Tax Bill

The EnterTRAINment Line president said yesterday he will continue to fight for an exemption from a tax bill totaling more than $300,000 despite rejection from a Senate committee."

During one General Assembly committee session Friday, Sen. Larry E. Haines proposed bills that would both increase and shrink local tax bases.One proposal would allow counties to collect recordation taxes, rather than allowing the Circuit Court clerk to do it; the other would exempt improvements required by the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) from being added to a company's property assessment."Unfortunately, I have to be on the other side of the table from Senator Haines on this issue," said Michael Sanderson of the Maryland Association of Counties as he spoke against the property tax exemption.

Taxes are by far the biggest item in your household budget, says the Tax Foundation, which keeps tabs on how much of your income is siphoned off by federal, state and local governments. The latest available figures reveal that the average American spends almost three times as much for government than for food.That disheartening statistic underscores just how costly a mistake it is to think of federal income taxes as simply a once-a-year affliction caused by the need to grapple with Form ++ 1040.

A three-year battle over a College Park restaurant property tax bill ended with an appeals court ruling last week that experts say may have enlarged a tax loophole that would cost state and county governments thousands of dollars in lost revenues.The Court of Special Appeals ruled that the 94th Aero Squadron restaurant, on the grounds of the College Park Airport, qualifies as a concession on government-owned land and that its landlord, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, is excused from paying its $30,000 real estate tax bill.

A liberal advocacy group has asked the attorney general's office to investigate whether the governor had a conflict of interest in vetoing a tax bill that could have cost his wife's employer money. Tom Hucker, executive director of Progressive Maryland, said yesterday the group wants Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. to examine Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s veto of a bill that would have prevented corporations from shifting assets to Delaware to avoid taxes. Records show that Comcast Cable Communications Inc. has hundreds of subsidiaries incorporated in Delaware, and first lady Kendel Ehrlich is a part-time Comcast employee.

WASHINGTON - The Senate voted 78-15 last night to give the government broader power to regulate cigarettes and create an industry-financed buyout of tobacco "quotas" that have propped up prices since the 1930s. The vote on the $12 billion tobacco buyout added language to a corporate tax bill needed to end escalating European duties on several U.S. products. Whether it will become law remains in doubt, because little time remains in this legislative year for a House-Senate conference committee to resolve disagreements about the tobacco measure.

High-income parents for years have given securities - or the cash to buy them - to their teens so that any income generated by these investments would be taxed at the children's much lower rate. The $70 billion tax bill to be signed by the president this week would put a crimp in this strategy. The legislation would raise the age of children affected by what's known as the "kiddie tax," in effect enacting a tax increase on teenagers. The bump-up in age means parents would have fewer years to take advantage of a child's more attractive tax bracket.

WASHINGTON -- In the tax legislation he submitted early this month, Rep. Bill Archer, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, proposed raising more than $4 billion in the next decade by trimming and eventually abolishing the federal tax subsidy for ethanol.Archer, a Texas Republican, even managed to win his committee's approval of the measure. But then it ran into snags.House Speaker Newt Gingrich spread the word that he would use his authority to have the changes in the tax treatment ofethanol deleted or at least significantly modified before the tax bill went before the full House of Representatives.

A short-lived effort by Senate Republicans to delay passage of a tax bill died after about 90 minutes yesterday, when Democrats mustered the votes to break a filibuster and pass the final piece of the $22.4 billion state budget. Republicans recognized their efforts were futile - it was clear the Senate would approve the bills, including a $135 million tax package. At the same time, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. wasn't softening his pledge to veto it. But GOP senators said they wanted to take the only stand they could on the tax issue.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Finance Committee plans to add several key health-care proposals to the tax cut bill it drafts this week, including provisions designed to make it easier and less expensive for Americans to buy medical insurance, according to Senate strategists.Among them will be provisions that would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to people with existing medical problems and would enable workers who have health problems to continue their current medical insurance if they change jobs.