Happy Monday and welcome back to On The Money, where we’re officially challenging President BidenJoe BidenMcConnell doesn’t rule out getting involved in Republican primaries Perdue files paperwork to explore 2022 Senate run Hillicon Valley: Parler announces official relaunch | Google strikes news pay deal with major Australian media company | China central to GOP efforts to push back on Biden MORE to a game of Mario Kart at Camp David. I’m Sylvan Lane, and here’s your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line.

See something I missed? Let me know at slane@thehill.com or tweet me @SylvanLane. And if you like your newsletter, you can subscribe to it here: http://bit.ly/1NxxW2N.

Write us with tips, suggestions and news: slane@thehill.com, njagoda@thehill.com and nelis@thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @SylvanLane, @NJagoda and @NivElis.

ADVERTISEMENT

THE BIG DEAL—Democrats make historic push for aid, equity for Black farmers: Democratic senators introduced a pair of bills this week aiming to help Black farmers survive the coronavirus pandemic and reconcile a long history of mistreatment and discrimination.

• Sens. Raphael WarnockRaphael WarnockPerdue files paperwork to explore 2022 Senate run On The Money: Democrats make historic push for aid, equity for Black farmers | Key players to watch in minimum wage fight Democrats make historic push for aid, equity for Black farmers MORE (Ga.), Cory BookerCory BookerOn The Money: Democrats make historic push for aid, equity for Black farmers | Key players to watch in minimum wage fight Democrats make historic push for aid, equity for Black farmers Senators, impeachment teams scramble to cut deal on witnesses MORE (N.J.), Ben Ray Luján (N.M.) and Debbie StabenowDeborah (Debbie) Ann StabenowOn The Money: Democrats make historic push for aid, equity for Black farmers | Key players to watch in minimum wage fight Democrats make historic push for aid, equity for Black farmers Senators, impeachment teams scramble to cut deal on witnesses MORE (Mich.) announced the Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act on Monday. 
• Booker, Warnock and a gaggle of other senators also introduced the Justice for Black Farmers Act, which had initially been pitched in November during the previous session of Congress.

The emergency relief bill would provide $4 billion in direct payments to farmers of color and another $1 billion toward rooting out systemic racism within the Department of Agriculture that Booker and the other sponsors say has robbed Black families of the ability to build and pass on generational wealth. 

“When it comes to farming and agriculture, we know that there is a direct connection between discriminatory policies within the USDA and the enormous land loss we have seen among Black farmers over the past century,” Booker said in a statement about the Justice for Black Farmers Act. The Hill’s Marty Johnson explains here.

The history: Years of discrimination left Black farmers with more debt than their counterparts, and less land and access to credit, contributing to a decline in the number of farmers who are not white. While changes in the agriculture industry over a number of decades have also cost white families their farms, Black farmers have taken a disproportionate hit.

• In 1920 there were more than 900,000 Black farmers in the U.S., about 14 percent of the country’s farmers at the time, per the USDA. Agency census data from 2017, however, revealed that only about 35,000 Black-owned farms remain.
• As a whole, Black farms today make up just 1.7 percent of the nation’s 2 million farms, despite the fact that the number of Black farms has increased since the 1990s.
• Moreover, the 2017 data showed that Black farms were grossly below the average in most revenue-related categories, only receiving about half of the government payments that an average U.S. farm receives.

 

ADVERTISEMENT

LEADING THE DAY

Key players to watch in minimum wage fight: The battle over whether to keep a minimum wage hike in President Biden’s COVID-19 relief package is heating up, with key players on both sides of the issue digging in for the fight.

• The debate is threatening to create deep divisions among Democrats as they move forward with an economic rescue package without GOP support.
• Outside groups are also exerting pressure on progressive and moderate Democrats to boost the rate from $7.25, where it’s stood since 2009, to $15 an hour.

The battle over raising the minimum wage could be the most contentious intraparty debate for the Democrats since taking control of the government. Here are the main players to watch on the minimum wage fight, from The Hill’s Alex Gangitano.

• Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersOn The Money: Democrats make historic push for aid, equity for Black farmers | Key players to watch in minimum wage fight Key players to watch in minimum wage fight Sirota: Tanden’s past tweets were ‘distraction’ from other issues at hearing MORE (I-Vt.): The Chairman—Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, is vowing that the final version of the coronavirus relief package will include language raising the rate to $15. The reconciliation process gives Sanders a great deal of power from his perch.
• Sens. Joe ManchinJoseph (Joe) ManchinOn The Money: Democrats make historic push for aid, equity for Black farmers | Key players to watch in minimum wage fight Biden pledges action on guns amid resistance Key players to watch in minimum wage fight MORE (D-W.V.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.): The Moderates—Manchin, a pivotal centrist swing vote, has said he opposes a nationwide wage hike to $15 an hour. And Sinema recently said the wage increase should not be included in the coronavirus relief package.
• Senate Majority Leader Charles SchumerChuck SchumerSenate passes bill to award Capitol Police officer Congressional Gold Medal Trump lawyers center defense around attacks on Democrats Democratic norms aren’t safe just because Biden won MORE (D-N.Y.): The Shepherd–Schumer, a co-sponsor of the Raise the Wage Act, has said he is working to see if it’s possible to pass Sanders’s bill in the COVID-19 relief plan.
• Elizabeth MacDonough: The Senate parliamentarian—MacDonough will be forced to decide whether the minimum wage increase complies with the Byrd Rule, which determines what legislation can be passed through the reconciliation process.

