By Tom Yamachika, President On July 10, 2017, Governor Ige proudly signed House Bill 209, a bill that establishes a Hawaii earned income tax credit (HI-EITC for short). The EITC has been described as “a federal tax credit that helps … Read More
By Tom Yamachika, President On June 7, 2017,the Honolulu City Council voted to authorize bond funding to keep the Honolulu rail project on track. What they might not realize is that bond funding dramatically raises the stakes for transparency around … Read More
By Tom Yamachika, President On Thursday, June 22nd, the board of Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) stunned critics by cancelling a special audit that would have examined past cost overruns. Ember Shinn, former City Managing Director and HART … Read More
By Tom Yamachika, President One of the legislative bills that is now being considered by Gov. David Ige is a curious bill, HB 735, involving the car rental industry. The bill doesn’t seek to impose new taxes or fees upon … Read More
By Tom Yamachika, President In early May, on the day our Legislature adjourned, one of the newspapers summarized our Legislature’s work on the Honolulu transit surcharge extension as “Epic Fail on Rail.” With the Federal Highway Administration poised to … Read More
By Tom Yamachika, President One of the bills our legislature sent up to Gov. Ige to be signed, which is almost certain to become law because the Department of Taxation sponsored it, is one to close an estate tax “loophole.” … Read More
By Tom Yamachika On May 22, 2017, the Supreme Court of the United States denied review in seven cases involving retroactive tax legislation. In the Dot Foods case out of Washington which we have written about before, a company began business … Read More
By Tom Yamachika, President I have written previously about some of the human casualties that took place in this past legislative session. I would be remiss if I failed to mention Tom Gorak, who had been chief counsel of the … Read More
By Tom Yamachika, President Our legislature this year has had several casualties. We expect quite a few bills to be tossed aside during the legislative process. However, in recent years we have had more than the average number of human … Read More
By Tom Yamachika, President We have written before about GEMS (Green Energy Market Securitization), a program adopted by our state government in 2013. The state wanted to facilitate the buildout of “clean energy infrastructure,” a necessary step to reaching its … Read More