may see a massive tax hike this time next year.

A law that has waived homeowners’ tax liability for any mortgage debt that was forgiven through modified loans, short sales or foreclosures is expiring at the end of 2012. If Congress doesn’t vote for an extension this year, forgiven debt will again be taxed as regular income — just as it was before 2007, when the provision was passed after the housing bubble burst.

In the past four years, the law has waived the tax liability for tens of billions of dollars in forgiven mortgage debt, saving families who are either severely underwater on their mortgages or have lost their homes tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes they would have otherwise owed the federal government.

To the congressional delegation from Nevada, the hardest hit and most foreclosure-ridden state in the nation, extending the provision seems a no-brainer, at least in concept.

But even though the expiration date is months away, some lawmakers are bracing for an uphill battle.

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The main fight in Congress this year is over how to balance the federal budget, or at least reduce deficit spending. The constant partisan back-and-forth over how best to do that essentially boils down to two options: cut more or tax more.

But also in the mix is a third option: getting rid of tax loopholes.

To the Democrats, that means eliminating subsidies for the oil and gas industries and eliminating tax write-offs for luxury items. To some Republicans, waiving taxes for forgiven debt for foreclosed homeowners looks like a tax giveaway, experts say.

“There are many on both sides of the aisle who believe ... the way to (bring the debt down) is to get rid of special-interest earmarks in the tax code. And for some, this is how this will be presented,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, who now heads up the conservative-leaning American Action Forum.

He said last week that he expects Republican House freshmen affiliated with the Tea Party to sound the loudest alarm on “tax-code ‘bailouts’.”

(For proponents of extending the tax waiver on forgiven debt, it probably doesn’t help that the provision, initially adopted in 2007, was extended through 2012 as part of the same bill that orchestrated the bank bailout.)

“Past this year, if you start doing tax reform, that reform is about getting rid of all sorts of special provisions,” he said.

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