Finance

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has approved a new standard intended to improve accounting and financial reporting for state and local governments’ combinations and disposals of government operations.

The U.S. Small Business Administration highlighted some of the main tax incentives for small businesses that were extended as part of last week’s fiscal cliff legislation.

Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 155,000 jobs in December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, but that was not enough to lower the unemployment rate of 7.8 percent as the pace of hiring appeared to slacken after strong gains in November.

President Barack Obama signed the legislation that enacts a last-minute budget deal and averts income tax increases for most U.S. workers, marking an end to a yearlong impasse.

Even though President Obama indicated only last Friday that the fiscal cliff deal likely to be produced by the January 1 deadline would be a basic package, lawmakers managed to come out with a surprisingly comprehensive set of tax provisions, some with long-lasting effects.

The House passed a deal to avert an income tax rate increase on middle-class families on Tuesday night, following a New Year’s Eve vote by the Senate, sending the bill to President Obama for his signature.

The U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan budget deal two hours after income tax cuts expired, reaching an after-deadline deal to undo the potential economic harm of $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts.

The U.S. House of Representatives doesn’t plan any votes on the federal budget tonight, meaning that Congress for now will fail to avert $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set to start at midnight.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected the latest Republican offer to resolve the U.S. fiscal crisis as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reached out to Vice President Joe Biden in an effort to break the impasse.

President Barack Obama summoned congressional leaders to a White House meeting three days before a year-end deadline to avoid $600 billion in spending cuts and tax increases as lawmakers gave little sign they intend to act together on a budget plan.

Congress is scheduled to return Thursday, with one of its top priorities a deal to avert the December 31 “fiscal cliff” deadline of looming tax increases and automatic spending cuts, but it will need to work quickly or reach some type of interim agreement.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader who has stayed largely outside the U.S. budget fight this year, will be thrust into prominence just five days before the deadline for tax increases and spending cuts.

Time is running out for U.S. lawmakers and President Barack Obama to agree on a budget deal by year end to avoid triggering more than $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts, Sen. Joseph Lieberman said on Sunday.

Paul Beswick is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new chief accountant.

(Bloomberg) -- House Republican leaders canceled a planned vote on Thursday night on Speaker John Boehner's plan to allow higher tax rates for annual income above $1 million, throwing already-stalled budget talks deeper into turmoil.

House Republicans plan a vote late Thursday on a measure that would have been hard to imagine before the November 6 election -- a tax increase for top earners, which they previously labeled as job-killing class warfare.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved Auditing Standard No. 16, Communications with Audit Committees, as well as amendments to other standards from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

A pair of lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill in the House to end a 78-year-old tax provision that includes dividends from controlled foreign corporations in personal holding company income.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Tuesday that House Republicans would introduce a bill to raise tax rates for millionaires as a “Plan B” in case his negotiations with President Obama on averting the fiscal cliff fail to produce an agreement.

The New Mexico Finance Authority has completed its probe of fake audits and said it was reforming its accounting practices as a result.