Finance

With lawmakers under pressure to find ways to reduce the deficit while avoiding the more painful spending cuts in the sequester, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing to examine how to reduce the deficit by eliminating wasteful spending in the Tax Code.

Consumer spending in the U.S. rose in January even as incomes dropped by the most in 20 years, showing households were weathering the payroll-tax increase by socking away less money in the bank.

President Obama said that he hoped to work with members of both parties in Congress to stop the damaging impact of the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts that officially began on Friday.

The Senate has confirmed Jacob Lew as the next Secretary of the Treasury, succeeding Timothy Geithner.

Less than two months ago Washington escaped from the doomsday scenario of the looming “fiscal cliff.” Now it faces the threat of the less colorfully named “sequester” or “sequestration,” depending on who’s talking about it, but somehow the dire warnings of impending disaster are beginning to sound unconvincing.

President Obama appealed to Congress to balance tax reforms with spending cuts to avoid the painful automatic cuts imposed by the budget sequester deal.

An advocacy group and a former congressional candidate have filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service in an effort to force the IRS to enforce its laws prohibiting tax-exempt 501(c)4 groups from engaging in political activity.

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.