NEWS
May 25, 2012
Q. I think electric cars are the wave of the future. As soon as I read that [GM's Volt is available in all states], I contacted a nearby Chevy dealer who has been a lifelong friend to get on the list to buy one. He assured me that I'd be among his first 50. The price will be about $40,000. The demand is apparently so great that the dealer will be able to demand full sticker price for some time to come, so I got no price break. However, he assured me that the price hit will be softened by a federal income-tax credit.
NEWS
May 23, 2012 | By Joelle Farrell, INQUIRER Trenton Bureau
TRENTON — When the electric company shut off Barbara Offredo's service last spring, she used flashlights to cheer up her 11-year-old son, Joseph, who missed lights, cooked meals, and hot showers. "Pretend we are camping," she told him, knowing it would be eight days before she could pay some of what she owed. Offredo, 51, of Hamilton, choked up telling the story Monday. A full-time hospice nurse and single mother of two, Offredo said she is on the brink of homelessness because rent for her two-bedroom apartment eats up half of her monthly salary.
NEWS
May 4, 2012 | By Angela Delli Santi, Associated presS
GARFIELD, N.J. — Gov. Christie on Wednesday ramped up public pressure on Assembly Democrats to agree to his tax-cut plan. The Republican governor told a town hall audience in this Bergen County town that Democrats in the lower house are obsessed with raising taxes. Christie is trying to drum up support for his plan to reduce income taxes by 10 percent over four years. The Assembly and Senate have offered competing plans. The Assembly plan would reduce taxes 20 percent — 25 percent for seniors and the disabled — funding the reduction by reinstating the so-called millionaires' tax. Christie previously has vetoed a millionaires' tax. The Senate plan provides a tax credit of up to $1,000 based on amount of property taxes paid.
NEWS
May 4, 2012 | By Jan Ransom, Daily News Staff Writer
As City Council mulls Mayor Nutter's proposal to shift to a property-tax system based on market values, Council President Darrell Clarke revealed a plan Thursday that would lessen the blow to longtime homeowners, seniors and low-income residents. Clarke's proposal includes a plan to give property-tax exemptions to homeowners of 10 years or more in neighborhoods where property values have spiked due to development. The bill doesn't yet specify the amount of the exemption, and the city would need enabling legislation from the state.
NEWS
April 16, 2012 | By Melissa Dribben, Inquirer Staff Writer
Mark Segal had been biting his nails, waiting for the call. Thursday morning, he was drinking a mug of sweet vanilla coffee in his den above the offices of the Philadelphia Gay News when the phone finally rang. His dream project, an affordable housing complex welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender seniors, had won a competitive bid for an $11 million state tax credit. "I've been trying not to cry," Segal said Sunday, barely succeeding in holding back the kvell . For more than three years, the 61-year-old founder and publisher of PGN has been planning, lobbying, negotiating, collaborating, and cajoling every social-service agency, activist group, and political leader he knows to make Philadelphia one of the first cities in the nation to meet the needs of the aging LGBT community.
BUSINESS
March 4, 2012 | By Gail MarksJarvis, Chicago Tribune
Give your tax return your full attention. It might be one of your last chances to partake in about $450 billion in tax breaks set to disappear at the end of this year. With the federal government scrounging for money and desperate to relieve a mounting deficit, lawmakers are circling some favorite tax breaks like vultures. During the last couple of years, they have tried to spur an anemic economy by putting a little more of your income back into your pocket instead of routing it to taxes.
NEWS
March 2, 2012 | BY JAN RANSOM, Daily News Staff Writer
WHEN THE CITY and the Philadelphia School District participated in interest-rate swaps - contracts aimed at trimming city borrowing costs - it backfired and the city ended up dishing out millions to big banks to break the deal. Now, City Council wants to see if the city can get some of that money back and whether legal action should be pursued. Councilman Jim Kenney introduced a resolution yesterday calling for hearings to investigate the use of interest-rate swaps. Local governments and schools were swayed by bankers in the early 2000s to purchase swaps that were dependent on the future of U.S. interest rates.
NEWS
February 24, 2012 | By Troy Graham, Inquirer Staff Writer
The city has won $50 million in federal tax credits that will be used to spur economic-development projects in targeted neighborhoods, Mayor Nutter announced Thursday. The money will be doled out by the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. primarily for four types of projects - supermarket-anchored shopping centers, health-care facilities, manufacturing, and mixed-use developments. The city last received the New Markets Tax Credits in 2007, using the money to help finance four projects, including the SuperFresh grocery at Second Street and Girard Avenue and the Hilton Homewood Suites on City Avenue.
BUSINESS
February 19, 2012 | By Gail MarksJarvis, Chicago Tribune
After the financial stress of the last few years, your tax return this year might offer some relief, but it also might deliver some disappointment. If you were out of a job for part of 2011, you may find yourself able to qualify for lucrative tax credits and deductions you can't normally get. At the same time, however, Uncle Sam will continue to make an unpleasant demand if you were one of the first-time home buyers who used a $7,500 tax credit in 2008 to buy a new home. People who took that credit in 2008 have to pay it back, said Robin Christian, senior tax analyst for Thomson Reuters.