Minor Memos

MINOR MEMOS - January 1999

January 01, 1999 | By Keith Martin in Washington, DC
The Joint Tax Committee in Congress reported in December that 47.8 million Americans will escape income tax liability in 1998 due to deductions and credits. Most are in lower income brackets. The total number of taxpayers in the United States is 133.9 million . . . . Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company complained to the US Tax Court in a recent filing that the IRS will not let it deduct $4 million that it was assessed by Maine for construction of a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility. Maine Yankee insists that the payments are equivalent to taxes, while the IRS wants Maine Yankee to treat them as a cost of its nuclear power plant  . . . he US wants input from US businesses on whether it should renegotiate the current tax treaty with India .   . . . The IRS told a US company on audit that its foreign tax credits for Canadian taxes had to be reduced by the amount of investment credits and research credits that it used to reduce Canadian taxes. Only the net tax bill in Canada was creditable in the US.