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This year, it’s going to take the average American 99 days to earn enough money to pay the IRS. That’s one day longer than last year.

"Tax Freedom Day" marks the date that most Americans have earned enough money to pay their federal, state and local taxes, and this year that day arrives on April 9, according to the Tax Foundation’s annual calculation, which is based on government tax and income data.

Tax Freedom Day arriving one day later than it did last year means most Americans will have to work that much harder — for more than three months — just to pay their 2010 taxes.

The number of days Americans have to work to pay off their taxes has declined steadily since 2007. That’s due to a handful of tax cuts, certain income tax provisions that were repealed for 2010 and because the recession has reduced tax collections faster than it has cut income, according to the Tax Foundation.

But while it will take people less time to earn the money this year than it did in 2007, Americans will still spend more on taxes in 2010 than they will on food, clothing and shelter combined, the Tax Foundation said.

State-by-state: Each state has its own Tax Freedom Day. The day arrived earliest in Alaska and Louisiana — on March 26 — because of "modest incomes and low state and local tax burdens," the Tax Foundation said.

Mississippi, South Dakota and West Virginia celebrated soon after, on March 28, March 29 and March 30, respectively.

Connecticut, the state with the highest per capita income, will be the last to celebrate. Tax Freedom Day won’t arrive until April 27, the 117th day of the year.

New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Washington will join Connecticut as the last states to celebrate. In these states, Tax Freedom Day will fall on April 25, April 23, April 19 and April 15, in that order.  

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SUDBURY–Andrea Daily fell to her knees in the grocery store as her young daughter begged one more time for that special granola bar. Tearfully, Daily grabbed her 5-year-old and told her to stop asking because it was an item she could no longer afford.

"When she asks, it’s difficult to say `no’ over and over again," says Daily, 32. "But we have no choice because of the strike."

The strike at Vale Inco hit the Daily household hard.

Her husband, Dave, 34, joined Vale Inco as an apprentice mechanic in February 2008 and earned $27 an hour. She later began working part-time at a spa. They bought a home and a car and looked forward to finally settling down with their two young daughters.

Then Dave Daily’s union, the United Steelworkers, walked out in a contract dispute last summer. His income plunged by more than 75 per cent. It turned the family budget, and their lives, upside down.

"We never had much chance to build any strong savings," she says.

The Dailys are just one of the young families struggling through a strike that has lasted more than five months. A majority of Inco workers are in their late-20s and 30s, with less than three years service. Many have heavy financial obligations.

Before the strike, the Dailys felt financially comfortable enough to donate to the community food bank instant personal loans guaranteed. Now, they are using it.

"We’ve been humbled," she says.

The Dailys have slashed spending. Cable TV is gone. The cellphone disappeared and the couple bunch up numerous errands to save fuel costs. They are stretching their food dollar like never before.

Dave Daily makes some extra dollars fixing cars. Relatives and the union help, but the bills pile up. A student loan remains outstanding.

The bank has shown flexibility on mortgage payments but for every bit of relief, another problem sets them back. The spa reduced her work hours, partially because business has slowed during the strike.

"Christmas is cancelled here," she says, but adds that they’re pulling out some old toys from when her husband was a boy.

Dave Daily voted in favour of the strike. "When I signed up (Vale Inco) told me about the bonus incentive, but now they want to take some of it away," he says. "I don’t know if I want to stay with a company like that any more."

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Builders in November probably broke ground on more U.S. homes, and gains in consumer prices were within the Federal Reserve’s long-term forecasts, economists said reports today may show.

Housing starts rose 8.5 percent to an annual rate of 574,000, according to the median forecast of 78 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. A Labor Department report may show the cost of living climbed 0.4 percent last month.

Government tax credits, lower home prices and borrowing costs near record lows may stabilize sales and construction into the new year. A lack of inflation means Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues today will probably reiterate a pledge to keep the benchmark interest rate low for “an extended period” to ensure the economic recovery is sustained.

“The construction market is starting to come back,” said Patrick Newport, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. “Residential construction is going to contribute to growth going forward.”

The Commerce Department’s housing report is due at 8:30 a.m. in Washington. Survey estimates ranged from 540,000 to 620,000.

Also at 8:30 a.m., the Labor Department’s report may show consumer prices compared with the same time last year rose 1.8 percent, according to the survey median.

Excluding food and energy costs, the so-called core index rose 0.1 percent after climbing 0.2 percent in October, according to the survey median. The gauge was probably up 1.8 percent in the 12 months to November, the survey showed.

Inflation Measure

Fed policy makers’ long-term forecast for their preferred measure of inflation, the Commerce Department index tied to consumer spending and excluding food and fuel, calls for gains in a range of 1.8 percent to 2 percent. That gauge, which is typically lower than the CPI, was up 1.4 percent in the 12 months to October guaranteed payday loans.

The housing report may also show building permits, a sign of future construction, increased 3.4 percent to a 570,000 annual pace, according to the survey.

Favorable weather probably also played a role in boosting construction last month, according to IHS Global Insight’s Newport. November was the third warmest in 115 years of record keeping, according to the National Climatic Data Center, giving builders an opportunity to keep working. By contrast, October was the wettest in the past century, contributing to the 11 percent drop in starts that month.

President Barack Obama’s extension last month of a first- time homebuyers’ tax credit of as much as $8,000 until April 30 will also give builders reason to speed up projects over the next couple of months.

Toll Brothers

Some companies are already seeing a turn. Toll Brothers Inc., the largest U.S. luxury homebuilder that reported a 42 percent surge in fiscal fourth-quarter orders, is anticipating a gradual recovery in the market, Chief Executive Officer Robert Toll said during a Bloomberg Television interview on Dec. 11.

“There is a pretty good reservoir of pent-up demand,” he said in New York City. “We don’t know how fast we’re coming back, but we do know we’re coming back.”

The Standard & Poor’s Homebuilder Supercomposite Index has gained 53 percent since March 9, compared with a 64 percent increase in the S&P 500 Index from a 12-year low reached that day.

Any sustained recovery will require gains in employment, economists said. The economy has lost 7.2 million jobs since the recession began, and economists surveyed by Bloomberg early this month forecast joblessness will average 10 percent next year.

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SupportSpace Ltd., which runs a web-based network of independent computer support experts, has raised $10 million in funding.

Founded in 2006 and based in South San Francisco, SupportSpace had previously raised a $14.25 million Series A round of venture capital. The latest round was led by Emergence Capital Partners, with participation from previous investors BRM Group and Gemini Israel.

Kevin Spain, principal at Emergence Capital, has joined SupportSpace's board of directors.

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More than a year after the financial system came to the brink of collapse, Congress is finally starting to make headway on bills that aim to prevent future catastrophes.

The House has been drafting and re-working legislation for a month, and a key committee is set to delve back into it on Tuesday. The Senate will begin discussing its lengthy version on Thursday and is expected to get into the details of the legislation next month.

But Congress is far from reaching consensus on a bill that could get the filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate and pass both chambers.

And there are several key issues on which the ideological gulf between the Senate and House, or between Republicans and Democrats, may not be bridgeable. The divisions could threaten passage of meaningful legislation or drag out the debate and even prevent final passage.

Here are three big points of controversy.

The role of the Federal Reserve: The Senate and House couldn’t be further apart on how they see the Federal Reserve and its role as a regulator going forward.

The House proposes stripping away the Fed’s consumer protection powers, leaving in place its banking regulatory powers. In fact, the House would make the Fed the principal overseer of financial firms tied to the global economy.

The Senate, by contrast, would limit the Fed’s powers to mostly monetary policy. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is proposing stripping the Fed of its banking regulatory authority and giving that power to a new consolidated agency.

"It’s not designed to basically punish the Federal Reserve at all, but rather to enhance their role and their independence," said Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. "You start loading up the Fed with additional responsibilities and that independence could be threatened."

Late last week, high-ranking Treasury and White House officials made it clear in public statements that they’re at odds with the Senate on this idea and they think the Fed should keep its regulatory powers and oversee the biggest financial firms.

"No regulator had a perfect record leading up to the crisis, but in our view, the Federal Reserve is the agency best equipped for the task of supervising the largest, most complex firms," Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said Friday. "It is the only agency with broad and deep knowledge of financial institutions and the capital markets necessary to do the job effectively."

