Finance

Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., has introduced a bill that would help low-income married couples deduct twice as much of the interest charged on their student loan debts.

The Internal Revenue Service is being urged to improve its efficiency in auditing the growing number of large partnerships, in a new government report.

The chairman of the House Small Business Committee, Sam Graves, R-Mo., has introduced legislation to streamline and simplify the loan application process at the Small Business Administration by requiring the agency to permit the use of electronic signatures and electronic records.

If there were ever a politically opportune time for Congress to remove the National Football League’s tax exemption, it would seem to be now.

Six years ago this week, investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, observed Attorney General Eric Holder at New York University Law School during a speech Wednesday. This marked “the culmination of a period of deregulation, excessive risk-taking, questionable lending practices, and defective underwriting that heralded the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression,” he said.

A Deloitte official defended the firm’s mandatory retirement requirements for partners in a congressional hearing Wednesday.

Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., has introduced legislation that would amend the Tax Code to disqualify movie and TV producers from receiving tax credits from the federal government if any of the production is done outside the United States.

The House passed three pieces of legislation Wednesday aimed at limiting the authority of the Internal Revenue Service in response to scandals involving the extra scrutiny given to political groups applying for tax-exempt status as social welfare organizations.

If it seems impossible to amass a fortune in an IRA during your lifetime, think again.

About 9,000 U.S. taxpayers have each accumulated at least $5 million in individual retirement accounts, said the Government Accountability Office, raising questions about some investors’ tax-advantaged returns.

The American Institute of CPAs has written a letter to Congress asking lawmakers to address the uncertainty about dozens of expired tax breaks and about-to-expire breaks that could complicate next tax season for practitioners.

An industry group is urging the House to postpone a vote on legislation that would scale back Securities and Exchange Commission requirements for companies to file their financial statements using Extensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, technology.

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.