Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Democrats have revived their plan to reorganize Iowa’s tax code and end federal deductibility, which allows state residents to write off their federal taxes on state returns.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Shomshor, D-Council Bluffs, re-assigned the bill, House File 807, to a subcommittee Wednesday. While Democratic leadership has said the legislation is probably not going anywhere this session, the move to assign the bill to committee has rattled those opposed to the changes, including Ed Failor Jr. of the Iowans for Tax Relief.
From the Gazette:
Assigning the bill, which was approved by Ways and Means last year, to a subcommittee might be procedural, he said, “but that’s the first thing that has to happen to take away Iowans’ right to deduct their federal taxes.”A year ago, Failor added, leaders said ending federal deductibility wasn’t on their agenda, but they made a run at it.
“So we have to be on guard and assume that’s what’s going to happen this year,” he said.
Failor’s group led an all out assault on the legislation during the 2009 session. The Muscatine-based tax watchdog organization aired television and radio ads attacking the plan. Their opposition culminated during a public hearing on the bill, when anyone speaking in support of the legislation was greeted with boos and hisses from the rowdy crowd, organized by Iowans for Tax Relief. The situation got so disruptive that House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, ordered state troopers to clear the public from the chamber.
In addition to ending federal deductibility, which has been described by at least one economist as “an archaic holdover from a long ago time that nobody really knows why it exists anymore,” the Democratic plan would also reduce overall tax rates across the board, increase the tax credits for elderly and blind individuals, increase the amount of the earned income tax credit, and adjusting the eligibility for the child and dependent care tax credit and early childhood development tax credit.
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