Daily Deduction Payments, Patriots, and Pot
Renu Zaretsky
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Coming soon: Enhanced and advanced child tax credit payments. Beginning July 15, about 39 million families and over 65 million children will receive enhanced monthly child tax credit payments of $300 for each child under age 6 and $250 for those ages 6 to 17. The benefit will reach 88 percent of children in the US. The Biden administration plans to launch an outreach campaign to inform families about the enhanced payments and the online portals they can use to update information and assure they receive proper benefits. Enhanced, monthly payments are scheduled to end December 15, through Biden and Hill Democrats want to extend them.

A House GOP infrastructure bill. Politico reports that House Republicans this week will roll out a plan to spend about $400 billion on roads and bridges over five years. The plan is far smaller than President Biden’s American Jobs Plan but House Republicans say it would be a significant increase over current spending. No word on how they’d pay for it.   

Patriotic Millionaires: “Tax the Rich!” The group whose members have annual incomes of over $1 million or assets of more than  $5 million launched a tax protest yesterday. It  included mobile billboards in front of billionaire Jeff Bezos’ homes that say ““Cut the bull----. Tax the rich.” The group also will take the billboards to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Washington, DC residence, the offices of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the US Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, Heritage Foundation, Democratic National Committee, Americans for Tax Reform, the IRS, and former President Donald Trump’s Old Post Office hotel.

Is New York State’s marijuana tax too complicated? It will be the first state to tie a wholesale tax on marijuana to each product’s  level of psychoactive compound, THC Other states base their tax on weight or volume of marijuana sold. New York may end up favoring larger producers or may better adapt to the growth in concentrates and edible products.  

Missouri now requires all online retailers to collect its sales tax. It’s the final state to do so in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair decision. The  Court held that states may require businesses to collect sales tax on purchases by their residents, even if the seller does not have a physical presence in the taxing state. The Court left it to states to decide whether to require collection of the tax and most did within a year. Advocates in Missouri had worked for three years to secure passage of the legislation.

EU suspends tariff increase on US goods, for now. The European Union in 2018 scheduled an increase to its tariffs on US goods including Kentucky bourbon, Harley Davidson motorcycles, and other manufactured and agricultural goods. The increase had been planned as a response to former President Trump’s increases to tariffs on all aluminum and steel imports. The US will keep its current tariffs of 25 percent on foreign steel and 10 percent on aluminum while negotiators work toward a longer-term solution.

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