TAXES

HOUSE PASSES BILL TO KEEP LOWER CAPITAL GAINS TAX

WASHINGTON – The House voted yesterday to make sure investors hang onto lowered tax rates for capital gains and dividends for an extra two years.

Voting mostly along party lines, the House narrowly passed a $56 billion, five-year package of tax cuts that retains reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends in 2009 and 2010.The vote was 234-197.

Republicans said their record of tax cutting revitalized a sluggish economy, and the White House praised the bill. “These extensions are necessary to provide certainty for investors and businesses and are essential to sustaining long-term economic growth,” the president’s budget office said in a statement.

– Associated Press

REAL ESTATE

TWO MAJOR HOMEBUILDERS REPORT GROWTH, PREDICT SLOWDOWN

Homebuilders Hovnanian Enterprises and Toll Brothers reported double-digit earnings growth in their fiscal fourth quarters, but both reported signs that sales and price increases in certain markets are returning to more “normalized” levels from the frenzied pace of the last few years. The company’s orders rose 27% in the quarter. However, the chief financial officer of Hovnanian, Larry Sorsby, said demand in certain markets is starting to slow to more “normalized” levels.

– Dow Jones Newswires

IN THE COURTS

JURY BEGINS DELIBERATIONS IN FIRST FEDERAL VIOXX TRIAL

HOUSTON – In their closing arguments in the first federal trial over Merck & Co.’s Vioxx, attorneys painted opposing pictures of the drug maker’s handling of the painkiller, what it knew about Vioxx’s cardiovascular dangers, and whether Vioxx contributed to the death of a man who took it for less than a month. The jury in the two-week trial here received its instructions from Judge Eldon Fallon yesterday afternoon. Separately, the New England Journal of Medicine posted an “expression of concern” that three heart attacks among patients on Vioxx were left out of the data in a crucial study of Vioxx called Vigor, making Vioxx appear safer than it was. NEJM, which said it found out about the missing data in a deposition, said it had asked the authors for a correction.

– Dow Jones Newswires

IN BRIEF

Governor Romney of Massachusetts said the state would become the first in America to limit how much carbon dioxide power plants can emit, starting January 1 … GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil antidepressant carries an increased risk of birth defects and usually shouldn’t be used during pregnancy, federal regulators said in an alert to doctors … Southwest Airlines pilots agreed to add about 90 minutes a month to their flight time without increasing pay, saving about $4 million a year for the most profitable American carrier.

– Bloomberg News