Tax Credit

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said this week he plans to introduce tax-credit legislation that should help working families become homeowners. Under his Home Ownership Tax Credit Act, the federal government would issue targeted tax credits to participating lenders that, in turn, would be obligated to offer either low- or no-interest second mortgages to low-income homebuyers. The plan, says the first-term senator, would allow renters earning as little as $14,500 a year to "step up to join the great middle class.

Is the U.S. Congress' misfeasance in 1991 limited to overdrawn checking accounts, fixed parking tickets, restaurant bills in arrears and ignorance of sexual harassment's powder keg? Apparently not. The same body that the founding fathers believed would be close to the people seems light-years away from critical hometown needs. Early in summer, Congress nearly gutted the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, the best tool ever to get banks to grant loans in working-class and poor neighborhoods.

Message to Snooki, the Situation, and friends: You can fist-pump in da club all night long, but not on New Jersey's dime. Gov. Christie on Monday vetoed a $420,000 TV-production tax credit for Jersey Shore , MTV's hit reality series about eight hard-drinking housemates based in Seaside Heights. The governor has long criticized the show, now in its fourth season, as reinforcing negative stereotypes of New Jersey. In a letter to Caren Franzini, CEO of the state Economic Development Authority, dated Monday, he went further.

The end of the federal home buyers' tax credit pulled the rug out from under Philadelphia real estate sales and prices in the third quarter, data gleaned from city records show. From July through September, the typical home sold in Philadelphia fell in value by an average 4.6 percent from second-quarter levels and was down 3.3 percent from 2009's third quarter, economist Kevin Gillen, vice president of Econsult Corp. in Philadelphia, said Wednesday. "This most recent decline more than eliminates the gains from the previous quarter, in which prices rose 3.8 percent as buyers sought to take advantage of the federal tax credit before its expiration in June," he said.

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania will soon offer a new sweetener to attract developers to blighted communities: a tax credit for restoring historic buildings. After 16 years of on-and-off debate, legislation establishing a 25 percent tax credit for historic-preservation projects rolled through the General Assembly straight to Gov. Corbett's desk in the final hours before lawmakers' summer recess. With Corbett's signature last week, Pennsylvania - which boasts one of the largest numbers of designated historic structures in the nation - became the 30th state to provide such a tax credit.

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania will soon offer a new sweetener to attract developers to blighted communities: a tax credit for restoring historic buildings. After 16 years of on-and-off debate, legislation establishing a 25-percent tax credit for historic preservation projects rolled through the General Assembly and straight to Gov. Corbett's desk in the final hours before summer recess. With Corbett's signature last week, Pennsylvania - which boasts one of the largest numbers of designated historic structures in the nation - became the 30th state to provide such a tax credit.

The Senate passed an expanded child tax credit yesterday that would result in government checks for up to 6.5 million low-income families who did not qualify for them in the bill President Bush signed into law last month. After Democrats protested that the initial bill punished the poor, Senate Republicans moved quickly to strike a deal and put out a political brushfire. The measure passed, 94-2. All six Philadelphia-area senators voted for it. Only Oklahoma Republicans James M. Inhofe and Don Nickles voted no. The House still must act, however, and Republicans there want to add bigger tax cuts to the measure before passing it. The White House has said the President would sign the Senate proposal.

If Pennsylvania ended its tax incentive for film companies, some crews would pack up and find locations outside the state to shoot, a report released yesterday found. Pennsylvania "could expect to lose significant amounts of production activity statewide without such an incentive," according to the report by the General Assembly's Legislative Budget and Finance Committee. "In the current economics of the industry and the highly competitive landscape at state levels, the presence of a film tax credit for producers can be considered the price of admission for being considered for such activity," the report said, noting that only eight states don't offer such credits.

WASHINGTON - The IRS approved more than a half-billion dollars in homebuyer tax credits to people who probably did not qualify, a government investigator said Friday. Most of the money - about $326 million - went to more than 47,000 taxpayers who did not qualify as first-time homebuyers because there was evidence they had already owned homes, the report by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, said. Other tax credits went to prison inmates, taxpayers who bought homes before the benefit was enacted, and people who did not actually buy homes.

New-home sales soared in April to levels not seen since before 2008's financial meltdown, but the expiring federal tax credit might be just part of the surge, industry experts say. Whatever the reason, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday that sales of new homes climbed a whopping 47.8 percent above April 2009, and were 14.8 percent higher than its revised rate for March. Although there are no regional sales data available, many Philadelphia-area builders reported that they, too, benefited from the tax credit, adding their own incentives to bring buyers in. The now-expired federal tax credit offered as much as $8,000 to qualified first-time buyers and a maximum of $6,500 to people who had not purchased a primary residence in the last five years.