Financial thoughts

A new Illinois non-traded real investment estate trust (REIT) bought the Pleasant Hill Commons shopping center in Kissimmee for $12.4 million in cash.

Inland Diversified Kissimmee LLC, a related entity to Oakbrook, Ill.-based Inland Diversified Real Estate Trust Inc., bought the 70,642-square-foot Publix-anchored shopping center from Winter Park-based MCP Retail LLC on Feb. 18, said a filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. MCP Retail LLC is an entity related to developer Michael Collard Properties Inc.

Lou Quilici of Inland Real Estate Acquisitions Inc. handled the transaction, said a news release.

The property is 100 percent leased, the SEC filing said, and has tenants including Tijuana Flats, Subway, Jackson Hewitt, Metro PCS, Pizza Hut, BonWorth and Fantastic Sams.

Inland Diversified Real Estate Trust filed its prospectus in August 2009 to be taxed as a REIT beginning with the tax year ended Dec flexcheck cash advance. 31. This was the firm’s second purchase and was funded by proceeds from its initial public offering, the SEC filing said. The REIT focuses on the acquisition and development of a diversified portfolio of commercial real estate assets.

The REIT is related to The Inland Real Estate Group of Companies Inc., a fast-growing buyer of retail property in the United States and one of the largest shopping center owners in North America. Inland-sponsored firms own and manage more than 113 million square feet of commercial real estate in 46 states and manage properties valued at more than $25.3 billion.

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American taxpayers, if you believe in stereotypes, are scurrying around this time of year, rummaging shoeboxes for receipts and other paperwork to support itemized tax-deduction claims.

In reality, most taxpayers, including me, don’t bother itemizing deductions, which must be reported on a tax form called "Schedule A" and require proof in case of an audit. We don’t bother because the basic standard deduction, which is free for the taking, is higher than all the itemized deductions most of us can legitimately claim. The basic standard deduction requires no documentation and is entered on the main 1040 tax form.

For 2009 returns, thanks to what Congress enacted as temporary measures, the standard deduction will be even higher for many Americans who meet qualifications. The higher the standard deduction is, the lower the taxable income and tax bill are.

The downside is increased complexity, including a new tax form to fill out called Schedule L.

"The standard deduction isn’t so standard anymore," said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst for tax publisher CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business. "For some people, filling out this schedule will probably entail as much figuring as taking a few itemized deductions on Schedule A."

For a little bit of work, though, the tax savings can be significant.

For the 2009 tax year, the basic standard deduction is $5,700 for singles and $11,400 for joint filers. Blind people and those 65 years old or older as of Jan. 1, 2010, can claim an additional $1,100 standard deduction for 2009. (Therefore, a couple filing jointly, both 65 or older and blind, would take an additional $4,400 deduction). Higher deductions for seniors and the blind have been part of the tax code for years and are not likely to be discontinued, Luscombe said.

In addition, in what are supposed to be temporary measures to boost housing and the economy:

— Non-itemizers can claim an additional standard deduction for state and local property taxes paid in 2009, up to $500 for single taxpayers and $1,000 for joint filers.

This extra deduction, first available for 2008 returns and later extended for 2009, was part of a legislative package aimed at boosting a sagging real estate market. "Much of the package rewarded people for buying homes," Luscombe said, and the extra deduction benefits people who have no mortgage (like me) or don’t pay enough interest on it to be able to itemize. The deduction expired at the end of 2009 but is likely to be extended to 2010, Luscombe believes.

— Another provision effective since 2008 allows taxpayers who have experienced casualty losses in areas the U.S. president has declared disaster areas to take those losses as an additional standard deduction.

"This is especially valuable to people who may experience a few thousand dollars in losses that they can ill afford, but whose losses are not large enough" to itemize (because the basic standard deduction would be larger), Luscombe said.

This deduction is not available to taxpayers in the Midwest Disaster Area of 2008, for whom different rules apply.

— Subject to income limits, non-itemizers who bought a new car in 2009 on or after Feb. 17 can add to their standard deduction the state and local sales and excise taxes they paid for the vehicle. Eligibility for this tax break phases out for single filers with modified adjusted gross income between $125,000 and $135,000 (joint filers, $250,000 to $260,000), and the deduction is limited to taxes paid on up to $49,500 of the purchase price.

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The nation’s two largest hospital chains signaled today that they are actively seeking acquisitions in the year ahead. Prime targets: Nonprofit hospitals whose investments were hit hard by the sour economy.

In back-to-back earnings calls with analysts, Nashville-based HCA Inc. and Franklin-based Community Health Systems Inc. both said they are well-positioned to take advantage of favorable pricing in the U.S. hospital market.

