Time to get empowered. The IRS is reminding businesses that a number of special tax benefits are still available in 40 designated U.S. empowerment zones before 2017. These include the empowerment zone employment credit, increased expensing for qualifying depreciable property, tax-exempt bond financing and the deferral of capital gains tax on the sale of qualified assets sold and replaced. The empowerment zone benefits provision is one of 35 temporary tax provisions scheduled to expire at the end of 2016. It’s not known if it will be extended into 2017.
Woes continue for pension insurance program. The financial health of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which protects the benefits of some 40 million people in private sector pension plans, is a mixed bag, according to the agency’s 2016 FY annual report. Its multiemployer insurance program deficit climbed from $52.3 billion in FY 2015 to $58.8 billion due, in part, to additional multiemployer plans that are projected to run out of money in the next 10 years. But its single-employer insurance program’s deficit declined from $24.1 billion to $20.6 billion.
