Social entertainment wrapped in a survivor theme ... lemmings 'news' is the nightly stampede to the cliff.
"Vote for the Comprehensive Health Care Bill and pass it. Then you'll see what's in it." - Pinhead Pelosi
PAPERWORK NIGHTMARE: A STRUGGLE TO FIX NEW LAW ~ THE UNCERTAINTY OF THE FUTURE BASED ON LEGISLATIVE AGENDA CONTINUES TO EXTEND THE RECOVERY.
By Stephen Ohlmacher, AP Writer, MODIFIED AND EXTENDED REMARKS
Saturday, July 31, 2010
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tucked into the new health care law is a requirement that could become a paperwork nightmare for nearly 40 million businesses.
They must file tax forms for every vendor that sells them more than $600 in goods.
The goal is to prevent vendors from underreporting their income to the Internal Revenue Service. The government must think vendors are omitting a lot because the filing requirement is estimated to bring in $19 billion over the next decade.
Business groups say it will swamp their members in paperwork, and Congress is listening. Democrats and Republicans want to repeal it, but getting them to work together on the issue is proving difficult in an election year.
The House rejected a bill Friday that would have repealed the provision. The two parties disagreed on how to make up the lost revenue.
"This foolish policy hammers our business community when we should be supporting their job growth," Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska said in the Republicans' weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. "It's only one example of how the administration's promise to support small businesses really rings hollow."
Democrats blamed Republicans for Friday's failure. [HUBRIS ... THE DEMOCRATS DON'T NEED THE REPUBLICANS TO PASS ANYTHING AND NO REPUBLICANS VOTED FOR OBAMA-CARE, SO BLAMING THE REPUBLICANS IS A STATEMENT WRAPPED IN STUPIDITY!]
"Despite all of their rhetoric about the need to eliminate this reporting requirement, Republicans walked away from small businesses when it mattered most," said Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
Businesses already must file Form 1099s with the IRS when they purchase more than $600 in services from a vendor in a year. The new provision would extend the requirement to the purchase of goods, starting in 2012.
The requirement would hit about 38 million businesses, charities and tax-exempt organizations, many of them small businesses already swamped by government paperwork, according to a recent report by the National Taxpayer Advocate. It would also create an avalanche of paperwork that could strain the IRS itself, wrote the advocate, an independent watchdog within the IRS.
Businesses that repeatedly make small purchases from the same vendor would have to keep good records in case the total exceeded $600 in a year. Companies would also have to get vendors' tax identification numbers to include in the filings.
"Tax paperwork and compliance are already major expenses for small businesses," a coalition of 80 business groups recently wrote lawmakers. "This new and expanded requirement means that almost every business-to-business transaction is potentially reportable to the IRS."
Republicans want to repeal the filing requirement and pay for it by changing other parts of the new health care law, a strategy that Democratic leaders won't support. Democrats want to repeal the filing requirement and pay for it by raising taxes on international corporations and limiting taxpayers' ability to use special trusts to avoid gifts taxes. Republicans won't support that.
The House rejected the Democratic bill Friday after Democratic leaders brought it up under a procedure that requires a two-thirds majority for approval. The vote was 241-154, with nearly all Democrats voting in favor of the bill and nearly all Republicans opposed. [THIS WAS A STRATEGIC DEFEAT ENGINEERED BY THE DEMOCRATS KNOWING THEY DIDN'T HAVE THE VOTES WITHIN THEIR OWN PARTY TO PASS IT, THEREBY BLAMING THE REPUBLICANS!!!]
Johanns has been working to repeal the filing requirement in the Senate, with similar results.
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Online:
National Taxpayer Advocate: www.irs.gov/advocate/
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
