The CNMI now needs congressional approval for the release of federal tax refunds known as \u201ccover over tax\u201d totaling some $100 million after the U.S. Treasury expressed hesitation to release the funds to the CNMI right away.<\/p>\n
Gov. Juan N. Babauta, who discussed the issue with federal officials during his recent trip to Washington D.C., said yesterday that the CNMI would have to work now with Congress in getting this money that is due the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working through Congress on that. There\u2019s a little reluctance on the part of the [Bush] administration, the Treasury. Obviously, they don\u2019t want to just release out $100 million. They\u2019re kind of protective with their turf and I don\u2019t blame them. They just want to make sure that they have [the] authority to do it,\u201d said Babauta.<\/p>\n
He said the CNMI would have to work with Congress to prompt Treasury to turn over the \u201ccover over\u201d tax to the CNMI.<\/p>\n
He cautioned that the amount is a rough estimate and requires a lot of work from the CNMI administration.<\/p>\n
As much as possible, he said, \u201cwe want to play low key on that because we don\u2019t want to get people\u2019s hopes too high.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very complicated process. It literally would take a lot of my time and a lot of my staff\u2019s time to push this inch by inch in Congress,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Authorities said that under existing laws, the U.S. government should return to the CNMI taxes paid to the federal government by certain employees and businesses based in the Commonwealth since about 1976.<\/p>\n
The administration said that over the years, CNMI soldiers and federal employees in the CNMI have forked out tax obligations that should have been channeled to local coffers. This money is what is referred to as \u201ccover over.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The CNMI now needs congressional approval for the release of federal tax refunds known as \u201ccover over tax\u201d totaling some $100 million after the U.S. Treasury expressed hesitation to release the funds to the CNMI right away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}