Fiscal cliff deal also included plenty of perks for special interests

In addition to extending tax breaks for racing moguls, the legislation also extended:

• A tax credit for construction of renewable energy projects, like wind turbines and biomass, geothermal and hydropower generation, for one year. It’s projected to cost about $116 million, the committee said.

That may seem like a drop in the bucket, but here’s the kicker: While the extension to qualify for new projects covers only 2013, the actual tax credit itself is good for 10 years. That means new projects that break ground in 2013 will be able to claim the credit for the next decade, at an overall price tag the committee put at slightly less than $12.2 billion.

• An arcane provision of corporate tax law, called active financing income, that lets U.S. corporations defer taxes on some income they earn from their overseas subsidiaries. That provision will cost the U.S. Treasury more than $9 billion this year and $1.8 billion next year.

• Tax breaks for Hollywood producers who shoot their movies and TV shows in the U.S., at a cost of about $430 million through 2014.

• A program that sends most federal taxes collected on rum produced in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands back to those territories to subsidize domestic production. Bar tab: $222 million over two years.

• A tax break worth about $15 million a year for asparagus growers hit hard by cheap asparagus imported from Peru.

• $4 million in tax breaks over the next two years for people who buy “2- or 3-wheeled plug-in electric vehicles” — in other words, electric scooters, Segways and the like.

The purpose of the deal was to prevent a series of steep spending cuts and tax increases on the middle class from automatically taking effect in the new year. But “we’re not making it (the tax system) better or fairer,” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said on the House floor Tuesday in explaining why he was voting against the measure.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16334798-fiscal-cliff-deal-also-included-plenty-of-perks-for-special-interests?lite

One thought on “Fiscal cliff deal also included plenty of perks for special interests

  1. Mr WordPress says:

    Hi, this is a comment.
    To delete a comment, just log in, and view the posts’ comments, there you will have the option to edit or delete them.

Leave a comment