Where tax policy meets politics — legislation, elections, and the debates in Washington that decide how (and how much) you’re taxed.
The Senate failed to say no to $35 billion worth of tax breaks for the oil and gas industry on yesterday. I know, double negatives. But that’s the easiest way to describe it. You see, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a provision that would have limited write offs for drilling expenses, eliminated a tax deduction…
As small businesses collectively hold their breath this summer over the inane Congressional proposal to tax some – but not all – s corporations differently, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) is offering some hope. Together with Mike Enzi (R-WY), she is filing an amendment to strike the provision from the bill altogether. Calling the tax a…
The crazy train that is Congress just keeps on rolling this week. Despite the overwhelming cost to taxpayers of the homebuyer’s credit, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has caved to housing lobbyists decided that money does, in fact, grow on trees panicked about the number of seats the Dems appear to be losing in…
Forget dying birds. Who cares about poisoned fish? Those sick fishermen? They’ll totally get over it – after all, it was food poisoning, right, Tony Hayward? What we need in this country is cash. And we can exploit the BP spill to get it. Democrats in the Senate have come up with a way to…
My daughter asked me the other day why the birds couldn’t breathe. It took me awhile to figure out that she was talking about what’s going on in the Gulf. We’re going on day 46 of the BP spill. So far, BP has tried robots, drilling a relief well, a contaminant dome, “Top Hat”, “Top…
If Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) gets his way, the cost of calling for tech support is going up. Under a new proposal, US companies would be taxed 25 cents per call outsourced to a foreign call center; there would be no fee for calls transferred to a call center inside the US. The bill would…
When I got up this morning, I was all set to blog more about the disaster that is (and let me type it out one more time) the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010. Specifically, I was going to focus on the S corporation provisions, which seem to be taking a beating…
It’s almost like Congress is dragging this thing out just to make me have to type the phrase American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010. There’s not even a good acronym for it since there are too many consonants and not enough vowels: AJCTLA, which kind of sounds like something Gwen Stefani would…
Hmm. Maybe Congress is listening after all. After vowing to rush the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010 (the revised Tax Extenders Bill) through, they’ve taken a step back. On Friday, House members decided to give themselves a 72-hour window for “member review.” I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up, but…
Apparently, Congress is on a roll. Just a couple of months after they pushed through the massive health care bill (referred to as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March 2010) and debated the similarly hefty Tax Extenders Bill (referred to as the American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act…