Tax Credits

If you've been holding back on the new $6,500 federal tax credit for repeat home purchases, you now have all the official IRS guidance you'll need to buy a house, qualify for the credit and pocket the $6,500. That's because the Internal Revenue Service finally published the rules for the repeat purchase credit along with key details for taxpayers that had been missing since President Obama signed the legislation creating the program Nov. 6. The IRS posted its revised Form 5405 on its website ( www.irs.

SAN JOSE - After a morning of closed-door campaigning here Thursday, President Obama plans to talk about tax credits for clean energy production during a visit to Iowa. As he focuses on his administration's efforts to boost job creation, Obama plans to call on Congress to extend tax credits designed to encourage businesses to invest in clean energy production, senior officials said. Obama is scheduled to make his remarks on a visit to TPI Composites, a global provider of composite wind blades to major turbine manufacturers.

I believe we can all agree on the root cause of the state's $20-billion budget gap. It's welfare: all those millions of taxpayer dollars going to recipients who line up for their government handouts instead of competing in the marketplace on a level playing field like the rest of us, who don't pay their fair share of taxes and who get protected by a politically powerful lobby. Yes, I'm talking about the business community. For all the hand-wringing by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger about how there's almost nothing left to cut in the state budget except services to children, the aged and the destitute, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year on handouts to business.

Amid mounting evidence that rival states are chipping away at California's movie and TV production business, a coalition of entertainment unions and film industry officials is renewing a push to provide long-term funding for California's popular film tax credit program. But the effort faces an uphill challenge in Sacramento, where lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown are wrestling with a wider-than expected $16-billion budget deficit. California currently sets aside $100 million annually for dozens of projects applying for credits that cover 20% to 25% of qualified production expenses.

This year's $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time home buyers has attracted as many as 90,000 ineligible claimants -- including a 4-year-old child -- raising questions about efforts to extend the popular program. In all, tax credit claims totaling more than $600 million are suspicious, tax officials testified Thursday before Congress. The credit, on home sales to first-time buyers that close through Nov. 30, is an important piece of the $787-billion stimulus package enacted in February and is part of the Obama administration's effort to lift housing sales.

Question: How do you pack a theater with jaded movie industry professionals? Answer: Show them the latest hot information on film tax credits. Nearly 200 people crammed into an auditorium at the Landmark Theatre in West Los Angeles recently to learn the latest skinny on the kind of topic that would set an accountant's heart aflutter. The filmmakers, production executives and bankers were attending the Spring Fling Production Incentives Symposium, hosted by the aptly named Incentives Office, a Los Angeles firm that helps filmmakers and lenders navigate the welter of tax credits and rebates.

First it was artificially tanned, party-crazed Italian Americans. Now it's mud-racing, squirrel-hunting Appalachians. MTV is again at odds with state film officials who refuse to subsidize the network's latest reality TV show with tax credits. West Virginia film officials have cited MTV's unflattering depiction of state culture in "Buck Wild. " The show, scheduled to start filming next spring in Charleston and Sissonville, follows a group of recent high school graduates living in rural West Virginia as they participate in homegrown activities such as mud-racing.

SAN JOSE - After a morning of closed-door campaigning here Thursday, President Obama plans to talk about tax credits for clean energy production during a visit to Iowa. As he focuses on his administration's efforts to boost job creation, Obama plans to call on Congress to extend tax credits designed to encourage businesses to invest in clean energy production, senior officials said. Obama is scheduled to make his remarks on a visit to TPI Composites, a global provider of composite wind blades to major turbine manufacturers.

President Obama will roll out a jobs package on Thursday that strives to lift the ailing economy through roughly $300 billion worth of tax credits, school renovation projects, job training for the unemployed, and a program to prevent layoffs of school teachers, according to a person familiar with the administration's plans. In his speech before a joint session of Congress, Obama also will ask lawmakers to renew the 2% payroll tax cut that was approved last December and to extend jobless benefits, the person said.

