Tax Credit

Councilman Wilson Goode Jr. introduced a bill Thursday that would double the amount of tax credits available to city businesses for creating jobs. Currently, the tax credits are capped at 1 percent of city revenue collected from the gross receipts and net income business taxes, or about $4 million a year. Goode's bill would cap the program at 2 percent of the revenue collected from those taxes. The city has had the tax credit since 2003, when the credit was $1,000 per job created.

THEY'VE GONE a little bit Hollywood this fall over at school-district headquarters. Banners for "Independence Memorial Hospital" hang high above the 440 N. Broad St. lobby, and the fifth floor's a warren of operating and waiting rooms, doctor's suites with views of the Ben Franklin Bridge in the distance and even a room with a genuine-looking (but hollow) MRI machine. It's all part of the setting for an NBC drama "Do No Harm" that's leasing space the district once used for book storage and filming there a few days every episode.

WASHINGTON - A typical middle-income family making $40,000 to $64,000 a year could see its taxes rise by $2,000 next year if lawmakers fail to renew a lengthy roster of tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, according to a new report Monday. Taxpayers across the income spectrum would be hit with large tax hikes, the Tax Policy Center said in its study, with households in the top 1-percent income range seeing an average tax increase of more than $120,000, while a family making between $110,000 to $140,000 could see a tax hike in the $6,000 range.

Wind and more Thanks for supporting continuation of the wind-power tax credit ("Wind industry's survival could depend on tax credit," Monday). I support the credit but believe that focusing on that alone is thinking much too small. We need to think about how we are going to replace coal, oil, and natural gas with wind, solar, hydro, and other renewables that will help stabilize the world climate for future generations. We already have the technology and know-how. According to Stanford's Mark Z. Jacobson, the world can be powered by alternative energy, using today's technology, in 20 to 40 years, with approximately the same investment that will be required to meet future demand through coal, oil, and natural gas energy sources.

Gov. Corbett's education agenda and Pennsylvania's school-choice movement got a big boost in late June when the legislature targeted up to $50 million in business-tax credits to help students living near low-achieving public schools attend private schools or public schools in other districts. But the new Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Program has gotten off to a slow start. As most schools prepare to open this week, only $10 million in tax credits have been snapped up by businesses.

In the Philadelphia region, the rebirth of the defunct U.S. Steel site in Bucks County makes the best case for winning the high-stakes gamble being played out in Congress over extending vital, government incentives for developing wind-energy systems. It's at the old Fairless Works that the Spanish turbine manufacturer Gamesa has employed hundreds of people, and where predicted layoffs affecting 20 percent of the firm's Pennsylvania workforce would hit hard. Gamesa has grown by leaps, building wind-power equipment and wind farms that generate 40 percent of the state's wind power - all while relying on domestic suppliers for an increasingly large share of its components.

NEW YORK - Twenty-six big U.S. companies paid their CEOs more last year than they paid the federal government in tax, according to a study released Thursday by a liberal-leaning think tank. The study, by the Institute for Policy Studies, said that the companies, including AT&T, Boeing and Citigroup, paid their CEOs an average of $20.4 million last year while paying little or no federal tax on ample profits, according to regulatory filings. On average, the 26 companies generated net income of more than $1 billion in the U.S., the study said.

The Corbett administration has stopped funding a program that helped low-income working people get federal tax credits that kept them out of poverty. The program, administered by the Department of Public Welfare for just over $500,000, also helped pay for low-income workers to have their taxes prepared free, which saves people at or below the poverty line hundreds of dollars, advocates say. The cut echoes growing concerns among Republicans in Congress about the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)

DES MOINES, Iowa - It's an overriding conservative principle: Scale back government interference and let businesses survive or fail on their merits. But standing by that principle may hurt Mitt Romney in Iowa, a hotly contested swing state that could provide a crucial six electoral college votes in November. Romney recently upset many conservatives here by saying he would end a government tax credit that helps subsidize a burgeoning wind industry in the state. Some of them - farmers who earn tens of thousands of dollars a year for having wind turbines on their property - say they won't vote for Romney because of his wind position.