Once President Bush signs the final bill, the tax rate on dividends, retroactive to the first of the year, should fall to 15 percent for most people and 5 percent for those in the 10-percentage-point tax bracket. The capital gains rate should fall to the same levels for transactions after May 5.

For investors, the biggest benefit of the cuts would be a rip-roaring economy and a brand-new bull market. Would they really help?

Hard to say. On the one hand, tax breaks are a standard tonic. When you roll back taxes, you put money in consumers' pockets, and they spend more. That, in turn, stimulates business and hiring. If the economy starts chugging, the stock market should rise, and unemployment should fall.

On the other hand, you need a lot of dividend income for this tax break to stimulate your personal economy, and companies are stingy doling dividends out. Split $1 million among the 354 dividend-paying stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, and you'd get $23,200 in dividends, says Howard Silverblatt, quantitative analyst at S&P.

For all but the very wealthy, the tax break from dividends would be meager. Suppose you had $100,000 in the Vanguard 500 Index fund on Jan. 1, 2002. You would have collected $1,219 in dividends last year, according to Vanguard. Had you been in the 38.6 percent tax bracket, you would have owed $470 in taxes. At 15 percent, your tax would have been $183. Total savings: $287.

The new rules could prompt more companies to pay dividends, however. And companies with decent dividend payouts should become more attractive. So your first move should be to look for stocks of companies with decent dividend payouts.

One simple investment technique is the Dogs of the Dow. How you do it: Invest in the 10 Dow stocks with the highest dividend yield each year. That's it.

The strategy is called the Dogs of the Dow because a high dividend yield is often a danger sign. A Dow Dog has a high yield because its price has fallen, not because it has a generous dividend payout. When you buy a Dow Dog, you're buying the stock of an established company that's undergoing some problems, which, you hope, are temporary.

The 10 current Dogs, according to www.dogsofthedow.com: Altria, Eastman Kodak, General Motors, SBC Communications, J.P. Morgan Chase, AT&T, DuPont, Honeywell, ExxonMobil and General Electric. Average yield: 4.4 percent.

Some stock sectors traditionally pay above-average dividends. Banks, for example, pay an average 3.2 percent in dividends, says James Schmidt, manager of John Hancock Regional Bank. Utilities also pay top dividends.

Mutual fund fans can invest in an equity-income fund, which specializes in dividend-paying stocks. Typically, these funds don't pay a lot of dividends, because they must take their annual expenses from their dividend payout. But the funds in the chart have a good record of paying decent dividends.

The new rules mean that it's important to keep your stocks outside of tax-sheltered investments, such as corporate 401(k) plans, says Gary Schatsky, a New York financial planner. When you keep your stocks in a taxable account, you'll pay 15 percent on your gains, and your dividends will be taxed at the same rate. Put them in a 401(k), and they eventually will be taxed at your maximum income tax rate, which would fall to 35 percent from 38.6 percent now. And you can deduct capital losses from a taxable account.

If you have a stock you've been dying to sell at a profit, this is the time to do it. "There's little to suggest taxes will go any lower," Schatsky says.

Most people won't pay a lot of attention to the proposed capital gains provisions of the tax bill.