As many of you know, I am an active member in the "Agriculture Community", as a member of the American Agricultural Law Association and a student of ag policy for many years. In this capacity, I follow a number of industry and academic thinkers on industry trends and challenges. One of those thinkers is Roger McEowen, a distinguished professor from Iowa State University and Director of the ISU Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation.
One of Professor McEowen's recent tax updates included the following overview of the "massive" American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (this is the one that you see the signs for on the road projects). The following is his overview:
"Pushed through Congress with little debate based on claims that matters would be "catastrophic" if passage was not immediate, and without an opportunity for members of Congress to actually read the text of the legislation, the Congress passed the massive spending bill, H.R. 1 . . .
The Act contains 575 pages of tax provisions. Many of the provisions are individual credits that will likely have little-to-no immediate stimulative effect and targeted tax benefits that appear to be so narrow as the be largely ineffective economically at the present time. That is why it is inaccurate to call the Act a "stimulus" bill. In addition, the non-tax portion of the Act contains massive amounts of spending for social programs largely unrelated to the economy. To facilitate the massive spending contained in the Act (it is the largest spending bill in U.S. history), the Act raises the U.S. debt limit to over $12 trillion."
This one caught my attention!
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