pimblr.com

Katie Finnerty already had spent her $600 tax rebate by the time the government deposited it in her bank account earlier this week.
But the compliance specialist with M&T Bank didn’t splurge. Instead, she and her twin sister, Molly, invested their windfalls in hardwood flooring for their Getzville condominiums.
“We’re in the process of doing home improvements,“ said the 34-year-old Finnerty. “Because of the $1,200, we did more. We upgraded.”
Economists predict many consumers will take such frugal paths as $110 billion in federal economic stimulus rebates start landing in bank accounts of 130 million low-to middle-income people.
The rebates amount to $600 for individuals, $1,200 for couples and another $300 for each child under 17. They are going out to singles with adjusted gross incomes of less than $75,000 and couples who filed joint returns with adjusted gross incomes of less than $150,000.
You can calculate what you will receive using this Economic Stimulus Rebate Calculator.
Whether the influx of cash will pump up the economy is debatable. But the infusion is particularly important for the Buffalo region’s long-troubled economy, local economists say.
Of the 8.3 million New Yorkers receiving the rebates, an estimated 498,000 live in the Buffalo Niagara region, where up to 70 percent of the households qualify.
“It’s much more likely to have an impact on the Buffalo economy than in Manhattan,” said Lewis Mandell, professor of finance and managerial economics at the University at Buffalo’s School of Management. “Most of the Buffalo area is going to end up getting something.”
Retailers here, as elsewhere, are banking on it.
• Rosa’s Home Stores, for instance, will roll out a special “Economic Stimulus Sale” Sunday, hoping to draw consumers in with double-digit discounts on appliances, mattresses and furniture.
“We know what people are going through,” said Dean Rallo, the local chain’s president. “We’re stretching the dollar as far as possible for them.”

buffalonews.com

A dozen sites
1. I have been a big fan of Snapz Pro X as a screen and video capture device, but I may be falling in love with ScreenFlow.
2. Guy sets world record for wearing the most T-shirts at once, puts it on YouTube and gets 6 million views.
5. Where do you buy stolen military gear, including jet parts that Iran would love to buy? On EBay, of course.
8. Virtual Gumshoe offers investigative links to help you find people, search criminal records and more.
9. RetailMeNot delivers more than 13,000 discount coupons to online sites. Do not buy ANYTHING online without checking this site first to see if you can get a discount.
11. Finally, a way to get those camera lights off your video cameras so you are not blasting the subject with light. The Xtender looks xcellent.
Editor’s Note: Al’s Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.

poynter.org

Barring quick action by the Alabama Legislature, some of the federal tax rebate will have to go to pay state income taxes. A bill that would exempt the federal rebate checks is stalled as the Legislature enters the final six days of the 2008 regular session.
The bill to exempt the rebates from state income taxes is waiting to be considered in the House and still must go to the Senate. The bill is stalled behind the state’s education budget and a controversial corporate income tax measure.
Debates on the corporate income tax bill and the $6.3 billion education budget are expected to take up all of the time in the House next week, leaving just two days for the bill to pass in time to be considered in the Senate.
Early in the session, Gov. Bob Riley and the Democratic and Republican caucuses in the House and Senate had made it a priority to exempt the rebate checks from income taxes. But since the bill by Rep. Terry Spicer, D-Elba, was approved by the House Education Appropriations Committee in March it has been sitting on the calendar in the House.
“It is in line to be considered,” House Speaker Seth Hammett, D-Andalusia, said.
Spicer said he hoped to be able to bring the bill to the floor for a vote after the House passes the education budget.
The bill was amended by the education appropriations committee to remove an incentive for businesses that’s offered in the federal tax rebate package.
The federal package allows businesses to increase the amount that they deduct for the depreciating value of equipment. State law ties Alabama’s depreciation schedule for businesses to the federal schedule, which means Alabama’s schedule would go up automatically under the federal legislation. But the House committee voted to allow businesses to take only the current deduction.

montgomeryadvertiser.com

The check really is in the mail for property owners waiting for their tax rebate checks.
That’s according to Morgan County Auditor Brenda Adams, who said all of Morgan County’s property tax rebate checks were mailed March 25.
“I’m sure some people should already have theirs,” Adams said Friday morning.
While most Morgan County residents have eagerly anticipated getting the rebate checks, part of a plan passed by the Indiana General Assembly last year to give some property tax relief, Adams said some people called into her office, apparently unaware about the rebate checks.
“They just wanted to know if they could cash them,” Adams said, noting that some people were confusing the rebate checks with their federal or state income tax refunds.
“But nobody wanted to give anything back,” she said.
Morgan County, however, is not even close to being the last county to mail out their tax rebate checks.
Income tax rules on refunds, rebates
Jodie Reynolds, spokesperson for the Internal Revenue Service for Indiana and Kentucky, provided rules for including tax refunds and rebates on income tax returns.
According to IRS Publication 17, Chapter 12, “Recoveries: A recovery is a return of an amount you deducted or took a credit for in an earlier year. The most common recoveries are refunds, reimbursements, and rebates of deductions itemized on Schedule A (Form 1040). You also may have recoveries of non-itemized deductions (such as payments on previously deducted bad debts) and recoveries of items for which you previously claimed a tax credit.
“Tax benefit rule: You must include a recovery in your income in the year you receive it up to the amount by which the deduction or credit you took for the recovered amount reduced your tax in the earlier year.”
Angie Dvorak, legislative director of the Association of Indiana Counties, said as of Feb. 15, less than half of Indiana’s counties had sent out their tax rebate checks.

