Finance

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel has recently investigated several cases in which Internal Revenue Service employees allegedly engaged in partisan political activity in the workplace, advocating in support of President Obama.

The United States is working with other countries on multinational corporate tax issues, including the increasingly thorny issue of base erosion and profit shifting.

The House Committee on Small Business held a hearing to discuss the biggest tax problems for small businesses.

The House Ways and Means Committee voted Wednesday to send a criminal referral letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking him to determine whether Lois Lerner, the former director of the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations unit, violated the law.

The top lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee disagreed over whether extending tax breaks for research and international finance operations should be offset to prevent the U.S. budget deficit from growing.

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the subject of incompetent and unethical tax preparers and heard testimony on how the Internal Revenue Service should deal with them.

House Republicans are showing no sign that they’ll move forward legislation the Senate passed restoring benefits for the long-term unemployed.

The Marketplace Fairness Act, which was supposed to finally settle the question of how states can tax online sales, appears to have stalled in Congress after passing the Senate last year.

New York’s top banking regulator is investigating whether Credit Suisse Group AG’s private banking practices resulted in the evasion of state taxes, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The Internal Revenue Service paid out $53 million in whistleblower awards last year, a steep decline from the $125 million paid to whistleblowers in 2012, according to an annual report by the IRS Whistleblower Office.

Administering the 2010 health-care law is just like municipal snow shoveling—a top priority that’s non-negotiable, John Koskinen, the commissioner of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, said Wednesday.

The Senate Finance Committee voted to revive almost all of the 55 tax breaks that expired Dec. 31, providing benefits for wind energy, U.S.-based multinational corporations and motor sports track owners.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday they will treat 19 countries that have reached agreements in substance with the U.S. on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act as having those agreements in effect, until the end of 2014, and they will also delay the registration deadline for foreign banks for 10 more days.

The Senate Finance Committee plans to hold a hearing next Tuesday to discuss how to protect taxpayers from incompetent and unethical tax return preparers.

Republican Representative Paul Ryan unveiled a $1.014 trillion U.S. budget plan that envisions revamping the tax code and social-safety net in a declaration of party priorities seven months before the midterm election.

A Caterpillar Inc. executive defended her company’s tax maneuvers today, telling a Senate panel that moving profits from its parts business to Switzerland from the U.S. was a legal and appropriate way to eliminate unnecessary expenses.

Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee plan to markup long-awaited legislation to extend a long set of expired and soon-to-expire temporary tax breaks.

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., has announced he will not seek reelection after his term ends this year.

When President Obama announced the myRA program during his State of the Union Address this year, it likely raised several questions among those in the accounting community: What is this new program? How will it work? How does it compare to the retirement benefits businesses already provide to their employees? What do I need to share with my clients about this?

The American Institute of CPAs has written to lawmakers on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee supporting their efforts to simplify the array of education tax credits available to students while suggesting several reforms of its own.