PNC Bank: Next in Line at the Bailout Trough
In the wake of revelations that Wells Fargo Bank stands to reap $20 billion in federal tax cuts from a probably-illegal tax giveaway imposed on us by departing leaders in the Bush Treasury Department, the most obvious question was which other large corporation would be next in line to cash in on this particular tax break. The answer: PNC, which just bought Ohio-based National City Bank.
As with the Wells Fargo case, the generosity of the tax break leaves one dumbfounded. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer asks:
How can PNC pay $5.6 billion for National City and get back more than $5 billion in tax breaks?
It’s a rhetorical question, of course: the Plain-D guys know that this tax break exists because of clever back-room maneuvering by Bush Administration Treasury officials. The short explanation: 20 years ago, Congress passed a law (as part of the justly-celebrated Tax Reform Act of 1986) that prohibited banks from buying loss-ridden banks as a tax dodge. While lobbyists pushed hard for Congress to undo this change for, well, the next 20 years, they were unsuccessful– until the Treasury Department decided to change the law themselves by issuing a notice saying that they’ve changed their interpretation of the law. Oversimplying a bit, Treasury officials have taken a law that says “this tax scam is not allowed” and basically crossed out the “not”.
Plenty of people are now paying attention to this anti-democratic outrage, not least among which are the members of Congress who view the creation of absurd tax breaks as their domain alone. (They’re right, for better or for worse.) But the real question remains: what can be done about this?
An incoming Obama Administration can (and should, if all else fails) simply rewrite the administrative regulations. Again resorting to a gross oversimplification, this means un-crossing-out the “not” mentioned above.
Alternatively, tax writers in Congress (who are peeved that Treasury usurped their authority on this one) could pass a law preventing banks from using this made-up loophole going forward.
A stickier issue is whether anything can be done to take away the tax breaks already claimed by Wells Fargo and PNC. If their purchases of unprofitable banks were driven by the tax break, it may seem unfair to take the tax breaks away retrospectively, but there’s enough unfairness to go around: Wells Fargo got a tax break that Citigroup didn’t, entirely because Wells Fargo tried to buy Wachovia right after Treasury’s announcement– and Citigroup had the bad luck to make its acquisition bid right BEFORE Treasury’s announcement. Ain’t nothing fair about that.
It would probably be best for Congress to tackle this one head on, even as it deals with allegations that the direct bailout costs (the much-ballyhooed $700 billion) are being doled out indiscriminately. Let’s hope they do!
KEEPING TRACK OF BUSINESS MILEAGE
We were discussing keeping track of business mileage, and it came up that most of us tax pros, and probably most other business persons, make multiple trips to the same locations on a regular basis – in my case to Office Depot for supplies, to my mail drop (which is also a client), to the bank, and to various business clients.
I was reminded of a practice many, many, many years ago when I was a “para-professional” (official title was “Business Services Associate”) in the Small Business Department of Deloitte, Haskins + Sells – one of the then “big eight” international CPA firms. We had to record the mileage to and from our client’s offices on our time report. The firm would reimburse us for business miles – and would turn around and bill the client for the mileage. But rather than have to count the miles for each individual trip the firm provided employees with a chart that listed the round-trip mileage from our office to each of the firm’s clients. If Client A indicated 20 miles each time I would go to Client A I would record 20 miles on my report.
I expect that the mileage was clocked on the first visit from the office to the client, and that mileage was used as the standard for every trip from then on. If a client moved the standard would be changed accordingly.
My colleague mentioned that she had heard of clients who looked up the mileage between the addresses of their office and the business location in Yahoo or Google, and used that figure instead of actually clocking the mileage. I felt this could short change the driver. Isn’t the mileage provided on these online services more “as the crow flies” than actual driving miles? I think it is much “more better” to do as I think DH+S did – on your first round-trip to a location to which you will be making multiple stops record the exact mileage from your odometer. You can then use the same miles each time you make a round-trip from your office to the location.
There is a downside to using a pre-determined mileage figure. In reality each individual round-trip to a location is not always exactly the same number of miles.
On one trip excessive traffic may cause me to take an alternate route to save time – i.e. get off a major highway and take back roads, which is more actual miles but less travel time. Or road construction or an accident may force me to take a detour that ends up being more miles. On another trip I may stop to buy office supplies or visit the Post Office to mail business packages on the way to or from a client, which would add a couple of miles to that specific trip.
I realize that we are not talking about thousands of miles lost – but if you do a lot of client visits the added miles could add up.
The bottom line is that clocking each and every individual business trip is the best and most accurate way to record your true business mileage. This is not difficult – you just have to get into the habit. You can use a simple pocket date book to keep track of business trips. Enter the location, business purpose and miles driven. For example – “Office Depot (Union City) to purchase office supplies 4 miles” or “Business Client, LLC (Watchung) to do payroll and accounts payable 56 miles” or “Wachovia (Union City) to make deposit for client 3 miles”.
If you are the lazy type – or forget to set the odometer – you can always use a standard mile amount – the “DH+S method”. But remember – you still have to keep a record of the date, location, and business purpose for each trip in some kind of log or record book.
TTFN