Home Builders (You Heard That Right) Get a Gift [View All]

[katkat]

Source: New Tork Times

ON Nov. 6, President Obama signed the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009 into law, extending unemployment benefits by 20 weeks and renewing the first-time homebuyer tax credit until next April.

But tucked inside the law was another prize: a tax break that lets big companies offset losses incurred in 2008 and 2009 against profits booked as far back as 2004. The tax cuts will generate corporate refunds or relief worth about $33 billion, according to an administration estimate...

Among the biggest beneficiaries are home builders...This is getting to be a habit: companies that participated on the upside and are now reaping rewards from the taxpayers on the downside...dropping helicopter money on the home builders — the folks who massively overbuilt in community after community — seems decidedly less urgent (unless you are one of these companies, of course). Given that the supply of housing far outstrips demand, it is unlikely that these companies will use these tax breaks to hire workers (unless they go into a completely new line of business)...

Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, has conducted a lonely fight against the tax break all year.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/business/economy/15gret.html

---

Yet another giveaway of taxpayer money, increase in the giant deficit, while Joe Public is being foreclosed on and paying 20-30% interest on credit cards with no help.