Loophole

Re “ Corporate tax rate may be lowered ,” Business, Dec. 25 Republicans have agreed that loopholes should be closed for corporations. The most egregious loophole may be the one that in effect gives interest-free loans to U.S. corporations to invest overseas. I am referring to the loophole whereby they are excused from paying taxes until the money earned is “repatriated.” If the president is willing to lower the rate to competitive levels, he should insist on changes to this tax break.

Stephanie Nordlinger, who lives in a modest Baldwin Hills tract home, has been reading with interest the news stories about computer magnate Michael Dell and his low, low property taxes. Last week, the Times reported that Dell has saved more than a million dollars a year in taxes on a landmark Santa Monica hotel by exploiting a gaping legal loophole in the rules that govern how Proposition 13 is applied. By bringing his wife and two investment advisors into the 2006 deal for the Fairmont Miramar Hotel, my colleagues Jason Felch and Jack Dolan reported, Dell has so far been able to keep his taxes based on the hotel's 1999 assessed value of $86 million, rather than the $200 million he paid.

Payday lenders are the bottom-feeders of the financial industry, offering short-term loans with high fees to borrowers who typically live from paycheck to paycheck. Even those that play by state rules can still ensnare over- extended borrowers in debt traps. Yet some payday lenders can't seem to live with any regulation at all.

Two prominent defenders of Proposition 13 spoke out on Tuesday against "gimmicks" used by some companies to avoid paying additional property taxes when buying real estate in California. Responding to a Los Angeles Times story that ran Sunday, the presidents of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. and the Small Business Action Committee said they would be open to narrow legislation to fix the law, which appears to allow such deals. The statements mark a shift for two organizations that have long led the fight against changes to Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot initiative that transformed property taxes in California and sparked a nationwide tax revolt.

A case to be argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday poses the question of whether a prisoner must be advised of his rights when he is interrogated inside prison walls. The court should answer yes and close an unconscionable loophole in the Miranda rule. Randall Lee Fields was in jail for disorderly conduct when he was taken by a corrections officer to a locked conference room. He was then questioned about his relationship with a man named Travis Bice, whom he had met when Bice was a minor.

WASHINGTON -- The senators behind the Volcker Rule warned Friday that regulators implementing it have proposed a loophole that would have allowed JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s $2-billion trading loss. "That loophole should be closed," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). Levin and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) wrote the provision in the 2010 financial reform law designed to limit trading by depositary banks for their own accounts. The Federal Reserve and other agencies are drafting the specific regulations covering that proprietary trading.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, who represents the west San Fernando Valley, on Wednesday sought to close a loophole in the city's zoning code that allows construction of more than one home on a large residential lot without public hearings.

A controversial $40-billion government program to buy toxic securities from ailing banks has a flaw that law enforcement and financial experts say could allow traders to illegally profit from inside information. Critics of the program say that without adequate safeguards, traders could use the tens of billions of dollars provided by the government to manipulate prices and exploit the price swings in other trades. Because the government is providing 75% of the program's money -- $30 billion -- the manipulations could lead to significant losses by taxpayers.

Re "Closing the 'sloophole,' " editorial, Feb. 19 Folks rich enough to afford a motor home, a yacht or an airplane should view it as an issue of conscience to pay sales taxes and user fees. This latest attempt to reverse-Robin Hood the California treasury only spares the wealthy from paying taxes they can easily afford. Otherwise they shouldn't be buying those toys in the first place. They and the politicians who are enabling them should hang their heads in shame. Joan Walston Santa Monica -- Perhaps it would be a good idea to publish the names of legislators who voted to keep the loophole intact.

Re "Loophole You Can Sail a Yacht Through," June 30: Yachting in California used to be very middle-class recreation. The typical racing sailboat was a 30-footer, owned by an aerospace worker and crewed by his family and friends. Today, boating, particularly in Southern California, is much more a rich man's game. It would not hurt my feelings to force a few wealthy scofflaws to pay their fair share. To say they would leave the state is nonsense. Maybe they could just buy slightly smaller boats so a few more little guys could squeeze into the marinas.