ON TAP TOMORROW: Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman gives a speech on community bank supervision and regulation at 11 a.m.

GOOD TO KNOW

• The CEO of stock trading platform Robinhood said Friday that the company could have “communicated” better to investors on its decision to restrict the buying of stocks like GameStop after they were targeted by users on a Reddit subforum. 
• American Express disclosed on Friday that several federal agencies are probing its sales practices for its small business credit cards and consumer cards.

ODDS AND ENDS

• A news company in Australia has reached a deal with Google for the company to be paid to have its content displayed in Google’s News Showcase. 

The tax-filing season is now underway after a delayed start, and it’s expected to bring challenges and confusion as taxpayers and the IRS navigate pandemic-related issues, including some pertaining to stimulus checks.

The IRS started accepting 2020 tax returns on Friday, a couple of weeks later than the usual, after a coronavirus relief law was enacted in late December.

Many Americans saw significant changes to the amount and sources of their income last year because of the pandemic, and they will have to file returns that take those into account.

ADVERTISEMENT

People who have not received any or all of the funds that they’re entitled from the two rounds of stimulus payments can reconcile that on their 2020 return.

“2020 was kind of a year for the ages and all the life experiences it took with it,” said Mark Steber, chief tax information officer for the tax-preparation company Jackson Hewitt. “There’s a lot for people to watch for on their taxes, and a lot to watch out for.”

The IRS is expecting to process around 160 million individual tax returns this year. The agency said it’s prepared for the influx.

“We are ready,” Ken Corbin, a senior IRS official, said on a call with reporters Thursday.

The IRS is encouraging people to file their tax returns electronically and to use direct deposit for refunds. While the agency expects to issue most refunds within 21 days of receiving a return, as is typical, Corbin said people who file by mail should prepare for “potential lengthy waits” on any refunds.

“This is due to the impact of the pandemic, ranging from potentially lengthier mail time to the need to socially distance our employees in our processing sites,” he said.

ADVERTISEMENT

This year’s filing season is taking on added importance for people who have not received the full amount of the enacted stimulus payments. Eligible recipients who fall into this category include some taxpayers who saw their income decline substantially in 2020, people who welcomed new children last year and families with mixed-citizenship status.

Steber said the number of affected Americans is in the millions.

Taxpayers who have not yet received their full payment amounts can claim the difference between what they have received and what they are entitled to as a “recovery rebate credit,” which is line 30 on the 2020 tax return. People who have already received their full payment amounts don’t need to take any action.

The start of the filing season comes as Congress is considering legislation that would create an additional round of direct payments. Under the bill’s provisions, individuals with income of up to $75,000 and married couples earning up to $150,000 would be eligible for the full payment amounts of $1,400 per person. If the legislation is enacted, the initial payments would be based on income listed on 2019 returns, or 2020 returns when they’re processed by the IRS.

The potential for a new round of direct payments may influence the timing of when some file their 2020 tax returns. Some people whose income was lower last year than it was in 2019 may want to file their return on the early side to maximize the payment they could receive quickly. On the other hand, those who saw their income go up in 2020 may want to wait to file their returns so that they can potentially receive a stimulus payment based on their 2019 income.

Corbin said it’s more important to file tax returns accurately than it is to file them quickly and that people should wait until they have all the necessary documents in hand.

“We always encourage taxpayers to file the most accurate return that they can,” he said.

Stimulus checks aren’t the only aspect of pandemic-related assistance that may complicate the tax-filing season.

Millions of Americans received unemployment benefits last year due to the economic downturn. People often received the traditional state unemployment benefits, as well as benefits from federal programs.

Tax preparers said it may be complicated for people to receive all of the tax forms pertaining to their unemployment insurance. In some cases, people who received benefits from multiple programs may get one form from their state, while in other cases they may get multiple documents. Additionally, some people will have to download the tax forms from state websites.

Unemployment benefits are considered taxable income by the federal government and many states. However, many people were likely unaware of that and had little to no taxes withheld from their benefits. That gap could lead to smaller-than-expected refunds or even balances due to the IRS.

