[StBernard] LRA and taxes

[Westley Annis]

I seem to recall that prior to Katrina, many disaster victims had to pay
taxes on the free FEMA money.
Somehow, some congressionals figured out how counterproductive this was, and
for Katrina and Rita, at
least, we didn't have to consider the FEMA money as income.

Likewise, if our government really wanted to help us, they'd focus on
helping us, and consider LRA money like
FEMA money or SBA loan money, instead of acting like we made a windfall at
the casino or cashed out on 
our stocks in Google. Really, the tax somebody pays on the small LRA grants
is so meager that it's hard to believe the greatest power in the world needs
it more than the Katrina/Rita folks.

Do you think any of our elected leadership is working on making LRA funds
tax exempt? 

Also, Gaby suggested that they base it on cost to repair less insurance and
forget about pre-Katrina value. 
But it's like the IRS with the casualty loss-they give 3 ways to figure your
loss AND YOU HAVE TO USE THE LOWEST FIGURE OF ALL THREE.  The real losers
were the folks who bought a house 30 years ago, kept it up but didn't pour a
lot of money into remodeling over the years. There was no consideration that
the $28,000 house bought in 1972 even with $15,000 of improvements could
compare to the real value of that house in 2005, but
IRS forced them to have to use the lowest value. Lesson learned-sell your
house to your neighbor and vice versa to establish the true value of house
every 5 years, then sell the houses back again, and repeat the cycle. It
will be paper transactions, but at least you can establish the sale value of
the house to IRS and the lesser of
the three calculations won't be based on a house you bought 30 years ago.

I like the idea someone recently suggested to south LA. Secede from the US,
say we have weapons of mass destruction (we do have nuclear power plants and
refineries), and then the US government will want to be our allies and will
rebuild us with free money without all this red tape.  

ddk