Tax Treatment

Re "Health proposal gives and takes," Jan. 25 The president's proposal to extend health insurance to more Americans raises awareness of the unequal tax treatment of health insurance. Regardless of whether a patient receives health insurance through his employer or purchases it on his own, he should be given equal tax treatment. Patients need to own their own insurance plan so they don't lose it when they change jobs. In addition, the American Medical Assn. supports a system of income-based tax credits, or vouchers, for the purchase of health insurance, expanding coverage for lower-income Americans.

Like many parents of autistic children, Elizabeth Emken's priorities changed when she heard her son's diagnosis. But most parents do not wind up running for U.S. Senate. Emken's 12.5% of the vote in the June primary makes her the GOP challenger to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She's a UCLA graduate in economics and political science who worked at IBM before launching into more than a decade of lobbying for autism legislation. She'll be in Tampa - home of the Buccaneers football team - for next week's GOP convention.

States may not tax federal pensions while exempting the pensions of retired state and local government workers, the Supreme Court ruled today. By an 8-1 vote, the justices struck down Michigan's differing tax treatment of the pensions received by retired government employees. The challenged Michigan law "violates principles of intergovernmental tax immunity by favoring retired state and local government employees over retired federal employees," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court.

Among the many proposals to raise taxes and cut and reallocate government spending to regain our country's economic health, one of the most sensitive is decreasing the tax deductibility of charitable contributions. The independent Congressional Budget Office recently reviewed 11 options for revising the income tax treatment of charitable giving, and it grouped them into four categories. All establish a floor below which contributions would not be deductible. One proposal retained tax deductibility only for donations exceeding $1,000 per couple or, alternatively, 2% of a person's adjusted gross income.

Hilton Gets Favorable IRS Ruling: The Internal Revenue Service ruled favorably on the tax treatment of a compromise settlement last November dividing a 28% interest in Hilton Hotels, the Beverly Hills-based hotel and casino chain said. The shares, left by founder Conrad N. Hilton, will be split between his son, Barron Hilton, who is the firm's chairman and chief executive, and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. Conrad Hilton died in 1979 at 91. The ruling will allow distribution of the shares within a few weeks.

Like many parents of autistic children, Elizabeth Emken's priorities changed when she heard her son's diagnosis. But most parents do not wind up running for U.S. Senate. Emken's 12.5% of the vote in the June primary makes her the GOP challenger to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She's a UCLA graduate in economics and political science who worked at IBM before launching into more than a decade of lobbying for autism legislation. She'll be in Tampa - home of the Buccaneers football team - for next week's GOP convention.

Among the tax measures proposed in the President's congressional message is a reduction of the rate on capital gains. This proposal is without any merit and warrants outright rejection by the Congress. The most commonly given and, in fact, the only defensible reason for preferential tax treatment is the reputed incentive to foster new capital formation. But this is a delusion. By far the largest amount of transaction giving rise to capital gain (or loss) consists of the sale of existing securities and existing real estate.

Douglas Hallett's article (Editorial Pages, Dec. 17), advocating group automobile insurance as one means of solving the "automobile insurance problem," fails to recognize one crucial point: extremely few customers will buy such a product under our present tax laws. Group auto insurance programs were developed and heavily marketed by a number of major insurance companies in the 1960s. Some groups were sold and some are currently active, but not in significant numbers. Hallett's article identifies the principal reason for this: labor unions have not promoted group auto insurance as an employee benefit.

President Reagan's tax reform proposals would increase rents, lower the value of owner-occupied housing, increase the federal debt and cost more than 200,000 construction jobs, a report by a panel of economists said Sunday.

Each of the past several years has seen major tax "reform" proposals announced with great fanfare. Not wanting to make any erroneous decisions, businesses have delayed plans for capital investment, put hiring and new product proposals on hold and generally slowed their activities while awaiting resolution of the uncertainty. So it is now. Were it mere tinkering, the constant attempts to revise, adjust and amend would not be so troublesome. However, recent proposals have gone well beyond tinkering.

Single-payer. Insurance-based. Socialized medicine. Free-market reform. A lot of terms are flying in the debate over what shape healthcare reform should take in the U.S. Ask two people to tell you how it should be approached, and you'll get six answers. But at this stage in the process, it's important to put all ideas on the table. With that in mind, we present three viewpoints on what a new system should -- and shouldn't -- look like. -- President Obama is right when he says that the U.S.

Re "Health proposal gives and takes," Jan. 25 The president's proposal to extend health insurance to more Americans raises awareness of the unequal tax treatment of health insurance. Regardless of whether a patient receives health insurance through his employer or purchases it on his own, he should be given equal tax treatment. Patients need to own their own insurance plan so they don't lose it when they change jobs. In addition, the American Medical Assn. supports a system of income-based tax credits, or vouchers, for the purchase of health insurance, expanding coverage for lower-income Americans.

Boeing Co. may face congressional hearings into its $615-million settlement of ethics charges with the government if the company is allowed to take a tax deduction for the fine, three senators told the Justice Department. "We are very concerned about the possibility that this settlement may be structured in a way that allows for payments made by the settling company to be tax-deductible, thereby leaving the American taxpayer to effectively subsidize its misconduct," Republican Sens.

Prosecutors have launched an investigation of a West Covina city councilman who bought a cut-rate SUV, then voted in favor of a financial arrangement that benefited the dealer who sold it to him. The car in question was one of several damaged in August 2003 when environmental radicals set fire to some SUVs and painted slogans such as "polluter" on others in the San Gabriel Valley.

A federal judge Friday ordered the Internal Revenue Service to pay billionaire Warren E. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. $23.1 million plus interest for not allowing the company to take some tax deductions. The 38-page decision by Judge Lyle Strom of the U.S. District Court in Nebraska ends three years of litigation over the tax treatment of Berkshire's purchases of dividend-paying stocks such as Coca-Cola Co., Time Warner Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co.

Re "Cities vs. Team Owners: Time to Play Hardball," by George Skelton, Feb. 10. It may come as no surprise to major league sports fans and local government officials that more and more cities are being forced to spend millions to keep their sports teams in town. But what I find unbelievable is that some professional sports can expect and enjoy heavy subsidization, while at the same time others are burdened with extra taxes and high fees. Your article focused on basketball, which employs 5,000 people in this state.

The health care "reforms" celebrated in your Sept. 26 editorial constitute more governmental micro-management that we will all pay for in higher premiums, and will ultimately treat only the symptoms, not the disease, afflicting health care in this country. The "disease" is a lack of consumer-oriented choice and competition in the health care industry. Most of us are dependent on our employers for health care and our choices, if any, are limited to a few companies which are not accountable to us but which answer to corporate personnel departments looking for the lowest possible cost.

The Internal Revenue Service, trying to get Americans interested in their tax returns seven months before the filing deadline, today offered two free publications that explain many of the hundreds of changes made in the 1986 revision of income tax law. "We are trying to get out the message that you can't wait until next April to acquaint yourself with the new law," Wilson Fadely of the IRS said.

The health care "reforms" celebrated in your Sept. 26 editorial constitute more governmental micro-management that we will all pay for in higher premiums, and will ultimately treat only the symptoms, not the disease, afflicting health care in this country. The "disease" is a lack of consumer-oriented choice and competition in the health care industry. Most of us are dependent on our employers for health care and our choices, if any, are limited to a few companies which are not accountable to us but which answer to corporate personnel departments looking for the lowest possible cost.

Expressing regret that he lacks the power to veto elements of legislation, President Clinton signed into law Tuesday a bill giving self-employed people the right to deduct health insurance costs from their taxes. His objection: The bill gives media mogul Rupert Murdoch a huge tax break. "If we'd had the line-item veto it would have been a different story," Clinton said. The new law permits some 3.2 million people to claim a 25% deduction for health insurance premiums they paid in 1994.