What's a qualified dividend and is there really no tax on it?

Certainly others are going to give a more knowledgable answer than I do

Dividends are taxed at cap gains rate after owning for some period (?90 days?)

There is some amount of cap gains/qual dividends that you don't pay taxes on if that is your only income. Combine that with standard deduction and you can have fair amount of income if these are your ONLY income and not be taxed.

I did not think it was $120k but maybe

It is misleading at best or outright lie (to get views or make some inequality point I assume) to say that there are no taxes on qualified dividends.

ETA
Further down in thread

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josh.paiva
MFJ 0-94,050 is 0% LTCG rate, plus standard deduction. OP is technically correct, if that is the only source of income, it would all be taxed at zero percent.

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Uhmm no. Unless the divy came from something like a ROTH IRA and you are over 59 and half.

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Unless the divy came from something like a ROTH IRA and you are over 59 and half.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the dividend have to be re-invested or stay in the acct for 5 years before it comes out tax free in a Roth for people 59.5 or older?

A qualified dividend is a dividend in the normal way we think of them... payments from corporations that are made to shareholders.

It is true that if your total taxable income is below certain levels, there is a 0% federal tax rate that applies to qualified dividends and long term capital gains that are part of that taxable income.

You need to report them because they are indeed part of your taxable income, and if your taxable income is too high, you lose this 0% rate on this kind of income.

Also as Slackster said, this does not apply to most states that charge an income tax. So while it might be 0% for federal tax, it will likely still have some state tax consequence, unless you have no state income tax, or another state tax provision applies.