The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "tax loophole" ...
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Breaking Point: Personal tales of New Jersey's tax crush
This investigation into New Jersey's highest-in-the-nation property tax system found that it is forcing people out of their homes, fueling the big business of tax lien sales, forcing homeowners to pay billions in extra taxes because of the faulty assessment system. Loopholes in the law allow billionaires and land developers to get a 98 percent tax break.
Tags: tax liens; property tax; tax loopholes; tax breaks; tax rates; assessments
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Hidden Havens
The reporter investigates how U.S. multinational companies use hidden strategies and offshore havens to avoid paying the full corporate tax rate.
Tags: foreign tax haven; offshore; tax rate; tax avoidance; tax loophole
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Bloomberg's Offshore Millions/The Secret Campaign of Mayor Mike
The two stories take an unprecedented look at Mayor Michael Bloomberg's finances. One story uncovers how Bloomberg used a loophole to invest charitable funds in overseas tax havens. The other story examines the questionable tactics of his secretive campaign effort called "ballot security."
Tags: Bloomberg; mayor; election; finances; campaign spending
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Documentary stamp tax loophole
"Buyers and sellers of pricey properties structure sales as corporate entity transfers rather than as real estate transfers. This lets them legally avoid the Florida documentar stamp tax, collected at a rate of 70 cents per $100 of property value. My first stroy identified three sales totaling $600 million that avoided $4.2 million in taxes. My second story identified additional sales and also cited properties sold using land trusts, another structure that avoids documentary stamp taxes."
Tags: tax; stamp tax; real estate; commercial; documentary; porperty value
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Misuse of Tax Caps
The reporters' investigation focused on the community approval of local tax-rates without realizing that under a loop-hole in a tax cap law passed previously by the Illinois State legislature, public departments who knew about the loop-hole were able to collect a much higher sum of taxes than the constituents thought they were approving.
Tags: tax rates; loop-hole; tax law; financial consultants; school districts; property tax; district budgets; FOIA
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Cash Cows
This series examines some examples of misuse of a 1959 Florida law called the "greenbelt" law, which was designed to help farmers stay in business. Now it is exploited by developers who use it as a tax break and deprive local governments of taxes that could be used for schools, police departments and other public services.
Tags: real estate; development; farm preservation programs; tax loopholes
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Floating Loopholes
This investigation exposes the various loopholes that allow yacht-owners to lower or avoid the taxes they incur by buying luxury boats. Some of the ways people avoid taxes are declaring their yachts as a second home, using charter arrangements and buying yachts offshore to avoid state sales tax.
Tags: boating; water sports; leisure; tax breaks; corporate yachts; ocean; property; coast guard
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Unnecessary epidemic
This extensive investigation showed that Congress and the Drug Enforcement Administration could have stopped methamphetamine growth across the West during the 1990s and still can. The newspaper explained how the drug is able to be controlled because it relies on chemical ingredients produced by only a handful of factories worldwide. Two clampdowns on the legal trade of the chemicals caused meth shortages, prompting users to quit and meth-related property crime to fall. But the drug trade survived because of loopholes and lax enforcement. The scope of this story includes examinations of DEA drug seizures, DEA-registered sellers of the drug, ephedrine drug shipments, ephedrine seizures, congressional records, the federal budget, federal audits, property tax records, patents, academic studies and public policy.
Tags: drugs; meth; methamphetamine; Drug Enforcement Agency; DEA; drug control policy
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Cash Cows: Companies reap benefits of agricultural tax break as cities, schools lose out
An extensive investigation by the Dallas Morning News reveals how big corporations use agricultural tax breaks, which were intended to help farmers, for their own benefit. These companies found loopholes which allowed them to set up their own farms or maintain their own herds of cattle in order to receive huge agricultural tax exemptions. These exemptions can reduce a company's tax bill from $240,000 per year to $300 per year. The article goes on to mention that the biggest sufferers of these breaks are the school districts which rely on these taxes for revenue, losing upwards of $169 milllion.
Tags: agricultural exemptions; Ross Perot Jr.; Frito-Lay; Hillwood Development Corporation
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Empire Zones
Empire Zones is New York's program of business incentives that gives companies hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payers money to start business and increase employment. However, the present business establishment milks some loopholes in the existing law, much to their own lucrative benefits. While some companies are allowed to simply change their names and be treated as new businesses; others eliminate all their state taxes for a decade by doing as little hiring as one person. The series also shows that "some of Syracuse's biggest commercial buildings could get millions in tax relief for doing almost nothing".
Tags: Empire Zone Law; Gov. George Pataki; McAuliffe; Duke's Realty Co.