House to mull alternative energy tax: official - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An alternative energy tax program to make use of municipal bonds to counter global warming through renewable and more efficient energy will be on the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means' agenda this session, the committee's chief tax counsel said on Friday.
The committee has jurisdiction over all taxation, tariffs and other revenue-raising measures, as well as a number of other programs with the U.S. Constitution requiring all tax bills to originate in the House of Representatives.
"I believe you'll see fairly significant legislation in that area," Committee chief tax counsel John Buckley told a meeting of the Government Finance Officers Association, referring to the energy tax program.
The committee has proven to be one of the most important committees in setting U.S. policy.
"Energy and global warming will be a large part of the agenda. There will be hearings in the committee in late February on global warming," Buckley said.
Committee members, including Chairman Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record), also have a "strong" interest in tax-credit bonds, he added. Buckley appealed to GFOA members to make suggestions to the committee on how to make the instrument "more workable."
Buckley also told GFOA delegates the new U.S. excise tax is "flawed" from both policy and technical points of view and that the Alternative Minimum Tax has largely eliminated the market for private activity bonds.
"The large AMT problem we're facing is mainly from the large 2001 and 2002 (tax) cuts," he said.