reporter-times.com

Friday, March 21, 2008 | Mayor Sanders touts crime is down. Police Chief Bill Lansdowne claims we will be fully staffed by 2010 or sooner. I completely disagree and here is proof!
Violence in San Diego for the week of 3-16-2008:
1.Man killed, boy injured in Clairemont shooting
2. Man dies after being shot in brawl in Mission Beach.
3. Two dead in rollover crash after driver shot and wounded.
4.Road rage incident causes two to get shot by cop.
These are just a few of the violent crimes reported on in San Diego. There was more shootings in Linda Vista, most likely gang-related as well as other violent crimes.
What is my point you ask? Violent crime has not subsided in San Diego and regardless what our mayor or chief of police say.
The San Diego Police Department is under staffed and the city is not well protected. You have heard the saying, “Rob Peter to pay Paul.” Well, that is what each police division does daily to meet minimum staffing for the San Diego Police Department!
And get this folks: Many times divisions still are under-staffed and you, the citizens are paying the price for it! This is no longer a joke or something that should be overlooked and ignored by you the citizens.
This city is in serious trouble. Summer isn’t even here yet, which is the time violent crime always seems to increase. It has started much earlier this year. With a recession looming, prices on everything skyrocketing, and unemployment up, the nightmare is just beginning.
Comments are now displayed with the newest at the bottom. Not sure you’re seeing all of the comments? Click here:
1. Jim wrote on March 21, 2008 6:07 AM :
"I encourage every citizen to get involved. You need to ask the beat cops how many are out there on any given shift. Its not uncommon for some areas to have only 2 or 3 officers for an entire division. Its a shell game and its getting worse."

voiceofsandiego.org

AVON PARK — Feagin Avenue needed to be re-paved, Bob Reisig thought.
When one of his employees at Florida Tire Terminal got a back injury after his forklift rode into a pot hole that reached all the way to the clay underneath the asphalt five years ago, he knew the 100-yard stub of a road needed work.
Last week, that and parts of 16 other streets were re-paved as part of a city-wide improvement.
Avon Park Public Works Coordinator Ted Long said the city’s now working on sidewalk projects, mostly on the south half of the city.
Both streets and sidewalk projects are selected in part by the number of residential complaints and, for the latter, on pedestrian traffic.
“We generally look around to see where the kids on the street are at,” Long said. “We’re trying to get the kids out of the streets.”
Long said his department is adding sidewalks along the west side of Lake Tulane, on South Central Avenue and on Wilhite Street.
Long added that the city will use part of a $200,000 transportation fund for the ongoing sidewalk construction. The $207,000 needed for the repaving projects were funded by a county infrastructure fund generated from a 1-percent sales tax.
Some area residents were happy to see the new sidewalks. Reyes Hernandez, who walks five or six miles a day around the city, found the concrete from McDonalds along Wilhite Street to be more comfortable than the grass shoulder he treaded upon earlier.
“This is the first improvement I’ve seen in years,” he said.
Reisig also thought the re-paved streets made the city look better, as well as safer for his employees, even if his street doesn’t normally get a lot of traffic.
“The only reason it’s really nice is because of the holes in the roads,” he said. “The road was just falling into disrepair.”

www2.highlandstoday.com

Tax freedom allows a family trip to Sea World
My wife and I raised two daughters, each a grown women now. Although they both attended local public schools through the grades and then attended college in Oregon, we never took a family vacation during spring break.
The reason was one that might never occur to a lot of people. You see, my wife was a tax accountant and whatever late-in-the-month-of-March-week was spring break week, she was always too busy preparing tax returns at a local accounting firm to break away from her work. Gone from work for even one day was not in the cards for her, while being “unchained” from desk and computer for an entire week was virtually impossible unless her location for some critical reason was the Salem Hospital’s emergency room.
Well, guess what, she retired after last year’s desk-bound marathon and was “free” from the tax forms this year As the world turns, it so happened that our youngest daughter was scheduled for her last spring break this year and my wife was finally available during those days.
This is our daughter’s senior year so the planets aligned for the first time in all the years she’s been in school and we were able to take a spring break vacation together. Our apologies to our older daughter who never got the same break.
We let the younger daughter choose the destination and it turned out that she had always wanted to visit Sea World in San Diego. My wife and I hadn’t been there in years ourselves and that was before our youngest was born, so we greeted her choice of where to go with equal degrees of enthusiasm. As what some might consider frosting on a German chocolate cake that had never been baked in our family, our daughter was told she could bring a friend at our expense.

statesmanjournal.com