Finance

Members of Congress have re-introduced legislation aimed at pressuring online Web sites to charge sales taxes to out-of-state customers, combining three competing bills that were introduced in the previous congressional term.

Legislation has been introduced in Georgia to give the Georgia State Board of Accountancy its own executive director and staff, along with greater financial and operational autonomy, to bring it in line with other state boards of accountancy.

Representatives of various charities and nonprofits presented a case for preserving charitable deductions in the Tax Code in a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, arguing that imposing a cap on such deductions would cause many of them to cut back services at a time of critical demand.

Accounting and advisory firm Marcum LLP has introduced an interactive online map that tracks the status of same-sex marriage in each of the 50 U.S. states and how such unions are treated for tax purposes.

The Treasury Department has signed a bilateral agreement with Switzerland to share tax information in an effort to improve tax compliance and combat international tax evasion.

President Barack Obama called for tax reform as a way to temper drastic automatic budget cuts during his State of the Union address.

A pair of influential Senate Democrats have introduced legislation aimed at stopping multinational corporations from taking advantage of tax havens abroad.

The U.S. Postal Service said Wednesday that it will end Saturday delivery of letters starting in August, but will continue to deliver packages, in an effort to cut costs.

State budgets across the country collectively lost an estimated $40 billion in tax revenue due to corporations and individuals shifting their profits and income to offshore tax havens, according to a new report.

President Obama urged Congress to agree on a combination of tax reform and spending cuts to achieve deficit reduction during a speech Tuesday in which he proposed an alternative to the drastic automatic spending cuts that were part of the budget sequester deal.

U.S. financial institutions may see their reporting burdens rise as a result of a law designed to prevent taxpayers from hiding funds offshore.

Sunday marked the 100th birthday of the U.S. federal income tax with the passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution on Feb. 3, 1913.

A federal judge has denied the Internal Revenue Service’s request to suspend his January 18 ruling that struck down the IRS’s tax-preparer scheme as unlawful, but made some important clarifications in a ruling he issued last month.

The Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy has released the fourth edition of its report, “Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States,” which claims that in almost all state tax systems, middle- and low-income families pay a greater share of their income in tax than wealthy families.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that nonfarm payroll employment increased by 157,000 in January, but the unemployment rate ticked up a tenth of a percentage point to 7.9 percent.

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee is asking the Internal Revenue Service why its Web site continues to provide confusing information about the IRS’s recently invalidated tax preparer regulation requirements.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has asked the National Park Service to conduct an internal review of the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives Program to ensure the program is maximizing opportunities to use historic preservation to promote economic development and revitalization of communities, particularly in urban areas.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., have introduced legislation that would expand an existing tax credit for hiring veterans to encourage further hiring while making it easier for business claim.

The Republican chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Dave Camp, R-Mich., released a draft document Thursday proposing a series of tax reforms for various types of financial derivatives and other financial products, building on work done by his committee over the past two years.

President Obama nominated former prosecutor Mary Jo White as the next chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.