Finance

Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee are hoping their fellow members of Congress will work on passing tax extenders legislation to renew expired tax provisions for individual and business taxpayers, but the legislation probably will not be passed until after the midterm elections this fall.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it’s considering ways to end a “loophole” that allows hedge-fund managers to avoid taxes by routing their investments through an insurance company in low-tax countries like Bermuda.

Republicans and business allies such as House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce say they know the way to stop companies from changing addresses to cut their tax bills: Reform the tax code.

A bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives comprising 233 members have signed a letter urging the House leadership to preserve the cash method of accounting for tax purposes, writing that proposals requiring a transition to the accrual method “will have a severely detrimental impact on thousands of businesses in our districts.”

Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., has introduced three pieces of legislation to close tax breaks that enable U.S. multinational corporations to use so-called “inversions” in which they merge with a foreign company and move their tax domicile abroad to a low-tax country to reduce corporate taxes.

Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen told a congressional subcommittee about the IRS’s progress on the Affordable Care Act and the impact that tax subsidies will have next tax season.

The Obama administration can make tax inversions less economically attractive to U.S. corporations and deter companies from changing their addresses, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said.

The Institute of Internal Auditors has called on Congress today to fully support efforts by federal inspectors general to ensure unrestricted access to information needed for their investigations, as allowed by federal law.

The House has passed legislation that would toughen the penalties for criminals who engage in identity theft through stolen tax returns.

A proposal from a top Senate Democrat could limit deductions for companies that moved their tax addresses out of the U.S. as long ago as 1994, according to a draft obtained by Bloomberg News.

An inspector general who disclosed the Internal Revenue Service’s extra scrutiny of Tea Party groups ignored the tax agency’s similar focus on groups backing Democrats, according to a report released today by Senate Democrats.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington will rehear a case on Obamacare tax subsidies, granting a government request in a move that may reduce chances of a new Supreme Court showdown over a central part of the law.

While the effort to pass federal legislation governing sales and use taxes on online purchases appears to have stalled, some states have begun their own initiatives to require online merchants to collect and remit taxes from e-commerce customers across state lines.

Two years after a single vote on the U.S. Supreme Court saved a core part of Obamacare, opponents are trying to topple the measure again, this time using a four-word phrase in the law.

Tax lawyer Robert Wellen’s telephone keeps ringing with calls from hedge-fund executives he’s never met.

The profession speaks out in favor of cash accounting

The Internal Revenue Service has released a set of long-delayed draft instructions for the forms that companies need to file to comply with the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

Two top Republican lawmakers profited from a corporate tax-avoidance maneuver that the U.S. Treasury Department is seeking to curb.

There’s more than one way for a U.S. company to avoid taxes by claiming a foreign address.

The First Circuit has held that in determining the tax treatment of an FCA civil settlement, a court may consider factors beyond the mere presence or absence of a tax characterization agreement.