Finance

A group of lawmakers from the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee have written a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew urging the Internal Revenue Service to back off of a proposed rule change modifying the retail inventory method of accounting, which retailers fear could cost them millions of dollars a year.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has issued for public comment a proposed concepts statement that would guide GASB when establishing standards regarding the measurement of assets and liabilities for U.S. state and local governments.

The House Financial Services Committee has unanimously passed legislation prohibiting the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board from mandating the automatic rotation of a public company’s independent external auditor.

The Internal Revenue Service may be nearing an agreement to pay unionized employees $70 million in bonuses that aren’t legally required, said Republican Senator Charles Grassley.

Leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee continued their battle over the release of transcripts of interviews with officials from the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations division amid claims of what the transcripts indicate about White House involvement in the targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups.

New York State has suspended Deloitte Financial Advisory Services from consulting work on financial institutions regulated by the state’s Department of Financial Services, and the firm has agreed to make a $10 million payment to the state as a result of problems with Deloitte FAS’s consulting work for Standard Chartered bank.

World leaders at the G8 Summit meeting in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, issued a declaration Tuesday calling for countries to share tax information and increase transparency to discourage tax evasion, and President Obama released an action plan for identifying actual company ownership.

Congressman Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, has introduced legislation that would direct the Treasury Department to issue a legislative proposal to Congress concerning the viability of replacing the current income tax with a consumption tax.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., have introduced legislation aimed at allowing Enrolled Agents to present themselves as such and tout their credential wherever they practice.

The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing Thursday to examine corporate tax reform and the impact of offshore tax havens on base erosion and profit shifting by multinationals.

Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have sent a letter to Internal Revenue Service acting chief Daniel Werfel requesting information about a March 2011 IRS search and seizure of as many as 60 million medical records from a California health care provider.

Senators Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., have introduced a bipartisan bill to make the New Markets Tax Credit program permanent and increase its annual allocation.

The Swiss and U.S. governments have signed a memorandum of understanding on interpretations of their agreement on implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA.

The Internal Revenue Service, under a congressional microscope for conference spending and improper scrutiny of small-government groups, has fired fewer workers for misconduct this year than at any time since 2002.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has sent a letter to committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., urging him to stop making unsubstantiated allegations about the IRS Tea Party targeting scandal being traced back to the White House.

The House Ways and Means Committee plans to hold a hearing next Thursday on the use of tax havens by multinational corporations to shift their profits.

The unemployment rate rose a tenth of a percentage point to 7.6 percent in May as employers added 175,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Internal Revenue Service executive who portrayed Spock in the agency’s Star Trek video parody apologized to lawmakers for inappropriate spending on a $4.1 million conference in 2010.

A partisan divide is developing on how U.S. lawmakers view Internal Revenue Service actions, with Republicans seeing intimidation of their allies and Democrats citing agency mistakes and mismanagement.

Acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Werfel told lawmakers he is working to restore trust in the beleaguered U.S. tax agency and said he wants to make improvements before pressing for a bigger budget.