As expected, President Bush signed HR 3221 into law this morning, making billions of federal dollars available to home owners, shoring up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and providing closer oversight of the financial aspects of home ownership to the Administration and Congress.
What a shame.
After speaking with a good friend of mine that is a CPA, the tax incentives, particularly the $7,500 tax credit (a topic which is burning up the search engines at this time), are going to make life harder for tax preparers, tax payers, and probably increase the cost of running the IRS. As I’ve said before, There are going to be a lot of problems keeping track of this.
Plus, this is just an unfair competition with banks. The government …
By Art Smith. Posted Monday, Jul 28, 2008 at 6:00 am Filed Under: Economy, Energy, TAXES, US Congress
In reference to my post on Saturday regarding HR 3221, the “Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008″, I discovered a site where there is a copy of the Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate for HR 3221. Over the next ten years, according to the estimate, this bill will create a nearly $25 Billion deficit.
Another blogger, John D. Thornton, has some interesting insights regarding the OFHEO.
I’ve been getting some hits on Saturday’s post that are searches like this “explain the $7500 tax credit on the new housing bill that was just passed“. I’m glad to see there are people wanting to understand it better. This could be achille’s heel of the bill.
There is additional information available (this is …
By Art Smith. Posted Saturday, Jul 26, 2008 at 10:23 pm Filed Under: Economy, Energy, Featured, IRS, Military, TAXES, US Congress
Well, it took almost 3 months, but Congress finally passed the bill today, on older version of which was passed by the House in May, after some considerable back and forth between the Senate and the House. The bill is HR 3221 (pdf), titled: “Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008″.
The entire bill is over 600 pages long. The table of contents is 7 pages. And technically, this is a bill that began its life over a year ago. Sponsored by none other than Nancy Pelosi. And apparently Bush is planning to sign.
He should not.
Touted by most of the media is the section that provides up to a $7,500 tax credit is 1,800 words. And the media manage to mention it …
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