In 2006, billionaire computer magnate Michael Dell, one of the world's richest men, agreed to pay $200 million for the Fairmont Miramar Hotel, a beachfront landmark in Santa Monica that long has been a retreat for Hollywood starlets and U.S. presidents. A few months later, Dell tore up the contract. He still wanted the hotel. But his attorneys had found a simple way to reshuffle the deal to avoid a legal change in ownership. The maneuver saved about $1 million a year in property taxes -- an option available only to businesses, not homeowners, under the arcane rules governing Proposition 13. The Miramar deal illustrates how businesses can easily -- and legally -- avoid property tax hikes under the California ballot initiative passed in 1978.

With rare bipartisan support, the Senate is poised to pass a bill this week that could lead largely to the end of the nation's long online sales tax holiday. The measure would allow states to require that large online retailers collect sales taxes on goods sold over the Internet, closing a loophole that has benefited the likes of EBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. The White House gave the legislation its approval Monday, and it passed a key procedural hurdle. The Senate voted 74 to 20 to begin consideration of the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act, with a final vote expected in a few days.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge is expected Wednesday morning to decide whether an 86-year-old murder defendant should be released from custody and into the care of his son. Nattie Kennebrew, who is legally blind, in a wheelchair and suffers from severe dementia, is charged with killing an apartment handyman in 2009. After a preliminary hearing, Kennebrew was ordered to stand trial. But before the case went to a jury, his lawyer successfully argued that Kennebrew was not competent to stand trial and he was later transferred to Patton State Hospital, where a defendant can be held no more than three years under state law. Prosecutors have tried to keep Kennebrew from being released by asking Los Angeles County to become Kennebrew's public guardian, a move that would allow him to be held in a state mental facility.

A new fight is brewing over health insurance companies letting millions of Americans renew their current coverage for another year - and thereby avoid changes under the federal healthcare law. That may offer a short-term benefit for certain consumers and shield some of those individual policyholders from potentially steep rate increases. But critics say this maneuver could undermine government efforts to remake the insurance market next year and keep premiums affordable overall. At issue is a little-known loophole in President Obama's landmark legislation that enables health insurers to extend existing policies for nearly all of 2014.

It was the sort of letter designed to get attention. "Final attempt to notify," it said on the outside. Within, an official-looking "product warranty expiration notice" said that my Toyota's service contract "is expiring or has expired. " It provided a number to call "to extend coverage. " This was troubling because when I purchased my "certified pre-owned" car from a dealer in 2011, I paid $1,700 for a seven-year, 100,000-mile extended warranty. Now it was expiring? The answer, of course, was no. And the racket I'm about to run down is yet another reminder that you need to examine closely anything that even remotely looks like a financial warning.

WASHINGTON - In May 1999, one month after the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, Senate Democrats triumphantly declared that the politics of gun control had changed. An amendment to require background checks on all buyers at gun shows had just cleared the Senate in dramatic fashion: Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote. "It will never be the same again," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York. "The vise lock that the NRA has had on the Senate and the House is broken.

"Huge Campaign Loophole" (editorial, May 29) asked for an explanation of the Fair Political Practices Commission's ruling that Proposition 34's contribution and expenditure limits do not apply to committees set up for elections that took place in 2000 and earlier. Proposition 34 inadvertently created this distinction between old and new committees. To close this so-called "loophole" by regulation would have required us to choose an inconsistent reading of one provision in this complex statutory scheme.

Discovery of a gaping loophole in a county light pollution ordinance designed to protect astronomical research frustrated attempts by county supervisors Wednesday to prevent the installation of high-pressure sodium street lights at Lawrence Welk Village near Escondido.

Time and again in his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI spoke out against the scourge of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests, using words that would have been scarcely imaginable by his predecessors. It was, he said, "evil," "gravely immoral," "a terrifying sign of the times. " He spoke of the "deep shame" and "humiliation" the scandal had brought on the Catholic Church. He apologized to victims. Not long into his tenure, Benedict essentially banished an influential Mexican priest, Father Marcial Maciel, who had long been suspected of sexually abusing seminarians and boys in his care and had fathered at least three children.

The national effort to crack down on gun violence being led by President Obama is generating encouraging discussion in Congress, where until recently the subject of gun control had been largely taboo. That's good news. On the minus side, there's what is happening in California. Don't get us wrong, there are some worthwhile bills floating around in Sacramento. But most of the bills either introduced or under proposal seem primarily designed to seize headlines on behalf of individual lawmakers in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre.