United States Taxes

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce attacked a major part of President Clinton's economic program Monday, coming out against $104 billion of his proposed tax increases. In a letter to every member of Congress, the chamber said it opposed Clinton's broad-based energy tax, his proposal to boost the corporate tax rate from 34% to 36% and a Clinton proposal to boost taxes on foreign royalty income earned by U.S. companies.

House Democratic leaders, in a desperate bid to defeat President Bush's proposed capital gains tax cut, agreed Wednesday on an alternative plan to raise taxes on the wealthy while using the funds to expand individual retirement accounts for the middle class and to reduce the federal deficit. It is the first time in this decade that congressional Democrats have been willing to line up behind a significant tax increase without the backing of the White House.

"It's like a door shutting," said Kevin Consey, director of the Newport Harbor Art Museum. "It's absolutely disastrous. I can't believe that Congress and the Reagan Administration thought through the long-term implications of this," echoed Hugh Davies, director of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. "It's a bad situation, and it's getting worse," agreed Ashton Hawkins, senior vice president and counsel to the board of trustees at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Internal Revenue Service tax packages that are being mailed to millions of Americans contain instructions to pay the special surtax for Medicare's catastrophic health care program even though Congress repealed the surtax retroactively, Rep. Edward R. Roybal (D-Los Angeles) said Wednesday.

The Internal Revenue Service has been examining whether former President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, owe back taxes on gifts--including dresses for Mrs. Reagan--that they received while they were in the White House, according to sources familiar with the inquiry. The investigation, which began early this year, has been conducted by the IRS's Los Angeles field office because the Reagans were determined to be California taxpayers even while living in the White House, the sources said.

The federal government will begin sending refunds in February to millions of Medicare beneficiaries who continue paying premiums for the repealed catastrophic care law, officials said Thursday. The Treasury will make two payments of $10.60, in February and again in April, for each Medicare enrollee, the Treasury and Social Security Administration announced. The total refund of $21.20 will compensate for the $5.

The House on Friday easily approved a Republican-sponsored bill to phase out estate taxes over the next decade, signaling momentum for the repeal effort. Despite a vow by President Clinton to veto the measure as too costly, 65 Democrats joined a solid bloc of GOP supporters in passing the bill, 279 to 136, and sending it to the Senate.

Since the U.S. Forest Service established a recreational fee in Southern California forests, Terry Dahl has been one of the program's most outspoken critics. "I'm against charging the public for use of its own land," said the father of two from Santa Barbara. As part of a protest started by like-minded forest users, Dahl routinely refused to buy the $5 Adventure Pass and received 11 warnings on his car in the Los Padres National Forest. Now, the U.S.

President Clinton will use his new line-item veto power for the first time today to strike down special-interest tax and spending provisions hidden in the balanced-budget package he just crafted with Congress, senior administration officials said Sunday. Treasury Secretary Robert E.

It doesn't take a math wizard to calculate what a repeal of the 10% tax on luxury boats would do for MacGregor Yacht Corp. Before the tax went into effect last year, the Costa Mesa company sold two-thirds of its boats in the United States; now it sells none here. Repeal of the tax "would probably triple our business," said Laura Sharp, vice president. "All of our sales are overseas now. We're at one-third of our volume."