For President Clinton to propose to give more money, in the form of earned income tax credits, to those who don't pay income taxes, in an income tax reform bill, is pure nonsense. No, it's more than that. It's welfare in disguise and a sop to supporters angry that he signed the welfare reform bill. DONALD HIRT Paso Robles

The television commercial is designed to spark outrage. "Billions of taxpayer dollars spent on green energy went to jobs in foreign countries," it intones. "The Obama administration admitted the truth - that $2.3 billion of tax credits went overseas, while millions of Americans can't find a job…. American taxpayers are paying to send their own jobs to foreign countries. " But the widely broadcast anti-Obama ad, paid for by a conservative group called Americans for Prosperity, is highly misleading - a slick pastiche of untruths, half-truths and exaggerations.

The director of two movies shot on Cape Cod has been sentenced to a maximum of three years in state prison after admitting that he exaggerated expenses when he applied for Massachusetts film tax credits. Daniel Adams pleaded guilty last month to larceny and making a false claim when he applied for state film tax credits for the 2008 movie "The Golden Boys," with Bruce Dern and David Carradine, and "The Lightkeepers," a 2009 movie starring Richard Dreyfuss and Blythe Danner. Prosecutors said Adams overcharged the state by $4.7 million for expenses related to those movies.

Supporters of a bipartisan effort to protect the American wind energy industry say that 37,000 U.S. jobs will be at risk this year if Congress fails to extend the production tax credits that have been vital to wind power development. The call for Congress to pass HR 3307, the American Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit Extension Act, was made during a teleconference hosted by three members of Congress, the American Wind Energy Assn. and TPI Composites, a Newton, Iowa-based wind blade manufacturer.

Kansas is considering raising taxes on its poor and cutting them for everybody else. State Republicans have been campaigning to overhaul the tax code in Kansas to spur growth. The idea is that, by eliminating income taxes for residents and small businesses, lowering the sales tax and ditching a host of tax credits, Kansans will have more money and thus stimulate the economy. But for the state's poorest, the devil is in the details. A Kansas House tax committee passed a bill in which anyone making less than $25,000 a year - roughly half a million of the state's 2.9 million residents - will pay an average of $72 more in taxes, while those making more than $250,000 - about 21,000 people - will see a $1,500 cut, according to Kansas Department of Revenue estimates cited by the Kansas City Star.

Eddie Murphy may soon star in a more serious role, playing former Washington Mayor Marion Barry in an HBO film. An HBO spokeswoman said Friday that the network is working with Spike Lee and Murphy on the project, though she said it's in the early stages of development. Lee would direct the movie, and Murphy would play Barry, who, during his third term as mayor, was videotaped smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room during an FBI sting operation. He eventually served six months in federal prison on a misdemeanor drug possession conviction and was elected again to the D.C. Council in 1992.

First it was artificially tanned, party-crazed Italian Americans. Now it's mud-racing, squirrel-hunting Appalachians. MTV is again at odds with state film officials who refuse to subsidize the network's latest reality TV show with tax credits. West Virginia film officials have cited MTV's unflattering depiction of state culture in "Buck Wild. " The show, scheduled to start filming next spring in Charleston and Sissonville, follows a group of recent high school graduates living in rural West Virginia as they participate in homegrown activities such as mud-racing.

Like the Clint Eastwood character in "Gran Torino," a movie set in the Detroit area, the new governor of Michigan is telling Hollywood to get off his lawn. Rick Snyder, a Republican who was elected governor of the Great Lakes State on a platform to curb spending, wants to gut Michigan's film tax credit program, one of the most generous in the country. In his $45-billion budget plan, unveiled Thursday, Snyder proposed reducing or eliminating various state tax credits, including those awarded for filming.

House Republicans and Democrats joined to pass the first pieces of President Obama's jobs package, sending to the president a slim slice of common ground while the bulk of the legislation remains stalled in a divided Congress. The legislation passed Wednesday will repeal a tax on government contractors, boost job training for veterans and offer tax credits to companies that hire unemployed veterans. The House passed the measure without dissent, and Obama has said he would sign it. The Senate overwhelmingly approved it last week.

The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved provisions of President Obama's jobs plan that found rare bipartisan appeal, including a proposal to give companies tax credits for hiring unemployed military veterans. The veterans package proved too irresistible for Republicans to block, as they have most other pieces of Obama's $447-billion jobs package. The 94-1 vote on the eve of Veterans Day came as the jobless rate among Iraq and Afghanistan vets remains in double digits, higher than the 9% national unemployment rate.