The Washington Post reported last week that Microsoft saved as much as $4.5 billion in Federal taxes from 2009 to 2011 by shifting “almost half… Read More »Tax 1% of $4 Billion in Income Company Shifts to Territory
Since 1952, women have competed in the international beauty contest known as the Miss Universe pageant. Eight of the Miss Universe title holders have represented… Read More »Miss Universe Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is “catching up to Ireland and Singapore” as a tax “shelter,” according to the territory’s Secretary of Economic Development and Commerce — who seemed to view the Commonwealth becoming more of a tax haven as a positive development.
There’s one big difference between the Puerto Rico tax haven and taxation of Americans in foreign countries, however. The tax exemption that Secretary Alberto Bacó Bagué is marketing to rich residents of the States avoids Federal taxes on gains from selling stocks and bonds — a very valuable benefit that foreign tax havens cannot offer.Read More »Puerto Rico Seeks to be a Tax Haven — But with Less Tax Than Foreign Havens
The secretary general of Puerto Rico’s “commonwealth” party Monday erroneously claimed that actions of Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla had lowered the territory’s unemployment rate to 14.6% in January and that this was the lowest rate since January 2008, according to newspaper El Nuevo Dia.
Jorge Suárez Cáceres made the assertions in an attack on Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner in Washington, DC, Pedro Pierluisi (statehood party-D), who is expected to be Garcia’s main challenger in the 2016 election.Read More »Puerto Rico Governor’s Aide Wrong on Jobless Rate
Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States. Just what does that mean? As the United States grew from the thirteen original colonies,… Read More »What Does It Mean to Be a Territory?
The idea of exempting Puerto Rico from the law requiring that ocean shipping between U.S. ports be on U.S. built, owned, and registered vessels with primarily U.S. crews has been rejected by two groups with great influence in official Washington.
The nation’s largest labor organization, the AFL-CIO, and the coalition of U.S. ship builders, owners, and sailors, the American Maritime Partnership, reacted to a major report on the application of the law known as the Jones Act to the territory.Read More »Powerful national groups oppose Puerto Rico ocean shipping law exemptions
Prominent opponents of Federal ocean freight shipping requirements in Hawaii and Puerto Rico had the same criticism of the major Federal study of the application of the Jones Act to Puerto Rico shortly after it was released yesterday.
The Federal law requires that ocean cargo shipping between U.S. ports be on vessels that are U.S. built, owned, and registered, and primarily crewed by U.S. citizens. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), a non-partisan, objective, investigative arm of Congress, issued the report. Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner in Washington, Pedro Pierluisi (statehood-D), who has seat in the U.S. House of Representatives but a vote only in its committees, proposed the study.Read More »Hawaii and Puerto Rico Jones Act Critics Say Same Thing About Federal Report
Since the 1960s, schools in all 50 states and in Puerto Rico have provided affordable hot lunches for children and subsidized the meals of children who needed that help.
A 2012 study determined that the costs of providing school lunches for Alaska and Hawaii were greater than related costs in the 48 contiguous states, but the researchers said that they were unable to get the information needed for Puerto Rico. The factors identified as increasing costs for providing food in Alaska and Hawaii included a number of considerations related to geography:Read More »School Lunches in Puerto Rico
A major Federal study released today that examines the application of the primary Federal ocean freight law to Puerto Rico — and exempting the territory from it, as some in the islands have advocated — raises as many questions as it answers.
The law, known as the Jones Act, requires that shipping between U.S. ports be on vessels that are U.S. built, owned, and registered, and primarily crewed by U.S. citizens.Read More »New Study of U.S. Ocean Freight Law and Puerto Rico Inconclusive
