Finance

The House passed a pair of bills Thursday to provide tax breaks to businesses.

Facing a series of budget cuts in recent years, the Internal Revenue Service is being urged to set a long-term strategy and use return on investment data to better manage budget uncertainty and set priorities at the agency, in a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

A temporary tax holiday for U.S. companies to repatriate offshore profits would cost the government $95.8 billion in revenue over a decade, said the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper.

Amid continuing gridlock in Congress that has held up agreement between Democrats and Republicans on tax reform, the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee outlined a series of hearings this summer aimed at moving forward on the effort.

The Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund plans to distribute $3.5 billion in New Markets Tax Credit awards to revitalize low-income communities.

The top Republican tax writers in Congress and the biggest U.S.-based companies are warning that global negotiations to limit businesses from shifting profits to low-tax countries could harm Americans.

Paul Beswick, who has served as chief accountant in the Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of the Chief Accountant, plans to return to the private sector.

The IRS has issued a pair of one-page electronic publications containing information for individuals and families about the Affordable Care Act.

(Bloomberg) The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee voted to let companies write off more than half the cost of some investments immediately, providing a $287 billion tax cut to capital-intensive industries.

A group of technology companies sent a letter Wednesday to leaders of the House Financial Services Committee objecting to legislation that would exempt companies with under $250 million in annual revenue from existing requirements to file financial statements as machine-readable open data.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board voted unanimously Wednesday to approve two exposure drafts proposing significant improvements to financial reporting by state and local governments of other post-employment benefits, such as retiree health insurance.

Nearly 6 million Americans living abroad are facing a June 16 deadline to file their taxes this year.

The National Conference of CPA Practitioners is questioning a proposal to reinstate a discontinued program that would allow private contractors to collect unpaid tax debts on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service.

The Internal Revenue Service has ruled that employers are not in compliance with the Affordable Care Act if they simply reimburse employees for buying insurance through one of the exchanges instead of establishing a health insurance plan for employees.

The IRS Oversight Board has sent a letter to the leaders of Congress’s main tax committees urging them not to re-instate a privatized tax debt collection program.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to substantially change the regulations it proposed last fall for tax-exempt “social welfare” organizations and their political activities before moving ahead with a public hearing.

Enhanced Section 179 expensing allowances, along with dozens of other “temporary” tax provisions, expired at the end of last year.

Credit Suisse AG, which pleaded guilty Monday to helping Americans evade taxes, has so far avoided identifying thousands of customers who cheated the Internal Revenue Service. Instead, it promised to point investigators in the right direction.

The recently released discussion draft of the Tax Reform Act of 2014 by the House Ways and Means Committee is intended to simplify the existing tax code, make it fairer to taxpayers and strengthen the U.S. economy by lowering tax rates.

Rep. Jim Renacci, R-Ohio, a CPA, has introduced a bipartisan bill to bring more accountability and transparency to the federal government’s financial statements by making the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board more independent.