Sunday, August 26, 2012
Gov. Tom Corbett signed the current budget less than two months ago, but the administration already is looking ahead to 2013-14.
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Sunday, August 26, 2012
By PA Independent Staff HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania may be fresh into a new fiscal year, but heads are already turning toward next year and beyond. The administration warned state agencies about keeping budgets tight in 2013-2014, advising them against planning on state aid to fill in any gaps in federal funds. Some are looking at what legislative actions could occur in the next session. A committee designed to look at property tax reform will pull together recommendations this fall, and a new contract with transit employees in Pittsburgh’s Port Authority could be the start of long-term transportation funding overhauls. Meanwhile, a commission on manufacturing is pushing for decreased corporate taxes and more training efforts to help boost …
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Pennsylvania repealed the inheritance tax, or “death tax,” as it applies to family-owned farms.
- GOVERNMENT
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Sunday, August 19, 2012
By Melissa Daniels | PA Independent HARRISBURG — Jay Grove’s grandfather built Gro-Lan Farms in 1905, the Franklin County dairy farmer said proudly. More than a century later, Grove and his brother, Jeff, grow grain to feed their dairy cows on 425 acres and produce some 10,000 8-ounce glasses of milk a day. Not all family farms experience this success. Grove tells a story of a neighboring farmer who sold his 130 acres to a developer who built more than 130 houses there. “Family farms have struggled over the years just to stay alive,” he said. But Grove said Pennsylvania took a step in the right direction to help keep farms in the family. The state repealed the inheritance tax, or “death tax,” as it applies to family-owned farms, a passage …
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Unemployment in Pennsylvania is up, Commonwealth Court upholds voter ID law and state Rep. Joe Brennan is arrested for allegedly beating his wife.
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Saturday, August 18, 2012
By PA Independent Staff HARRISBURG — Unemployment in Pennsylvania and the state’s voter ID law are up this week — the jobless rate climbed to 7.9 percent and Commonwealth Court upheld the controversial law — but lawmakers’ behavior and the state’s spending on lobbying in Washington, D.C., are both down. Pennsylvania’s voter ID law survived the first challenge brought against it, but the ruling was appealed to the state Supreme Court. Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson on Wednesday upheld Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law because plaintiffs challenging the law did not meet the requirements to obtain an injunction. Those plaintiffs filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court on Thursday. In a 70-page decision, Simpson wrote that …
edmund dantes
12:16 pm on Friday, August 24, 2012
The tax rate for farms is the same as for any other asset. But farms present two problems. First, liquidity, finding cash available to pay the tax. If I inherit a $2 million stock portfolio, and so a $350,000 estate tax is due (2013 rates and exemption), I can just sell some stock to get the money to pay the tax. But if I inherit a $2 million farm, the land might be worth $1.5 million, the … more ›