Here’s a fairly detailed report on your double-tax hike, and according to this, it’s coming very soon–Republicans hope to ram this through Congress within the next ten days so people won’t have a chance to react to it before it hits them full in the face:

“As reported in the IAS Global Watch dated May 9, 2003, the Senate Finance Committee approved a tax package May 8 that includes a provision to repeal the foreign earned income exclusion and housing exclusion or deduction under Section 911 of the Internal Revenue Code. This repeal provision passed an important hurdle on May 15th when the Senate voted to retain the provision in its revenue reconciliation tax package, despite a proposed amendment by Senator John Breaux (D-La) to strike the provision which was voted against by a vote of 51 to 49. The provision to repeal Section 911 is reportedly the largest among revenue-raisers contained in the bill.

The bill is now expected to be negotiated at a conference between the House and Senate, with hopes to complete a finalized bill that may be sent to the President for signature. Lawmakers hope to complete negotiations prior to Memorial Day weekend.”

Source: IAS Global Watch.

To Contact your Congressional Representatives:

You can find a Congressional committee member at Congress.org’s page. This Contact the Congress web page can help you look up addresses as well. Here is a Congressional Email Directory. In addition, this web page has White House email addresses, and here are some tips on how to write a letter to your representatives.

Be sure to mention that this is related to Section 350 of Senate bill 1054 (S. 1054). According to the Senate web site, “The Senate incorporated S. 1054 in H.R. 2 as an amendment and passed H.R. 2 in lieu of S. 1054.” Be sure to mention the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (IRC Section 911) when you write.

Write to them now! There’s not much time–they may pass this bill by Memorial Day, that’s only a little more than a week away!