The Senate is taking up a $100 billion tax bill designed to spur renewable energy investment, give tax breaks to businesses and individuals and protect more than 20 million people from the dreaded alternative minimum tax.
The package has bipartisan support and is one of the bills Congress must address before it adjourns for the year. The Senate moves first Tuesday on the alternative energy section of the package. It provides some $17 billion in incentives to develop and use wind, solar, biomass and other renewables.
It extends for eight years the investment credit for solar energy and the credit for homeowners buying solar heating equipment, at a cost of $3.2 billion. It establishes a new credit for plug-in electric drive vehicles, at a cost of $758 million.
A study commissioned by the Solar Energy Industries Association found that the eight-year extension would more than triple investment during that period, to $325 billion, and almost triple employment in the industry, to 440,000 in 2016.
The bill must still go this week to the House, where there is strong recognition of the need to fix the AMT and solid support for the energy incentives and such tax breaks as the R&D credit. But there is also a strong sentiment among many House Democrats that it is wrong to provide tax relief without parallel revenue increases to prevent further ballooning of the budget deficit.
The Senate bill offsets the energy tax breaks by tightening the rules by which oil and gas companies pay taxes on income earned overseas. It offsets about $25 billion of the approximately $68 billion in individual, business and disaster tax relief. There is no new revenue to pay for the AMT fix.
Source: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080923/tax_breaks_preview.html?.v=1&printer=1 Date: 23-09-08
The package has bipartisan support and is one of the bills Congress must address before it adjourns for the year. The Senate moves first Tuesday on the alternative energy section of the package. It provides some $17 billion in incentives to develop and use wind, solar, biomass and other renewables.
It extends for eight years the investment credit for solar energy and the credit for homeowners buying solar heating equipment, at a cost of $3.2 billion. It establishes a new credit for plug-in electric drive vehicles, at a cost of $758 million.
A study commissioned by the Solar Energy Industries Association found that the eight-year extension would more than triple investment during that period, to $325 billion, and almost triple employment in the industry, to 440,000 in 2016.
The bill must still go this week to the House, where there is strong recognition of the need to fix the AMT and solid support for the energy incentives and such tax breaks as the R&D credit. But there is also a strong sentiment among many House Democrats that it is wrong to provide tax relief without parallel revenue increases to prevent further ballooning of the budget deficit.
The Senate bill offsets the energy tax breaks by tightening the rules by which oil and gas companies pay taxes on income earned overseas. It offsets about $25 billion of the approximately $68 billion in individual, business and disaster tax relief. There is no new revenue to pay for the AMT fix.
Source: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080923/tax_breaks_preview.html?.v=1&printer=1 Date: 23-09-08
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