Here's One Positive Thing About The Stimulus Plan That I Hadn't Heard About!

The IRS overturned a tax policy so that they could give more tax breaks to banks.How come the Internal Revenue Service goes out of their way to assist corporations while they audit the poor? How is it that the IRS never knew about Timothy Geithner or Tom Daschle's tax issues until they got nominated by President Obama? But the first time that I made a very small tax mistake,I got audited.Hmmm...something seems awfully fishy here.The IRS needs to stop giving tax breaks to corporations & looking the other way when wealthy & powerful people don't pay taxes.Here's more on the preferential treatment the IRS gives banks & how the stimulus bill will put it to a halt from McClatchy Washington Bureau:

"A tax decision that made it a better deal for Wells Fargo & Co. to purchase Wachovia Corp. would be eliminated by the economic stimulus bill being considered by Congress.

The Internal Revenue Service issued the controversial tax change two days before the Wells Fargo-Wachovia deal was announced Oct. 2, 2008.

Typically, businesses are limited in how much they can lower their tax liability when they acquire another company with built-in losses. But the IRS decision exempted banks, essentially providing no cap for how much a healthy bank could deduct from its taxes by realizing the losses that came with the troubled bank it acquired.

Several lawmakers cried foul when they learned about the preferred tax treatment for banks, saying the IRS had no authority to overturn tax policies without congressional input.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is leading an effort in Congress to get the preferential treatment eliminated. A measure that would do away with it for any bank deal announced after Jan. 16 of this year is in both the House and the Senate versions of the stimulus bill still being ironed out by Congress.

Grassley told Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner before his Senate confirmation that he found the decision troubling and asked him how to “deal with the mess.”

Geithner said in a written response that he’d review the matter, which is subject to an inquiry by Inspector General Eric Thorson.

“I realize that this is a complex issue that raises concerns about Treasury’s authority, differential treatment of the financial services industry and budgetary transparency,” Geithner said.

Reversing the tax change could save the Treasury an estimated $4.34 billion between 2009 and 2013, according to Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.

It’s unclear what Wells Fargo saved in the deal to buy Wachovia.

Robert Willens, a tax and accounting consultant on mergers and acquisitions, said that immediately after the sale it looked like Wells Fargo would be able to use $74 billion in losses that came with Wachovia to shelter its profits, provided the merged bank continued to make money. Without the IRS rule, it only would have been able to take $1 billion a year in losses over 20 years, Willens said."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.