Finance

The new chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission told attendees at a conference Thursday that he hopes to make a recommendation in the next few months on whether the SEC should move toward switching U.S. companies to IFRS, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Agency picks former Deloitte vice chair

The fate of President Barack Obama’s health-care law is again in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Governments around the world closed in on tax evaders with an automatic data-sharing accord that broadens efforts by the U.S. and the five biggest European Union economies to more than 50 countries and territories.

Hal Hicks cleared his throat and addressed a roomful of peers in a midtown Manhattan auditorium. The topic: the tax-avoidance technique called inversion, in which a U.S. company claims a foreign legal address.

The Internal Revenue Service needs to go to greater lengths to safeguard taxpayer information on health insurance exchanges, according to a new government report.

The number of companies lobbying the U.S. government on tax inversions more than doubled in the quarter ending Sept. 30, as they sought to prevent Congress and the Obama administration from imposing new restrictions.

A bipartisan group of 15 senators has written to the Internal Revenue Service urging the agency to do a better job of preventing tax refund fraud using stolen identities.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Safeguards is not doing enough to protect the federal tax information that it is required to disclose to other government agencies, according to a new report.

The federal government brought in $3.02 trillion in tax and other revenues in fiscal 2014 – its highest take ever.

The Internal Revenue Service said that the sequestration process could have an impact on the amount that certain small tax-exempt employers receive on the refundable portion of the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit.

Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., who chairs the House Small Business Committee, has sent a letter to Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen asking the IRS to do more outreach and education to help small businesses deal with the new forms required for the Affordable Care Act.

Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen has written a letter to the leaders of Congress’s main tax committees urging them to decide soon on what to do about extending dozens of expired tax provisions, or else next tax season and the processing of tax refunds could be delayed.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s proposed rules to prevent companies from taking a foreign address have ended one deal and forced another to get more expensive financing.

H&R Block is debuting a new program to encourage consumer savings at tax time, working with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the U.S. government agency charged with making financial markets work for American consumers, to encourage consumers to use tax refunds to build savings.

One of the efforts states are making to increase their revenue stream is to tighten up their enforcement of worker misclassification.

Pfizer Inc. has approached Actavis Plc about a deal that could allow the U.S. drugmaker to move its address overseas and reduce taxes, in a sign the Obama administration’s efforts to curtail inversions might fall short.

The Treasury Department announced steps that will make it harder for U.S. companies to move their addresses outside the country to reduce taxes, clamping down on the practice known as inversions.

Large partnerships, including private-equity firms and hedge funds, are often so complex that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service can’t audit them effectively, the Government Accountability Office found.

Congress made some moves this week in working on tax extenders, even though it is not expected to pass any legislation until after the midterm elections.