Detroit needs residents, but sends some packing: By Monica Davey, June 26, 2014, New York Times: “Ronald Ford Jr. has watched neighbors move away and brick houses on his family’s block crumble to nothing, but he says he wants to stay put and give a chance to city leaders who now promise a renaissance. ‘I’d like to try to go with the new Detroit if that’s really coming,’ Mr. Ford, 49, said, standing outside the house on the city’s east side that he describes as precious, ‘like a family heirloom.’ Yet as Mike Duggan, the mayor of the nation’s largest bankrupt city, pledges to stem the flood of departures that have crippled Detroit and to begin increasing the city’s population for the first time in decades, Mr. Ford is on the verge of losing his family’s house. So are tens of thousands of others here who failed to pay their property taxes. In a city that desperately needs to hold onto residents, there is a virtual pipeline out. At least 70,000 foreclosures have taken place since 2009 because of delinquent property taxes. . .”
Tag: Taxes
Tax Preparation Fees
Tax preparers targeting poor with high fees, By Campbell Robertson, April 7, 2014, New York Times: “In December, they begin showing up in empty storefronts in neighborhoods where empty storefronts are easy to come by. Cars with phone numbers brightly displayed on the doors roll down the streets, and signs pop up along the sidewalks promising fast money. For millions of low-income Americans, tax season means the biggest one-time influx of money all year. It also means the annual sprouting of commercial tax preparers: some of them big-name franchises, some mom-and-pops and some, as 20-year-old Brittany Dixon discovered this year, shockingly expensive…”
Earned Income Tax Credit
- Obama budget would expand low-income tax break, By Jackie Calmes, March 3, 2014, New York Times: “When President Obama releases his proposed annual budget on Tuesday, he will grab his best opportunity of the year to show, in one comprehensive package of hard numbers and precise detail, how he would have the government address what he has called ‘the defining challenge of our time’ — economic inequality. Many of Mr. Obama’s perennial proposals on education, job training, research and more have hit a Republican wall in Congress, but this year the president is adding one with echoes of Republicans’ own ideas. He will propose expanding a longstanding tax break to better benefit workers who are childless, which the White House estimates will help 13.5 million additional Americans who hold jobs yet remain poor. The current tax break favors low-wage workers with children…”
- Obama budget urges expanding earned income tax credit, By Aamer Madhani, March 3, 2014, USA Today: “President Obama’s 2015 budget to be unveiled on Tuesday will include a proposal to expand the earned-income tax credit for 13.5 million low-income Americans by closing tax loopholes benefiting certain fund managers and high-income, self-employed workers. Under Obama’s proposal, 7.7 million workers would be eligible for a larger credit and 5.8 million workers would be made newly eligible for the credit…”