WASHINGTON - WIND power developers, disaster victims, college students, teachers and millions of taxpayers and businesses will see substantial benefits from the tax relief package added to the financial rescue plan that the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on Friday.

So will more narrowly focused groups, including motor sports racetrack owners, film producers and bicycle commuters.

Virtually all the tax breaks already exist. But many of them expired on Jan 1 for use in the current tax year, and the others will expire three months from now unless Congress renews them.

Included in those are the extension of an expired provision that gives Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands rebates against excise taxes charged on imported rum.

The rebate, at $13.50 (S$19.56) per proof gallon, has been in effect since 1999 and costs $192 million (S$278 million).

It also would extend tax credits that expired at the end of 2007 for certain domestic corporations involved in the economic development of American Samoa. The cost of that is $33 million.

The largest group of beneficiaries in what is now the tax portion of the financial rescue bill is about 20 million mainly upper-middle income taxpayers.

Without congressional action, the alternative medium tax, which originally was to affect only the very rich, would add some $2,000 this year to the tax bill of people mostly earning under $200,000 a year.

Thousands of businesses are waiting for renewal of the R&D (or research and development) tax credit, which expired at the end of last year.

Without that credit, industry advocates say, high tech, biotech and aerospace companies have trouble hiring highly skilled workers needed to go head-to-head with foreign competitors.

The Information Technology Association of America reports an $18.5 billion drop in R&D activity since the beginning of the year when the credit lapsed. The R&D credit extension would cost $19 billion over 10 years. The cost of the entire tax portion of the bill is close to $110 billion.

The renewable energy incentives include an eight-year extension of investment credits for solar energy, as well as breaks for wind, geothermal and other alternative sources.

The solar industry says extension of the credits through 2016 would produce an extra 440,000 jobs and more than $230 billion in investments.

The measure also has $8 billion in tax breaks for disaster victims, $5 billion for higher education tuition deductions, and $400 million in deductions for teachers who buy school supplies with their own money.

There are $3 billion in deductions for residents of states without income taxes that have state and local sales taxes.

Extending the deduction would save people in Texas a projected $1.2 billion a year, or an average of $520 per filer claiming the deduction, said Mr Matt Mackowiak, spokesman for Republican Sen Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Among some four dozen small provisions in the bill are: