Finance

The U.S. Senate confirmed Mary Jo White to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, putting the former U.S. attorney in charge of an agency that has failed to satisfy critics with its response to the financial crisis.

The leaders of Congress’s main tax-writing committees said they plan to ask for proposals from the public for tax reform ideas using social media in an effort to make the process more transparent.

An audit by the Government Accountability Office of the Securities and Exchanges Commission’s Investor Protection Fund financial statements for fiscal years 2011 and 2012 found two areas of significant deficiency in the SEC’s internal controls.

President Barack Obama’s budget proposal would cap multimillion-dollar tax-favored retirement accounts like the one held by Mitt Romney, his Republican rival in 2012.

President Barack Obama’s budget plan will incorporate deficit-cutting proposals that include changing the calculation for Social Security cost-of-living increases and tax brackets, according to a White House statement.

The unemployment rate dipped a tenth of a percentage point to 7.6 percent in March, although hiring slowed to 88,000 jobs, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, with 11,000 jobs added in accounting and bookkeeping services.

The Internal Revenue Service is expanding a program nationwide to help law enforcement get access to tax return data.

The U.S. has asked Liechtenstein to hand over data on foundations that may have been used to hide untaxed American money from the Internal Revenue Service, a step that may threaten Swiss banks.

The Senate narrowly passed a budget for the first time in four years on a mostly party line vote, calling for $975 billion in additional tax revenue over the next 10 years along with state sales tax collections on online sales.

The House Ways and Means Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee held a hearing this week to discuss possible tax reforms on financial products such as derivatives.

The two leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and ranking Republican member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have begun developing proposals for reforming the U.S. Tax Code, including giving the Internal Revenue Service the clear statutory authority to regulate tax preparers in case the IRS loses its appeal of a recent court case invalidating its Registered Tax Return Preparer regime.

As U.S. lawmakers drafted a bill extending wind-energy tax credits in August, they revised a key clause that opens the door for a much bigger boost to the industry than just the one-year addition that was eventually passed.

House Republicans have passed the budget plan introduced by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., for fiscal year 2014, which shrinks the number of tax brackets to two brackets of 10 and 25 percent.

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee is calling on the Internal Revenue Service to provide a detailed accounting of how much taxpayer money will be used to implement the health care reform law and many IRS employees will be needed to work on it.

An influential lawmaker on Congress’s tax writing committee is calling on the Internal Revenue Service to release a copy of video parodies it shot of Star Trek and Gilligan’s Island.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. needs to win back public trust after losses on a derivative portfolio swelled to more than $6.2 billion and eroded confidence in the largest U.S. bank, a company risk manager told lawmakers.

A top official at the U.S. Small Business Administration prodded lawmakers at a congressional hearing to extend a debt refinancing program that provided a lifeline to thousands of struggling small businesses before expiring last year.

New York City officials are urging low-income and middle-class taxpayers to file their tax returns for free or low cost to claim their tax credits with one month to go in tax season, while cracking down on tax preparers.

The Tax Policy Center estimated Friday that the tax provisions of the budget plan introduced this week by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would reduce tax revenues by $5.7 trillion over a 10-year period, requiring a corresponding amount of tax increases and/or spending cuts to keep it “revenue neutral,” or risk a substantial expansion of the budget deficit.

Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee said Thursday they plan to begin developing a proposal for overhauling the nation’s Tax Code.