Tax Law

It was a $16 million tax problem, and, not surprisingly, David L. Cohen, the mayor's then-chief of staff, found an answer. So large was Cohen's reputation around City Council that the legislative solution he helped put together sailed through City Council last March. But now the city is facing unintended consequences from the bill. A group of powerful banks and trust companies want the Rendell administration and Council to abandon a new personal-property-tax law or face a major exodus to the suburbs of trust accounts that make up an estimated 60 percent of the current tax revenue.

Don't be surprised this year if the guy who's been renting his beach house to you for the past several years suddenly tells you that it won't be available this summer. The new tax code contains a provision that takes away the incentive of rich people to rent their vacation homes. The law stipulates that people who make more than $100,000 a year lose all tax breaks associated with a vacation home if they rent it out for more than two weeks. "You see people taking homes off the rental market," said Jay Lamont, director of the Real Estate Institute at Temple University.

Consumers, businesses and industries are beginning this year to enjoy a benefit of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 - lower utility bills. For example, the act enabled Philadelphia Electric Co. to announce that on Jan. 1, electric rates would decline, despite the added cost of its Limerick 1 nuclear plant. In Pennsylvania, customers of electric, natural gas, telephone and water utilities will pay about $320 million a year less than before tax reform because of rate reductions ordered by the Public Utility Commission.

It wouldn't be easy to do, but there is a case for gathering all writers and squatting them down for a few weeks in, say, Rhode Island. Then give the Rhode Island primary a great big hype. Writers are pretty good at arranging for that kind of thing. Why, give us a couple of years and the Rhode Island primary can be made to look like the Congress of Vienna, the Versailles Peace Conference and the All-Time Summit Conference. Writers aren't farmers. They are neither as numerous nor, as a class, as prosperous.

Rare and valuable paintings, sculptures and other works of art were donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art last year, thanks perhaps to a change in the 1993 tax law affecting charitable contributions. In December alone, a painting by Ralph Earl entered the museum's collection, the first by the 18th-century American artist, along with an ornate, early-Victorian marble-top table and a rare 17th-century iron chest from India. The three works of art, all year-end gifts from individuals, collectively are valued at more than $100,000.

Joseph S. Finch, disbursements manager for Du Pont Co. of Wilmington, has some new problems these days - 250,000 of them, actually - thanks to the tax law enacted by Congress last year. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was supposed to simplify the tax code, but Finch and most of 90 other expense and travel managers who attended a seminar on the new law yesterday insisted the new law is not simpler, especially in the areas of meal and entertainment expenses. Finch said that since Jan. 1, when the new expense provisions went into effect, he has had to handle differently the 250,000 expense reports received each year from the international chemical firm's 40,000 U.S. employees.

An era in Upper Darby's history came to an end this week when the McClatchy family, which has owned the 69th Street shopping district for 60 years, sold the commercial district to a Philadelphia realtor and mall owner for approximately $9 million. The heirs of John B. McClatchy Sr. and his brother, Richard, sold the shopping district Tuesday to Morris Willner, owner of Willner Realty, said Robert M. Segal, chairman of the executive committee of Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen, the Philadelphia law firm that handled the sale.

Next October, when I (a widow) marry my fiance (a widower), he will be 59 and I will be 54. He plans to sell his home and move into mine. Of course, he will use his one-time $125,000 home-sale tax exemption. My questions are: Will I lose my one-time exemption privilege by marrying a man who has already used his? If so, can I avoid the loss if we marry after May 1, 1988, when I become 55? Must we be sure to sell his house before our wedding day? If delaying the marriage by six months could preserve my one-time exemption until we retire, we might wait to get married.

General Electric has been slowly moving manufacturing jobs from China and Mexico to the United States, and Apple says it will spend $100 million to manufacture Mac computers in this country. That sounds like the beginning of a good trend, but it needs a shove. Democrats in the last election made campaign promises to pass legislation to eliminate the destructive practice of rewarding businesses for putting Americans on the unemployment line by allowing companies to take a tax deduction for the cost of exporting jobs overseas.

Mayor Goode, reacting to the disclosure of a multi-million-dollar property- tax break for condominium owners at a Rittenhouse Square high-rise, said yesterday that the city's tax exemption program may need to be changed. While defending the tax break for owners at The Rittenhouse condo and hotel project, Goode acknowledged that a 1978 tax law declaring the entire city a "deterioriating area" for exemption purposes was outdated. It was under that law that The Rittenhouse, located in one of the city's most affluent neighborhoods, received a five-year exemption that could save each condo owner from $30,000 to $130,000.