Finance

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.

The majority of small businesses want a long-term solution to the debt ceiling so the U.S. can pay its bills and the issue does not repeatedly come up for votes in Congress, according to a new survey.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has released new standards aimed at improving the accounting and reporting of combinations and disposals of government operations for U.S. state and local governments.

Unfortunately, recent events make fundamental tax reform, already a heavy lift, much less likely.

The American Institute of CPAs has written to the leaders of Congress’s tax-writing committees asking them to expand the replacement period for property loss for taxpayers affected by Hurricane Sandy.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service have issued a long-awaited set of final regulations implementing the information reporting and withholding tax provisions of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act aimed at combating offshore tax evasion, with far-reaching implications for U.S.-born taxpayers abroad, in addition to foreign financial institutions as well as U.S. banks.

The Internal Revenue Service is providing information on some of the retirement plan provisions of the fiscal cliff deal that was signed into law earlier this month.

The Internal Revenue Service stated on Tuesday that they will begin processing individual tax returns on Jan. 30, 2013, marking the official beginning of “tax season” for tax professionals.

CCH has issued a new report looking back at the year in tax, summarizing the major developments up to and including the fiscal cliff legislation that was passed by Congress on New Year’s Day.