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Tax Hikes under the Guise of Tax Relief?

Here’s more on what the House might be considering for its next tax bill this spring. As you’ll recall, last week they announced they would put forward a plan to address — that is, slow the growth of — the Alternative Minimum Tax among upper income taxpayers. This plan would be permanent, and would likely be offset with targeted tax increases elsewhere.

What would these targeted tax increases look like?

According to several sources, the Ways and Means Committee plans to lower the income thresholds applying to the 33 and 35 percent tax brackets. For married taxpayers filing jointly in 2006, the

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2019-02-06T18:46:05+00:00March 13, 2007|

AMT Plan Imminent — House & Senate Moving in Different Directions

The Ways & Means held a hearing yesterday on the Alternative Minimum Tax. While there is broad consensus in the tax world that the AMT is broken, there is little common ground on exactly how to go about fixing it. To date, Congress and the Administration have confined their efforts to temporary, one or two year “patches” that raised the AMT exemption just enough to limit the growth of AMT taxpayers. The current higher exemption runs through 2006, however, so Congress needs to act in the next

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2019-02-06T18:46:05+00:00March 8, 2007|

Energy Tax Bill and Energy Offsets

For those small business groups who are thinking that Big Oil will foot the bill for any energy tax title enacted this year, a new CRS report issued Tuesday provides little comfort.

The report, entitled “Oil and Gas Subsidies: Current Status and Analysis,” summarizes the current state of tax provisions targeted directly at the oil and gas industries. What they found is those tax “subsidies” are not as valuable as many people have assumed. As the report concludes:

“Although the above oil and gas tax subsidies may not be justified

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2019-02-06T18:46:05+00:00March 2, 2007|

S-CORP Leads Coalition Push for S Corporation Reforms in Minimum Wage Bill

The S Corporation Association (“S-CORP”) today sent a letter to congressional tax writers advocating for the inclusion of S corporation reforms in the final small business tax relief package and for the need to make these provisions effective immediately.

Signed by the S Corporation Association, the Associated General Contractors, the Printing Industries of America, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the Association for Manufacturing Technology, America’s Community Bankers, and the National Roofing Contractors Association, the letter emphasizes the important role S corporations play in the growth of small businesses and the

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2019-02-06T18:46:05+00:00February 28, 2007|

Is Official Washington Targeting S Corporations? Sure Looks That Way

As our readers know, the IRS is currently targeting S corporations, and only S corporations, for audits as part of its on-going “Tax Gap” research project. And the Joint Committee on Taxation and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration have, over the past couple year, proposed to dramatically increase the application of payroll taxes on S corporation income.

Now the Congressional Budget Office issues its new biannual “Budget Options” report, and there, on page 297 is an option entitled, “Repeal Tax-Free

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2019-02-06T18:46:06+00:00February 26, 2007|