They can’t actually be serious.
I wish this had come out earlier, it would have been interesting in the focus groups… to hear what case managers working so hard with so little would say about this. Their phones will probably be ringing off the hooks tomorrow morning. One more thing for which people need help and have no where to turn.
I’m a little baffled by it, too. Mostly by this part:
The IRS decided only late last year that the grants would be taxable.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding things, but isn’t it a bit irresponsible for the IRS to decide to tax something WAY after it’s been paid out? How is it okay to just change the rules after the fact? Particularly when the grant is for home-rebuilding and is going directly towards the costs associated with construction and repair? I don’t know of any folk who put Road Home money into a “rainy day” fund, just in case something else came along. And it wasn’t like the application had a line item for tax overhead. The kind of estimates that went into applications for Road Home money didn’t leave a lot of room for wiggle. Some folks had to get multiple estimates on repairs until one came that was low enough to be acceptable on the application.
Do we really need another layer of red tape in this process? More rules means more labor, more overhead, and more cost to the program that isn’t getting put in rebuilding. Things shouldn’t be this hard. Who is benefiting from all this hassle?
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