People who paid too little in taxes throughout last year could face penalties when they file their return this year. Corbin said that the IRS doesn’t have any current plans for blanket waivers of underpayment penalties relating to unemployment benefits but that the IRS is able to provide relief for taxpayers facing hardships on a case-by-case basis.

ADVERTISEMENT

A group of Democrats have introduced a bill that would exempt from federal taxes the first $10,200 in unemployment benefits people received last year, but it’s unclear whether the measure will make it through Congress. The bill’s contents are not a part of the current version of House Democrats’ relief package.

Adam Markowitz, a Florida-based enrolled agent who prepares individual and business tax returns, said the uncertainties over what will ultimately be in the next relief package make him inclined to not start filing many of his clients’ tax returns immediately. He also said there are business owners who may still be waiting for IRS guidance about how relief programs for businesses enacted last year will impact their personal taxes.

“The biggest thing is we don’t know what we don’t know,” he said.

State taxes are likely to prove challenging for many people this year. In some cases, people who worked in a state different from the location of their office could end up having to pay taxes to more than one state. Rules for taxing nonresidents vary from state to state.

“More than likely, we will have to file multiple state returns for people who worked from home, and their home was in a different state from their job,” said Ty Gaines, a Virginia-based enrolled agent.

Last year, the IRS extended the tax-filing due date from April 15 to July 15 because of the pandemic. The agency has no plans to take similar action this year, though as is typical people can request a six-month extension to file their returns.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Right now, we are not planning any administrative extensions beyond the April 15 normal deadline,” Corbin said.

The IRS has seen its funding level decline significantly over the past decade on an inflation-adjusted basis, and many lawmakers and tax professionals would like Congress to substantially boost the agency’s budget. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents IRS employees, used the start of this year’s filing season to call for increased IRS funding.

“NTEU has full confidence that IRS employees will deliver, again, a successful filing season,” the group’s national president, Tony Reardon, said in a news release. “They do so, however, stretched far too thin.”

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) says his legislative priorities this year will include legislation to advance environmental justice and update the country’s laws governing public lands mining.

In an interview with The Hill this week, Grijalva also said he is looking forward to working with President BidenJoe BidenFormer Republican officials in talks to form center-right anti-Trump party: report Biden raises concerns with Xi in first call with Chinese leader as president Castro: Trump further incited the mob ‘against his own vice president’ MORE’s nominee to lead the Interior Department, Deb HaalandDeb HaalandThe opportunity of Biden’s Cabinet Overnight Energy: Biden faces calls to shut down Dakota Access pipeline | Hackers breach, attempt to poison Florida city’s water supply | Daines seeks to block Haaland confirmation to Interior Biden makes inroads with progressives MORE, on a “repair job” at the department.

Grijalva returns to the helm of the committee with a Democratic president and the Senate in his party’s control after becoming the panel’s lead lawmaker in 2019, after his party took the House majority.

ADVERTISEMENT

The narrow margins in the 50-50 Senate, where some Senate Democrats are cool to more progressive proposals on climate change, raise questions about how much will change for Grijalva’s agenda.

Asked how much has changed, Grijalva said, “We’re going to find out.”

“I don’t want to begin to negotiate the legislation,” he added. “I think we need to put the best piece of legislation [forward], set the bar high, be bold about it, and then deal with whatever discussions we need to have with our colleagues in the Senate.”

Grijalva is targeting bills introduced in the last Congress that would use oceans and public lands as solutions to climate change.

One measure, the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act, aims to protect and restore ocean ecosystems that capture carbon. The bill would prohibit oil and gas leasing in the Outer Continental Shelf and promote offshore wind energy. 

Another measure would require the Interior Department and Forest Service to meet increasing emissions reduction targets to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040. 

ADVERTISEMENT

Grijalva also wants to revive legislation that would require the consideration of how new pollution discharges would combine with existing pollution sources in an area to impact health when deciding whether to grant a permit to allow the new emissions.  The bill would also require greater community involvement in construction permitting and ban environmental discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. 

The lawmaker stressed that environmental justice touches many other issues like systemic racism and public health, since communities of color are often subject to more pollution. He added that he thinks his bill will unify lawmakers and communities, even if it may not garner bipartisan support. 

“This to me is one of the best bridge issues that we have,” Grijalva said. “Will it have a total bipartisan effect? I don’t know, I doubt it, but it’s going to have a unifying effect with the general public.”

He also said the committee would like to advance legislation important to indigenous groups, such as codifying the process for consultations between Native American tribes and the federal government.

Grijalva also hopes to change a 19th century law that allows companies to extract minerals from public lands without paying royalties to the government and that can prevent the federal government from blocking hardrock mining. He argued that the government should have the right to refuse mining permits and that companies should have to pay to mine. 

