Finance

House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany, R-La., has asked the Government Accountability Office to assess how the Internal Revenue Service examines tax-exempt organizations in the aftermath of recent scandals.

The Internal Revenue Service has released the final regulations for how it will release tax return information to the Department of Health and Human Services to assess a taxpayer’s eligibility for help in buying health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

House Small Business Committee chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., has written a letter to the Internal Revenue Service expressing his concerns about the thousands of notices that the IRS is sending to small businesses telling them they may have underreported their income.

A pair of House Republican lawmakers, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., and House Oversight Subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany Jr., M.D., R-La., have written to Internal Revenue Service principal deputy commissioner Daniel Werfel calling on him to immediately stop the IRS from continuing to target Tea Party applications based on name alone, but Democrats are disputing the charges.

Most state and local governments have achieved clean audit opinions, but a new poll of state finance officials found that implementing the Affordable Care Act and funding the pension costs of current and retired employees are among their biggest ongoing challenges.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing dozens of tax-exempt bond-financed jails, particularly in border states, and suggesting in some cases that, if the jails hold significant amounts of federal inmates, the bonds are no longer tax-exempt and are instead taxable private-activity bonds, sources said Thursday.

Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship surged sixfold in the second quarter from a year earlier as the government prepares to introduce tougher asset-disclosure rules.

Among the many tax reform issues to be resolved in the months ahead is whether or not to produce a comprehensive tax reform bill or simply one limited to corporate reform.

The Connecticut Department of Revenue Services plans to begin a tax amnesty program from Sept. 16, until November 15, 2013 for any taxable period ending on or before Nov. 30, 2012.

The National Federation of Independent Business and the S Corporation Association released a new study Wednesday showing that S corporations pay the highest effective rates of any business type.

A proposal to drastically cut or abolish state income taxes in Georgia and replace them with higher sales taxes would raise taxes on up to 80 percent of Georgia taxpayers and spike Georgia's average state and local sales tax to as high as 14.5 percent, according to a new study.

A pair of Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to end unlimited tax write-offs on performance-based executive pay, allowing publicly traded corporations to deduct only up to $1 million in pay per employee.

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced a new initiative Monday to encourage individuals who owe significant back taxes to the state to pay their bills by suspending their New York State driver licenses when their past-due tax liability exceeds $10,000.

Governmental Accounting Standards Board chairman David Vaudt talks about his plans as GASB's new leader and the board's agenda for pension standards, post-employment benefits in the retiree health care area, and the need to provide useful information for elected officials and government policymakers, in an interview with Accounting Today editor-in-chief Daniel Hood.

The House passed a bill to prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from implementing or enforcing the Affordable Care Act before heading home for Congress’s August recess, but the legislation has little chance of advancing in the Senate.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa sent a subpoena for Internal Revenue Service documents to the Treasury Secretary, saying he thinks the agency’s chief counsel’s office is “compromised.”

The U.S. tax systems for individuals and corporations should be revamped together, said the top Republican tax writer in Congress, resisting President Barack Obama’s call for a business-only approach.

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, sending the unemployment rate down by two-tenths of a percentage point to 7.4 percent, although many of the gains were in low-wage jobs.

Tax reform talk is heating up. Support is growing for bipartisan efforts to rewrite the tax code, with committee chairmen and ranking members in both the House and the Senate jumping aboard the effort.

A bipartisan group of senators have introduced legislation to combat acts of tax evasion, money laundering, terrorism and other wrongdoing facilitated by U.S. corporations with hidden owners.