Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Obama 2016 budget urges U.S. states to cut emissions faster


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President Barack Obama's fiscal 2016 budget proposes boosting funding for clean energy by 7 percent and a new $4 billion fund to encourage U.S. states to make faster and deeper cuts to emissions from power plants, officials said Monday. Obama's budget also calls for the permanent extension of the Production Tax Credit, used by the wind industry, and the Investment Tax Credit, used by the solar industry, the officials said.

President Obama's fiscal 2016 budget introduces a one-time 14 percent tax on approximately $2 trillion of so-called unrepatriated foreign earnings. President Obama’s fiscal year 2016 budget introduces a one-time 14 percent tax on approximately $2 trillion of so-called unrepatriated foreign earnings. The tax would raise about $248 billion over the next five years, which would be used to help pay for infrastructure projects and replenish the Highway Trust Fund.

The proposal would also impose a 19 percent tax on future foreign earnings (with an 85 percent credit for any foreign taxes paid), allowing such earnings to then be brought back to the United States with no additional tax due. Under current law, multinational corporations based in the United States are nominally taxed at a 35 percent rate on worldwide income. But the tax does not have to be paid on earnings by a controlled foreign corporation until the company pays a dividend to its United States parent. So the tax can be (and often is) deferred indefinitely by keeping the earnings abroad.

Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google and Pfizer have stockpiled hundreds of billions of dollars abroad in the hopes of bringing it home later at a reduced tax rate. Such earnings are often referred to as trapped foreign earnings. The tax bill they would have to pay to bring those earnings to the United States is leading some companies to reinvest the money abroad, even if they get a lower pretax return on investment. Companies often prefer leaving it overseas over paying the tax and returning the money to shareholders or reinvesting at home.

This foreign earnings “lock-out” effect is conceptually similar to the “lock-in” effect of a high capital gains rate on individual investors. If the tax rate on capital gains is too high, individual investors may hold on to appreciated assets rather than sell them, particularly if enticed by the possibility that their heirs would be able to avoid the tax when they inherit the assets. In the State of the Union address in January, President Obama coupled his proposed increase in the capital gains rate with a proposal to make death a taxable event for wealthy households, precisely to offset this concern about lock-in of previously untaxed assets.

The White House proposal on foreign earnings takes a similar approach, taxing foreign earnings up front and eliminating deferral. Taxing the old “trapped” foreign earnings at a 14 percent rate allows multinationals to repatriate the money and return it to shareholders via a dividend or redemption. On the other hand organizations can decide to reinvest the trusts in the United States. There would be no confinements on what an organization could do with the repatriated cash, not at all like some "expense occasion" recommendations that would make an effort not to utilize repatriated trusts to pay profits or reclamations. Going ahead, the 19 percent charge on outside profit turns into a kind of multinational corporate least assessment. Albeit entirely household enterprises would confront a 28 percent assessment rate (25 percent for assembling partnerships), multinationals would pay 28 percent on residential profit and 19 percent on outside income (with generally a 85 percent credit for remote assessments paid).

Obama has made fighting climate change a top priority in his final two years in office. The White House sees it as critical to his legacy. The interest in clean vitality advances would cover programs essentially at the divisions of Energy and Defense, the authorities said.  The $7.4 billion figure is an increment from the $6.9 billion proposed in Obama's monetary 2015 financial plan, an ascent of 7.2 percent, and over the $6.5 billion established by Congress during the current year. 

The organization is finishing questionable decides that will cut carbon dioxide outflows from force plants across the nation. The new reserve would give states motivators to rush that process or go more remote than their ordered cuts. The proposed $4 billion fund would be available to any state that applies, Janet McCabe, acting assistant Environmental Protection Agency Administrator in charge of air regulations, told reporters.

"What we will be looking for are states that will get (carbon emission) reductions earlier... or seek to go further than final guidelines require," she said.

States would have access to money that could be used to finance clean energy technologies, funding for low-income communities that face "disproportionate impacts from environmental pollution" and create incentives for businesses to back projects that cut down on emissions, blamed for global warming.

In addition, the budget provides $400 million to help communities assess flood risks. It also spells out the costs to the federal government of climate-related disasters, highlighting a fiscal argument to fight global warming. The United States has taken on over $300 billion in direct costs resulting from extreme weather and fire in the past decade, the budget says. The EPA's proposals to slash carbon and other air pollution from power plants and oil and gas facilities are a target of some lawmakers.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of coal-producing state Kentucky said Monday he will join the Senate committee that oversees the EPA's budget.

"You can guarantee that I will continue to fight back against this administration’s anti-coal jobs regulations on behalf of the Kentuckians I represent in the U.S. Senate," he said.
Acting EPA Deputy Administrator Stan Meiburg said the agency is already working with limited resources, including a "historically low" staffing level.

"This has made us focus on being more efficient... with the staff we have," he told reporters.The Department of Energy requested $29.9 billion for fiscal year 2016, an increase of $2.5 billion from the amount enacted for 2015, of which $10.7 billion would be spent to support scientific research, development and deployment of new clean energy technologies and advanced manufacturing.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Monday the department's budget request highlights new investments in energy infrastructure technology to make the electric grid more resilient and reduce methane emissions from natural gas systems. To support the international component of Obama's climate strategy, the budget requests $500 million to support the United Nations' Green Climate Fund, the first tranche of the $3 billion pledged by the United States in November to help poor countries deal with climate change. Under present law, the 35 percent impose on repatriated profit coupled with inconclusive deferral urges American multinationals to move wage seaward, keep it seaward and for all time reinvest the income seaward. Some lawmakers have said they plan to block the funding.

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