Too big to fail: Congress has many different ideas when it comes to how to prevent big firms from taking down the entire financial system. Experts say this is one of the most important parts of the regulatory effort. But there are a lot of details involved and a consensus has yet to gel.

The White House and congressional Democrats want to create a mechanism for monitoring large financial firms, like American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500), and unwinding them with a new power called "resolution authority cash til payday loan."

Both chambers would charge the Federal Deposit of Insurance Corp. with such unwinding. But some lawmakers from both parties are worried about giving such broad powers to the executive branch.

A related - and contentious - debate is emerging over whether a government agency should have the power to break up companies that could threaten the economy before they do damage.

Lobbyists for the big banks are fighting the break-up proposal hard, calling it "misguided." The proposal could "lead to long-term damage" to the economy, wrote Rob Nichols, president of the Financial Services Forum, in a letter Monday to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

But community banks are big fans of the break-up idea, which is included in the Senate bill and is expected to be debated in the House later this week when Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., offers such an amendment.

Another point of disagreement: How to pay for a catastrophe fund without tapping taxpayers. The House is leaning toward making financial firms pony up before disaster strikes. The Senate is leaning toward charging after a firm falls.

Consumer Financial Protection Agency: Of the three trouble spots, easily the most high-profile one is the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

The agency faces a more familiar problem for financial-related legislation in Congress: opposition from the minority party and big business. That push-back could be a deal breaker in the Senate.

The agency would put new regulators in charge of keeping an eye out for consumers, while requiring more disclosure and scrutiny over some of the financial products, like mortgages, credit cards and auto loans, that contributed to last year’s crisis.

A wave of populism propelled credit card legislation earlier this year. But Republicans are mostly united against the creation of the consumer agency, calling it an added layer of bureaucracy that could threaten bank soundness.

Observers say the consumer agency is one of the biggest stalemates between Dodd and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., whose cooperation was key to getting the credit card bill passed by an overwhelmingly margin. President Obama even invited Shelby to the bill signing ceremony.

In late October, the House passed a version of the proposal to create a new consumer agency, with one Republican voting for it and two Democrats voting against it. But that version was watered down to exclude small banks and credit unions from being examined by the agency’s enforcement arm. The House bill also excludes auto loans and title insurance from the agency’s jurisdiction. 

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Small business lending has been in freefall since the recession began. Concerned about the obstacles that places in the way of economic recovery, President Obama recently proposed a new federal effort to give community banks access to ultra-cheap government loans, which they can then use to expand their local business lending.

One hitch: Bankers are lukewarm on the idea.

Obama’s plan, announced Oct. 21, calls for letting banks with less than $1 billion in assets borrow money from the government at a 3% dividend rate. To qualify, banks will need to submit a plan illustrating how they’ll use the borrowed money to expand their small business lending. The cash will come from the Treasury’s Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP).

That’s raising red flags with banks that have previously borrowed from TARP.

For instance, Monadnock Community Bank CEO William Pierce took $1.8 million in TARP funding in December for his Peterborough, N.H., bank. He’s not interested in another round.

"For a bank our size, it is too much extra regulation," Pierce said. "We have 25 full-time equivalent employees here, and most of them are working with customers and actually making loans, so to deal with the regulations is very taxing on a small organization."

Capital Pacific Bancorp in Portland, Ore., received TARP funds late last year totaling $4 million. The bank took the loan to boost its capital reserves and grow its balance sheet, but CEO Mark Stevenson is leery of the public backlash the program has sparked since then.

"TARP was advertised to healthy banks: an investment we would use for appropriate purposes," Mark Stevenson said. But now, "TARP has a negative stigma — it is associated with ‘bad bank, bailout.’"

The Treasury Department is still working out the details of Obama’s proposed lending plan — the coffers aren’t open yet. Program specifics will be available "very soon," Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said.

Even if the program terms are attractive — and a 3% rate is pretty tough to beat, Stevenson acknowledged — banks face another hurdle: Finding qualified borrowers. At many small businesses, sales are down, and the ongoing economic weakness has reduced the value of real estate, inventory and other assets business borrowers typically use as collateral against loans.