“We’ve got a 19th century law in a 21st century reality,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is bring mining up to the times that we’re in right now so that every decision about a mining location doesn’t become the…public fight that it is almost everywhere in this country.”

The chairman said that while his panel will work on completing some existing oversight they’re doing, including the impacts of President TrumpDonald TrumpHillary Clinton: Trump acquittal ‘will be because the jury includes his co-conspirators’ Former Republican officials in talks to form center-right anti-Trump party: report Gaetz hits back at Kinzinger PAC targeting ‘Trumpism’ MORE’s border wall, its oversight priorities will shift during the Biden administration. 

“We don’t feel like we’re in a combative, hostile confrontation with the Department of Interior going in,” said Grijalva, who backed Haaland for the secretary position.

“What I’d like to see is also that we look at the exterior influences that occurred particularly the last four years relative to industry, individuals, lobbying firms et cetera,” he said. 

Grijalva also said his oversight would include looking at the power of multinational mining companies, and the revolving door between industry and government.

“I’m fixated on the multinationals…that have this multinational presence across the globe and they’re doing business in this country paying no royalties and having no environmental safeguards or employee protections in all the parts of the world and complaining about the fact that we have those here,” he said. 

“And then the lobbying firms that do business with mining, with fossil fuels and the influence that they have in terms of directing how Interior functioned the last four years,” the chairman added. 

ADVERTISEMENT

Committee Democrats had a tense relationship with the Trump administration and had accused it of stonewalling the panel’s ability to conduct oversight. Last year, the committee voted along party lines to give Grijalva the power to subpoena documents from the Interior Department. 

Grijalva expressed optimism about his potential to work collaboratively with the Haaland on issues such as historic preservation, public lands, oceans, as well as issues pertaining to department personnel. 

“One of the things that I would like to work cooperatively with her, that I think is essential in the repair job, is the morale of the employee base and the plan to diversify,” he said. 

 

The CEO of stock trading platform Robinhood said Friday that the company could have “communicated” better to investors on its decision to restrict the buying of stocks like GameStop after they were targeted by users on a Reddit subforum. 

In an interview on the “All-In” podcast, CEO Vlad Tenev responded to pushback on the company’s decision to temporarily limit the buying of 13 heavily shorted stocks that were driven to record highs, including GameStop. 

Both amateur investors and lawmakers across the aisle criticized the decision, claiming that it was limiting opportunities for new investors while favoring hedge funds and Wall Street traders. 

ADVERTISEMENT

“No doubt we could have communicated this a little bit better to customers,” Tenev said on the podcast, adding that the restriction measures were needed due to a substantial increase in deposit requirements by a post-trade regulator. 

Tenev admitted that the reasoning was not included in automated emails sent to Robinhood customers early on Jan. 28.

“As soon as those emails went out, the conspiracy theories started coming, so my phone was blowing up with, ‘how could you do this, how could you be on the side of the hedge funds,’” he said.

The Robinhood co-founder went on to say, “We probably could have offered more detail into that with the foresight that maybe customers would think that a hedge fund forced us to do it.”

Tenev’s comments come a week before he is set to participate in a House Financial Services Committee hearing on the Reddit-driven stock rally. 

Users on the r/WallStreetBets forum and other amateur investors in late January into February worked to drive up the price of stocks that traditional hedge funds have shorted, including GameStop, AMC and BlackBerry. 

The Feb. 18 hearing will be split into two panels: one featuring government and industry investment regulators, with the other focused on the businesses and investors central to the recent stock market fluctuations. 

Committee Chairwoman Maxine WatersMaxine Moore WatersRobinhood CEO ahead of hearing: ‘No doubt’ company could have communicated better Democrats warn of ‘whataboutism’ ahead of Trump defense Justice Department opens probe into GameStop trades: report MORE (D-Calif.) said in a statement announcing the hearing that it would “examine the recent activity around GameStop (GME) stock and other impacted stocks with a focus on short selling, online trading platforms, gamification and their systemic impact on our capital markets and retail investors.”

A Hana Kimura tribute show has been announced for May.

Kimura’s mother Kyoko announced that a memorial show called “See You Again” will take place on May 23 at Korakuen Hall. It will mark the one year anniversary of Kimura’s death.

Kimura committed suicide on May 23, 2020 at the age of 22. She was a cast member of the reality television series Terrance House, where she got into a verbal confrontation with a house member after he damaged her wrestling attire. Her actions in the episode drew intense criticism online, to the point of cyberbullying. After her death the television series, which aired on Netflix, was cancelled.

During her career in Stardom, she won the Artist of Stardom championship twice and won the 2019 5 Star GP tournament. She also competed in the first ever Stardom match at the Tokyo Dome. On January 4, 2020, she teamed with Giulia to take on Mayu Iwatami and Arisa Hoshiki.