While it is widely believed that taxes cannot be retroactive, Congress in 2006 enacted a law retroactively raising taxes on teenagers who had worked or had taxable income in an investment account to pay for college.
BP officials said that the $75 million limit on the company's liability, as set forth in the law that governs oil spills, is "not relevant" in this case, and some United States senators seem to agree, having proposed legislation that would retroactively raise the cap to $10 billion.
A former member of Basque separatist group Eta has been allowed to walk from a Worcestershire jail where he faced extradition proceedings to Spain for his part in 22 murders, after the European Court for Human Rights ruled on Monday that Madrid could not retroactively raise legal limits on prison sentences.
Doing so now in order to retroactively raise BP's liability will mean running afoul of the Constitution, not to mention the rule of law.
Credit card companies are now prohibited from a long list of dirty business practices ranging from switching the date that a customer's bill is due to retroactively raising interest rates.
Card companies will no longer be able to retroactively raise the interest rate on existing balances--except under limited circumstances, such as a 30-day delinquency.
Negotiations are ongoing, but the crux of the legislation moves the industry from a disclosure frame -- in other words, they could do pretty much whatever they wanted as long as they disclosed it in fine print somewhere -- to a situation where certain credit company tactics become illegal, such as retroactively raising interest rates on balances.
The Bloomberg administration has sought to justify that position by saying that since productivity gains cannot be achieved retroactively, then raises should not be paid retroactively.
Mr. Bloomberg has taken a tougher stance than many of his predecessors by insisting that the city will not pay any raises retroactively.
Further, he has often said he would not give raises retroactively in contract negotiations, but he did just that when he reached the agreement Tuesday with District Council 37, the city's largest union.