Capital Pacific’s loan portfolio has been flat this year. Demand from existing clients is down, and the community bank has been working to shore up its balance sheet, cutting the credit lines of customers likely to default. But the bank is still issuing new loans to qualified borrowers: In the first nine months of this year, $26 million of the bank’s $135 million in total lending went to brand-new customers.

"I don’t know whether we would or we wouldn’t [take more TARP], because our capital is still strong today," Stevenson said.

Shane Bell, CFO of First Bank in Strasburg, Va., is in a similar spot faxless payday loans. "It is interesting what you hear on the news compared to what you hear on Main Street," he said. "There isn’t a lot of loan demand."

First Bank borrowed $13.9 million from TARP in March. Even at lower rates, the bank might not go back for more money, Shane said. It already has enough capital on hand to meet the loan demand from the credit-worthy borrowers in its community.

"There is not a whole lot walking in the door right now," he said.

Rescue redux

Obama’s new lending program could find itself caught in the same bind that has plagued another high-profile government effort to shore up small business lending: The America’s Recovery Capital (ARC) loan program. Created in February as part of the Recovery Act and run by the Small Business Administration, the ARC program offers participating banks a 100% guarantee on small banks made to viable but struggling businesses.

It took four months for the government to create guidelines for the ARC program, and once it did, relatively few banks signed on. The program is a safe one for banks — if the borrower defaults, the government will repay the loan — but it carries heavy administrative overhead for a fairly scant profit. And because the government doesn’t want to lose too much taxpayer money paying off loans that go bad, it set the qualification standards for ARC loans fairly high. The end result was a program that frustrated both borrowers and lenders.

As it crafts regulations for the new lending program, the Treasury will be hard-pressed to steer clear of similar pitfalls. An earlier Treasury program intended to add liquidity to the small business lending market by purchasing SBA-backed loans from banks stalled in part because small banks didn’t want to tangle with TARP red tape.

They’re right to be wary, said Monadnock Bank’s Pierce. Two months after the first TARP loans went out, the Treasury placed executive compensation caps and other regulatory restrictions on banks that had accepted the funds. While his bank wasn’t seriously affected by the changes, Pierce was annoyed to have the government changing the rules after the fact.

But the biggest hurdle will simply be finding qualified borrowers. Hit by rising defaults and determined to shore up their underwriting standards, many of the nation’s biggest banks have scale back their small business lending. Community banks, traditionally more conservative, have been cautious as well.

"We are still lending if there is a business that meats our reasonable requirements for risk," said Shane of First Bank.

"A lot of the small businesses are holding back — they are reluctant to make additional investments in their companies," Pierce said. "There is plenty of money around to loan. We would love to do it." 

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A tug-of-war between American Airlines and Delta Air Lines for Japan Airlines as a global partner underscores the importance of international alliances to the embattled U.S. airline industry.

For AMR Corp’s American, which is seeking to keep JAL in the Oneworld alliance, the stakes are especially high. The carrier is working to improve its competitive positions against Delta and UAL Corp’s United Airlines — both U.S. powerhouses on Asian routes.

Delta, meanwhile, hopes to lure JAL out of Oneworld and into its SkyTeam group. A tie-up with JAL could give Delta a major boost after buying Northwest last year, and would allow the world’s largest carrier greater access to island nations in Asia that depend on air travel.

“American has a lot to lose with its Pacific presence if JAL defects to SkyTeam,” said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Hunter Keay.

“I think American is going to do whatever they can to keep JAL in the Oneworld alliance,” Keay said. “It would surprise me more if Oneworld would allow JAL to defect.”

Last month, SkyTeam lost a major partner when Continental Airlines, which has a sizable presence in Asia, joined the rival Star Alliance.

The Wall Street Journal, citing an unidentified source, reported on Wednesday that Delta was willing to cover the cost of moving JAL to SkyTeam quick cash advance. Delta did not respond to a request for comment.

On Wednesday, AMR’s chief financial officer, Tom Horton, told reporters in Tokyo that private equity firm TPG could partner with AMR on a minority investment in JAL to prevent its defection.

