Through Sunday, April 27, 2008

This holiday provides statewide tax-free purchases for school supplies, art supplies and clothing priced $100 or less per item and computers priced $1,500 or less. This holiday also includes purchases of qualified items sold via mail, telephone, e-mail or Internet if the customer orders and pays for the item and the retailer accepts the order during the holiday for immediate shipment, even if delivery is made after the exemption period.

More information on the State of Tennessee sales tax holiday.

As reported in The Elizabethton Star,

Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) of East Tennessee encourages all consumers statewide to begin preparing their shopping lists now to take advantage of the holiday, particularly on higher-ticket retail items that are needed in households this spring or summer.

The CCCS has tips for shopping wisely.

FYI: Over 57% of the State of Tennessee's revenue is derived from the sales and use tax (link is to a 4MB PDF file).

April 15th is closing in and our 1040 taxes are due. If you want your Economic Stimulus Payment, you must file a tax return.

For those of you filing an extension for your tax reporting, If you file after April 15, with or without a tax-filing extension, your payment will be delayed. If you qualify for a payment, you can insure that you get it by filing your return by Oct. 15, 2008.

Theoretically, it's very simple to receive your payment. Just file a tax return. However, the IRS can make anything appear complex.

IRS Economic Stimulus Payment Information Center
IRS Payment Calculator
IRS Payment Schedule

I don't know if the stimulus payment will help the economy or affect the elections. What do you think? Will the primary result be to put the country further in debt, as with the war and financial institution bailouts, enabling citizens to not worry, spend money?

Hall Income Tax casts wider net

Tennessee is widely known as a state where no one pays income taxes. But try telling that to retirees and others hit with the Hall Income Tax.

More retirees, including some with modest incomes, are facing Tennessee's nearly 80-year-old tax on investment income, accountants say, and there is little political will to change that.

[..] the chairman of the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee said he doesn't think much in the way of tax relief will pass this year as government officials try to weather a possible economic slowdown.

"We're experiencing a downturn in the economy," said the chairman, state Sen. Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge. "Our tax revenues are not growing at the level we based our expenditures on."

These tax and spend Republicans in Nashville are taking money right out of the pockets of retired seniors who are just trying to get by, and they aren't ashamed to admit it.

(P.S. The Hall Tax hits small business owners, too, if they are organized as Sub-S Corporations as millions of small businesses are. Tennessee's approx. 300,000 small businesses, 75% of them with ten or fewer employees, employ nearly half of all workers in the state. Nationwide, small businesses generated 60% to 80% of new jobs over the past decade. Instead of giving big corporations a handout, we should be giving small businesses a break.)

House Democrats in the Tennessee General Assembly have introduced a bill (HB2475) to reduce the sales tax on food by another .5% to 5%. It may be another baby step, but at least it's in the right direction.

Marsha (Marsha, Marsha) Blackburn mounted her high horse the other day to discuss the travesty of the fact that the sales tax has not yet been made permanent by the Democratic majority. Now, she and TNGOP Chair Robin Smith are trying to confuse the voters by acting as if next year people in Tennessee won't be able to deduct their sales tax, however, there is currently before the Senate (no Tennessee Democrats are in the US Senate) a bill (which passed the House and which Marsha voted against) to extend the sales tax deduction for next year, and that bill is currently on the Senate calendar to be discussed, and most likely passed in time to go into effect for the next year.

However, when Rep. Blackburn talks about how the Republicans brought back the deduction (after Reagan got rid of it) and how they want to make it permanent, she is neglecting one contradiction. The Republicans put a sunshine provision in there. They could've made the tax deduction permanent, but chose not to so they could play politics (as she is doing now) in the future...in addition, they did it so that they could have budget projections which appeared to show fiscal solvency past 2010.

Now, there has been a bill (HR3592) introduced to make this tax deduction permanent. By whom you might ask? Well, Nick Lampson, the Democrat from Texas who replaced her corrupt pal Tom Delay in the previous election. (See Also: Democrat Brian Baird's bill)

So what did we learn today? Marsha Blackburn voted against the sales tax deduction extension. Marsha Blackburn and her pals crafted the original deduction in such a way as to have it expire. And a Democrat from Texas who replaced her corrupt friend is the one introducing legislation to make it permanent.

Update: From the office of John Tanner:

Allowing Tennesseans to deduct their sales tax payments remains a priority for Congressman Tanner in his work on the Ways and Means Committee. An extension of the sales tax deduction was included in the Temporary Tax Relief Act that passed the House last week -- under the responsible pay-as-you-go rules the previous Congressional leadership had let lapse, which helped push the federal debt up past $9 trillion.