CHS, which operates 122 hospitals in 29 states, said it plans to make at least two acquisitions in 2010. In December, CHS closed on a deal to purchase Rockwood Clinic, P.S., a multi-speciality clinic with 32 locations in Washington State and Idaho. The buy helped lift CHS’ fourth-quarter profits 8.7 percent to $65.1 million for the fourth quarter that ended Dec. 31.

“There are a number of opportunities out there. We always like to keep our pipeline relatively full,” CHS Chairman Wayne Smith said during the call. “I think two in 2010 is a good number, but as usual it could be more than that.”

Smith said pricing for hospitals has been “very good,” at 50 to 60 cents on the dollar of net revenues compared to 80 cents to 100 cents on the dollar a few years ago.

Such low pricing will likely drive up the competition for hospitals, creating what CHS Chief Financial Officer Larry Cash called a “competitive window over the next 12 to 18 months.”

The window is open. In one of the first deals of 2010, HCA announced on Wednesday an agreement to acquire the Heart Hospital of Austin through its existing joint venture with Texas-based St. David’s HealthCare. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the deal is valued at $83.6 million.

“We needed additional cardiac capacity, and it made more sense than building a heart tower at one of our other facilities,” HCA Chairman and CEO Richard Bracken said when asked by an analyst about the acquisition. “There’s a lot of synergies there, and we’re excited about it.”

HCA’s fourth-quarter earnings results released today confirmed preliminary results announced three weeks ago that showed revenue of $7.61 billion, a 4.7 percent increase over the same period a year earlier.

The privately held operator of 163 hospitals and 105 freestanding surgery centers said today its same-facility admissions increased 2.6 percent on an adjusted basis during the fourth-quarter, boosted by a 9.1 percent increase in emergency-room visits.

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Google moved quickly over the weekend to try to contain mounting criticism of Buzz, its social network, apologizing to users for features widely seen as endangering privacy while announcing product changes to address those concerns.

Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz, wrote in a blog post on Saturday that Google had decided to alter one of the most-criticized features in Buzz: the ready-made circle of friends the service provided to new users based on their most frequent e-mail and chat contacts in Gmail. Instead of automatically connecting people, Buzz will in the future merely suggest to new users a group of people they may want to follow or be followed by, he said.

Jackson, who said that the auto-follow feature had been designed to make it easy for people to get started on Buzz, acknowledged the criticism that was heaped on Google in the last few days.

“We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback,” Jackson wrote. “We’ll continue to do so.”

The startup for Buzz, which Google introduced Tuesday as its answer to Facebook and Twitter, drew angry responses on technology blogs and beyond, as users feared that the names of their e-mail correspondents would be publicly exposed. A set of changes that Google announced Thursday failed to quell the uproar.

Some critics said the latest modifications to Buzz, which is tightly coupled with Gmail, appeared to have addressed the most serious privacy concern.

“Turning off the auto-follow was a huge improvement,” Danny Sullivan, a longtime Google analyst and the editor of SearchEngineLand, said in an e-mail message.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said his organization was still intending to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission this week pending its review of Google’s changes.

“Even with these changes, there is still the concern that Gmail users are being driven into a social networking service that they didn’t sign up for,” Rotenberg said in an interview on Sunday.

The privacy concerns about Buzz, and Google’s rapid efforts to address its critics, echo incidents that have bedeviled other social networks, most notably Facebook personal business card. None of those incidents have slowed the growth of Facebook, which recently said it had reached more than 400 million users. Gmail has 176 million users, according to the research firm comScore.

“I think the privacy issues earlier this week with Buzz will blow over and not harm the product in the long term,” Sullivan said. But privacy will continue to haunt Google, he said, and many people will point to the release of Buzz as an attempt by Google to overreach and a reason that the company could not be trusted.

The change in the enrollment of new users of Buzz was the most significant of a series of modifications that Jackson announced on Saturday.

Google also said that it would create a new Buzz tab in Gmail’s settings page to allow users to hide Buzz from Gmail completely. The page gives users the option to disable Buzz, deleting their posts and removing their Google profile, which in many cases listed publicly their circle of contacts in Buzz.

The new feature could address concerns that disabling Buzz and removing a public profile was a multistep process that confused many users and that some described as a game of whack-a-mole.

Google also will no longer automatically connect public Picasa albums and items shared on Google Reader, another feature that had been widely criticized by some users and privacy advocates.

In the next two weeks, Buzz users will be directed to the new start-up to give them a “second chance to review and confirm” the people they are following, Jackson said.

The changes Google announced Saturday will be imposed in the next few days. While it is too early to gauge Buzz’s success, Google said tens of millions of people had tried the service in its first 48 hours.