For its part, American has escalated its talk against a JAL departure from Oneworld recently, but the carrier has not said what JAL’s absence would mean for its revenue.

“We obviously think that would be a very bad idea for Japan Airlines. That would be very bad for us — but we don’t control their decision-making process,” AMR Chief Executive Gerard Arpey said at an internal management conference last month. “We can just make the best case for them staying with American, and staying in Oneworld.”

Arpey noted that American currently has five flights a day to Tokyo’s Narita airport, which handles a majority of international traffic to and from Japan.

“If you look at the composition of our traffic on those five flights, the equivalent of two full airplanes now connects to JAL in Narita and goes beyond on their network,” he said.

(Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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Bank regulators closed Gateway Bank of St. Louis, in St. Louis, Missouri, and Prosperan Bank, of Oakdale, Minnesota, on Friday, the 118th and 119th U.S. bank to fail this year.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said Gateway Bank of St Louis had $27.7 million in assets and $27.9 million in deposits. The bank’s sole office will reopen on Saturday as a branch of Central Bank of Kansas City, Missouri, which assumed Gateway’s assets.

The FDIC entered into an agreement with Alerus Financial NA, of Grand Forks, North Dakota, to assume all of Prosperan’s $175.6 million in deposits and about $173.9 million of its $199.5 million in assets.

(Reporting by Charles Abbott; editing by Carol Bishopric)

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SABB bank 1060.SE, HSBC’s Saudi affiliate, booked 351.5 million riyal ($93.7 million) in provisions for loan losses during the third quarter, bourse data showed on Saturday.

SABB reported a worse-than-expected 19.8 percent drop in third-quarter net profit, hit by an increase in provisions for bad loans.

The data also showed that Aljazira Bank 1020.SE made provisions for loan losses of 115.7 million riyals during the third quarter, the lender’s highest in at least one year, while Saudi Investment Bank (SAIB) 1030.SE booked 60 million riyals for the same purpose, its the highest this year.

Aljazira reported a 14 percent increase in third-quarter net profit [ID:nLE169399] while SAIB tripled its net profit during the same period.

The provisions have been widely expected amid concerns over the solvency levels of heavily indebted Saudi conglomerates Saad Group SAADG.UL and Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Bros (AHAB).

Unlike their peers in the Gulf Arab region, Saudi banks have not disclosed the level of their exposure to these two firms and this keeps analysts wondering whether any newly booked sums would be high enough to fully cushion them against anticipated losses.

A Saudi government panel has brokered a deal between Saad Group and Saudi lenders but neither party disclosed the details of the agreement.

Saudi central bank governor Muhammad al-Jasser said last week that Saudi banks would make sure they have enough provisions for doubtful debts. Jasser has once in the past encouraged Saudi banks to keep the level of their exposure to the two groups secret.

Saad and AHAB are at the center of an estimated $22 billion debt implosion. The two firms are battling in court over alleged financial irregularities in the wake of a debt restructuring.

Standard & Poor’s has said it found banks in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates accounted for almost two-thirds of the total net exposure to the conglomerates of the 30 commercial banks it rates in the Gulf.

(Reporting by Souhail Karam; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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The world’s undernourished and hungry will exceed 1 billion this year as governments failed to channel a decade of rising wealth into improving agriculture.

The CHART OF THE DAY coincides with World Food Day and shows how hunger began increasing in the mid-1990s following a 20-year decline. The green line shows that global per-capita gross domestic product rose almost 84 percent through the end of last year and is likely to be 76 percent higher at the end of 2009 even after the global recession, according to World Bank and United Nations data.

Government development aid for agriculture has fallen 37 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis since 1988, contributing to the rise in hunger even as population growth eased, the Food and Agriculture Organization said in the 2009 edition of the State of Food Insecurity in the World released Oct. 14.

“Investment in more long-term agriculture is needed,” said David Dawe, a senior economist at the Rome-based FAO. “It’s going to take a long-term sustainable commitment and it’s going to require that those funds be spent effectively.”

World hunger declined in the late 1970s and through the 1980s after a global food crisis triggered a surge in government agricultural aid and investment that boosted crop yields and improved transport and irrigation, the FAO report said.

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