LA Times (May 9): Bills Seek State Tax Breaks for a Select Few

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Los Angeles Times
Dated Monday May 9

Bills Seek State Tax Breaks for a Select Few
Wealthy taxpayers push narrowly targeted changes in law that can save them millions.
By Evan Halper, Times Staff Writer

Sacramento — A Wall Street tycoon accused in the 1980s of cheating thousands of investors out of their savings in one of the biggest financial scandals in history now says the state of California cheated him.

So he has launched a campaign to change the state tax code — retroactive to 1992 — in hopes of getting $5 million back.

Peter Ackerman, who worked for "junk bond king" Michael Milken, walked away from the Drexel Burnham Lambert scandal with what financial experts say was hundreds of millions of dollars. Now a lobbyist for Ackerman has crafted a bill in the Legislature that would permit the refund — one of several measures apparently written with a single taxpayer in mind.

Another is a push by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, one of the world's richest people, to restore a tax break that would benefit his company. And a Central Valley container maker is making a bid for millions more in state subsidies for its manufacturing equipment.

Read more -- and hang on to your wallets.

[Liberty Belle]

1. Kick! Thanks. I sent this to our DFA legislative watch chair

in San Diego.