Sullivan of SearchEngineLand said that the level of activity on Buzz appeared to be significant. “I suspect Google might have a minor hit on its hands already,” he said.

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San Antonio area cable companies are gearing up for 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

Starting Friday, Time Warner Cable and GVTC Communications will offer content from NBC Universal’s 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games.

The cable companies will show more than 835 hours of programming, the most ever for a Winter Olympics.

The games will be played between Feb. 12-28. On Time Warner Cable, NBC Universal will air a number of events on Sports On Demand Channel 950 and in HD on Showcase on Demand Channel 101.

Time Warner customers who are watching the Olympics on WOAI-TV will be able to press select on their remote when they see a Start Over prompt to restart a program in progress ay day loans.

Separately, GVTC customers also will have access to more than 1,200 hours of free online video content from the games not available on television. Subscribers will be able to visit MyGVTC.com and sign in with their GVTC e-mail account to access the content.

Also half the content will be exclusive online video unavailable on NBC and affiliate networks CNBC, MSNBC, USA and Universal HD.

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Texas Governor Rick Perry is crediting a $352,800 investment from the state with wooing a Hollywood production to the Lone Star State that ended up creating 900 jobs and attracting more than $5 million in capital investment.

Perry said the HBO biopic "Temple Grandin" was shot in Texas as a direct result of the Texas Film Incentive Program, designed to woo film, TV and digital media producers. Texas beat out New Mexico and Arizona, Gov. Perry said.

The film was shot in Austin, Driftwood, Georgetown, Schwertner, New Braunfels, Luling, Corpus Christi and Gonzalez.

"Temple Grandin" premiered this past weekend on HBO.

During the most recent legislative session, Gov. Perry signed House Bill 873, which appropriated $60 million for the film incentive program.

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Driven by growth in insurance services, outpatient medical care and physician services, operating income rose 13 percent or $130 million for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for the six-month period ending December 31, the hospital network announced on Friday.

During the same period, operating revenue rose $216 million to $4.062 billion for a 5.6 percent increase, while the operating margin for the health insurance and medical giant improved to 3.2 percent from 3 percent.

The system’s earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization were $326 million for the first half of the fiscal year, up from $292 million for the same period a year ago and on target to exceed $600 million for fiscal 2010.

The results were released during a difficult period for health care providers and as UPMC’s cost of providing free care and contributions to the community rise, said CFO Robert DeMichiei. UPMC’s cost of charity care rose 16 percent to $518 million from 2007 to 2008, the most recent period data were available.

Key metrics for the six-month period include insurance services, up 8 percent to more than 1.4 million members; outpatient revenue, up 5 percent; and physician services, up 11 percent. During the same period, UPMC’s $3 billion investment portfolio gained $228 million, for a return of 11.8 percent, said Treasurer C. Talbot Heppenstall. UPMC reported a loss of $786 million for the same period a year ago.

Separately, UPMC’s pending $1.175 billion bond refinancing will be used to substitute fixed for variable rate debt and lower interest costs, Heppenstall said. Allegheny County Councilman Charles McCullough has been in court seeking to stop the refinancing because of UPMC’s decision to close Braddock Hospital Jan. 31, but Heppenstall predicted the litigation would not be a factor.

The biggest challenges may be ahead for UPMC and other hospitals, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

In a report released last month, Moody’s maintained its negative outlook for the nonprofit health care industry overall. The outlook was revised to negative from stable in Nov. 2008 based on credit market problems.

“Over the next 12 to 18 months, we believe the relative abilities of different not-for-profit hospital management and governance teams will become more apparent as they face one of the toughest environments in decades,” the report stated.

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As Toyota’s gas pedal recall expands into Europe, the carmaker says it has a fix for cars there and that one will be coming soon to drivers in the United States.

A Toyota spokesman has said that the carmaker is very close to announcing a solution to the issue for cars here in the U.S.

Toyota still needs to get regulatory approval for a proposed repair in the U.S. and in Europe before a fix can be made.

The recall is to correct a problem that could cause the gas pedal, as it ages and becomes worn, to stick partway down under certain circumstances. Toyota recalled 2.3 million vehicles in the U.S. for this problem this week, although no repair procedure had yet been put in place.

The European recall involves eight different models, several of them not sold here. The precise number of vehicles involved in that recall is still under investigation but it could be as many as 1.8 million, Toyota said in a statement.

The gas pedal recall is separate from an earlier one, begun in November to fix a problem in which the gas pedal can become caught on the edge of the removable floormat.

The floormat recall was recently expanded so that it now covers a total of 5.3 million vehicles.

In many cases, the same vehicles are involved in both recalls. It was not immediately clear how many different vehicles, in total, are part of the two actions. 

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