South Korea Free Trade Act

[Corduroy Frog]

The South Korea "Free Trade" Act (Free trade means we have the option to buy their manufactured goods at 10% of their value, and they have the option to buy OUR stuff at 500% of their value. Act was hailed as a solution to our trade imbalance. Go figure)

...increased the EIC preparer penalty from $100 to $500.

What does THIS have to do with "Free Trade?" How does this happen?

[RitaB]

Refundable

Since EIC is a refundable credit, and when you try to get a refund on a product shipped from South Korea you are SOL, it stands to reason that the tax preparer should pay a fine. And also pay the maximum postage to return the item for which the purchase price will never be refunded. That way, it can be sold to us over and over and over and Free Trade will flourish.

[DonPriebe]

EIC Penalties to increase by $19,000,000 next year

As Corduroy Frog alluded, the Korean Free Trade Bill may not be a big revenue producer for the USA. Since Washington is somewhat short of cash at the present time, congress had to come up with some new revenues that would offset the cost of the bill.

From the Congressional Budget Office Report http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/124xx/doc12466/hr3080.pdf ...

The bill would extend user fees collected by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that expire under current law and would increase those fees. In addition, it would establish a reporting requirement for federal and state prisons for tax administration purposes and increase the penalties on tax preparers who did not comply with due-diligence requirements for the earned income tax credit. It also would shift some corporate income tax payments between fiscal years.

The shifting of the corporate tax payments appears to be the biggest slight-of-hand [almost two billion dollars brought into 2016 from 2017]. Increased EIC penalities will bring in a modest nine million dollars in 2012, increasing to $19M in 2013 and showing slight increases after that.

Since the government is counting on us pay $197 million in increased fines over the next ten years, does that mean the the IRS program to train and register taxpreparers is counter-productive?

[ChEAr$]

This so called mandate for congress (note the little "c") to always come up with offsets to pay for expenditures is SO dumb. Instead of there being an offset to current year's expenditures, "they", meaning the demopubs, justify it by saying "we'll save the equivalent in the next ten years.

Or, "well, we'll save a bundle because our troops are not in Iraq any longer." DUMb.

In fact I don't even think I could justify it if I lived in Charlotte, NC .
Or manchester.
or Weaversville.

[Burke]

The shifting of the corporate tax payments appears to be the biggest slight-of-hand [almost two billion dollars brought into 2016 from 2017].

Well, they finally figured out since the states have been doing this for a while, that they could get in on the action!