Bills Seek State Tax Breaks for a Select Few

Un-f@#king-believable. Mindboggling.

A Wall Street tycoon accused in the 1980s of cheating thousands of investors out of their savings in one of the biggest financial scandals in history now says the state of California cheated him.

So he has launched a campaign to change the state tax code — retroactive to 1992 — in hopes of getting $5 million back.

Peter Ackerman, who worked for "junk bond king" Michael Milken, walked away from the Drexel Burnham Lambert scandal with what financial experts say was hundreds of millions of dollars. Now a lobbyist for Ackerman has crafted a bill in the Legislature that would permit the refund — one of several measures apparently written with a single taxpayer in mind.

Another is a push by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, one of the world's richest people, to restore a tax break that would benefit his company. And a Central Valley container maker is making a bid for millions more in state subsidies for its manufacturing equipment.

Large-scale across-the-board tax breaks may be out of the question as long as California has multibillion-dollar budget shortfalls. But some businesses and wealthy individuals hope that a few million in specific breaks here and there — amounting to "budget dust" in a state that spends more than $100 billion a year — will sneak through.

Some budget experts and advocates for the poor find such moves worrisome.

Well I don't know why they would worry anyone... I mean, we all know that our all-knowing-benevolent business leaders only have our best interests at heart. I'm sure they just want this money back so they can turn around and give it to the appropriate causes & charities because, as the conservatives always remind us, "the private sector knows best".

Wankers.