Next round of small business loans may face tighter restrictions. Sen. Susan Collins told The Hill that the next coronavirus bill would likely limit assistance to smaller firms that lost money in the pandemic. Lawmakers aim to have a tentative deal in place by July 20, when Congress returns to Washington. There is broad bipartisan support for another round of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans but disagreement over other issues, such as extending federal unemployment insurance and the amount of assistance to state and local governments.
And still no disclosure about the last round. After resisting congressional requests for weeks, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin finally promised to disclose information on the CARES’s Act PPP loan recipients. In late June, Mnuchin agreed to get the info to the Hill by July 4. But the deadline passed and…no report.
The IRS wants to distribute over $1.5 billion in unclaimed tax refunds from 2016. The agency announced that 1.4 million taxpayers have until July 15 to file a federal income tax return and receive their refund. There is no penalty for filing a late return if a refund is due.
Property tax assessments discriminate against homeowners of color. In a new working paper, Troup Howard of the University of Utah and Carlos Avenancio-León of Indiana University find that non-white homeowners pay 13 percent more in property taxes than comparable white families. They find that the racial composition of a neighborhood affects tax assessments relative to sales prices. And residents of those communities are less likely to appeal assessments and more likely to lose when they do. The researchers reviewed over 10 years of data on 118 million homes around the country. In almost every state, property tax assessments were relatively higher in areas with more black and Hispanic residents.
Remembering the late Ed Kleinbard. TPC’s Thornton Matheson writes that Kleinbard placed tax reform in the current context of widening US inequality and emphasized integration of tax and expenditure policies. Matheson concludes, “Ed insisted that restoring opportunity and the underlying fabric of our society will require significant investments in public education, social insurance (especially health care), and infrastructure. The benefits of progressive expenditure policies outweigh those of progressive income taxation alone, justifying reliance on a more efficient and diversified tax structure. Though Ed is sadly no longer with us, the wisdom of his scholarship will hopefully help shape future reforms.”
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