Finance

States are creating fiscal risks for themselves by neglecting to control the costs of tax incentives for economic development, according to a new report from the Pew Center on the States.

Republicans in Congress hardened their resistance to President Barack Obama’s proposed higher taxes for top earners and demanded a spending-cut plan, as lawmakers in both parties said it’s becoming less likely an agreement can be enacted before the Christmas holiday.

President Barack Obama reduced his demand for tax increases to $1.4 trillion from $1.6 trillion as he and House Speaker John Boehner traded another round of offers and inched toward a budget agreement.

After a Sunday meeting between President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, their staff members reportedly continued negotiations Monday on how to avoid the fiscal cliff.

As Democrats demand tax concessions from Republicans to avert a collision over the federal budget, Senate Democratic leaders are signaling that they may be willing to trade an entitlement spending overhaul to secure a deficit- reduction deal.

President Barack Obama again warned lawmakers that the U.S. economy will suffer unless there’s an agreement on a way to prevent more than $600 billion in automatic spending cuts and tax increases from taking effect.

The so-called fiscal cliff has politicians in Washington performing the political equivalent of a soap opera as they leave the country in suspense about whether they will manage to resolve a self-inflicted crisis in time to avoid a recession next year.

House Republicans, rejecting President Barack Obama’s demand for higher tax rates, countered with a $2.2 trillion deficit-cutting plan that would trim Medicare and Social Security and cap tax deductions for top earners.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she would try to use a procedure known as a discharge petition to bring a Senate-passed bill for extending the middle-class tax cuts to the floor of the House.

The fiscal cliff, once a seeming imaginary event far off on the horizon, is looming large as we approach the beginning of 2013 with a divided government. The cliff, a combination of tax increases and government spending cuts, threatens to send the country deeper into another recession, according to economists from the Congressional Budget Office.

Congressional Republicans dug in to fight President Barack Obama’s plan to skirt the fiscal cliff, rejecting his tax-and-spending proposal as the president heads out today to sell it to the American public.

President Barack Obama urged middle-class families who are in danger of seeing their taxes go up next year to begin using Twitter and other forms of communication to urge lawmakers to extend tax cuts for the middle class.

The U.S. Treasury Department and Mexico’s Ministry of Finance have struck a bilateral agreement to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act requiring financial institutions to report the holdings of U.S. and Mexican taxpayers to each other’s tax authorities.

New River Innovation has enhanced its Beyond415 Guidance product, a Web-based research center for resolving issues after tax filing, with key features including searchable guidance covering individual, business, and payroll areas of IRS practice and procedure.

A new White House report from the President’s Council of Economic Advisers predicts that allowing tax rates for the middle class to rise and failing to patch the alternative minimum tax would have a negative impact on consumer spending and retailers alike.

The U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday that the governments of the U.S. and Denmark have reached a bilateral agreement to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act to improve international tax compliance.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley released a report from a security company on a data breach at the South Carolina Department of Revenue that exposed the tax information of millions of taxpayers in the state to foreign computer hackers, while asking the IRS to take further steps to encrypt taxpayer information.

The Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board has sent a letter to the leaders of Congress’s two tax-writing committees urging them to act swiftly to patch the Alternative Minimum Tax to keep it from spreading to millions more taxpayers.

President Obama met with congressional leaders at the White House on Friday to negotiate over the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the looming problem of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” with the leaders agreeing that the meeting had been constructive.

Despite negative market sentiment due to concerns over the looming "fiscal cliff," many investors are unprepared for it, according to a recent survey by Nationwide Financial.