A retired Honeywell engineer expected to receive a federal tax rebate of $600, but his check from the IRS was a penny short. Days after Philip Gallion got a check for $599.99, he received a four-page letter from the IRS explaining that his rebate had been reduced to cover interest he owed on an underpayment of his 2000 taxes. “I thought maybe I had misread the stories about the refund,” he said. “Maybe there was a sliding scale. But a penny?” Gallion, 67, called a telephone number provided in the letter. When a person finally came on the line, she confirmed Gallion’s identity, then looked up his account records. “She said I made a calculation error of 46 cents,” he said. “She said they wrote it off, but the computer can’t write it off, so it generated a letter.”
Despite sales incentives that are double what foreign competitors offer, U.S. automakers are losing market share to point where Toyota Motor Corp. could surpass the Chrysler Group by the end of next year, analysts say. Efraim Levy, senior automotive analyst for Standard and Poor’s, said Toyota could overtake Chrysler, the U.S. division of Germany’s DaimlerChrysler AG, by the end of next year. August sales figures released Tuesday show Toyota is less than one percentage point behind Chrysler, the smallest of the Big Three, in market share: 10.9 percent versus 11.3 percent. One year ago, Toyota had 9.6 share and Chrysler had 14.1 percent. The shift reflects Toyota’s steady climb, while Chrysler has stumbled in the past year.
Japan’s economy shrank by 0.8 percent in the second quarter, the government said Friday, increasing fears that promised reforms won’t come quickly enough to save the world’s second-largest economy from recession. The drop in gross domestic product – the value of all goods and services produced in the nation – was caused by declining exports, company investments and public spending, the government said. Although slightly better than the 1 percent contraction that analysts had expected, Friday’s figures show the economy shrank 3.2 percent on an annual basis. Japan is not technically in a recession because its economy managed 0.1 percent growth in the first quarter.
Shares of Circuit City Stores Inc. tumbled more than 21 percent Friday after the retailer said its electronics store sales sank in the second quarter. The report came a day after rival electronics retailer Best Buy Co. said its sales were stronger than anticipated in the same period. Circuit City Stores, which owns Circuit City and CarMax stores, said its overall sales fell 9 percent to $2.89 billion for the quarter ending Aug. 31 from $3.18 billion last year. But sales for its Circuit City electronics store chain alone dropped 19 percent to $2.04 billion from $2.51 billion.
From Herald news services
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