Finance

State tax revenues increased 10.8 percent in the second quarter of 2011, but revenues for local governments headed in the opposite direction.

The free trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama signed into law by President Obama earlier this month included little-publicized provisions that would increase tax preparer penalties and crack down on prisoner tax fraud.

The House voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to repeal the 3 percent withholding rule on payments to contractors.

President Barack Obama pledged to help borrowers cope with student loan debt by capping student loan repayments at 10 percent of a borrower’s discretionary income, starting next year.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., has released a discussion draft version of proposed legislation to transition the U.S. from a worldwide system of taxation to a territorial system, while lowering the top tax rate for both individuals and businesses to 25 percent.

Texas Governor Rick Perry introduced a plan for a flat tax of 20 percent in an effort to revive his candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination.

The Internal Revenue Service is facing challenges keeping ahead of financial services companies that create sophisticated financial derivatives and offer them as a way to evade tax liabilities.

New information made public by the U.S. Federal Election Commission reveals that members of the accounting profession are opening their checkbooks early and often in an effort to help candidates in the 2012 Presidential elections.

One day after verbally scuffling with fellow GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, Gov. Rick Perry called for implementing a flax tax in what many saw as a preview of his economic policies.

Chief financial officers and investors have increased their support for global accounting standards since the start of the economic crisis in 2008, according to an international survey published Thursday by the global Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.

Following a scathing report by the Center for Public integrity, which revealed that the Department of Defense lacks any mechanism to shows how the billions in taxpayer dollars are spent, the agency pledged to clean up its accounting practices by 2017.

As with most legislation, the recently derailed American Jobs Act included some good ideas, some bad, and some that were mere political posturing. But now that it has been defeated in the Senate, the focus is on what parts of it might survive in separate future pieces of legislation.

Senate Republicans blocked President Obama’s jobs package with its extension of the payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance, tax credits for new hires and wage increases, and surtax on millionaires.

The American Institute of CPAs has written to the leaders of Congress’s main tax-writing committee urging them to repeal a requirement that would soon force federal, state and local governments to withhold 3 percent on the payments they made to most government contractors, including certain other payments such as Medicare.

The unemployment rate remained stuck at 9.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, despite the addition of 103,000 jobs.

Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Kay Hagan, D-N.C., introduced legislation Thursday allowing multinational corporations to repatriate their foreign earnings at a reduced tax rate.

President Barack Obama said Thursday he was “comfortable” with the changes made by Senate Democrats in his jobs bill on Wednesday, including a 5.6 percent surtax on millionaires starting in 2013.

The airline industry’s trade organization, the Air Transport Association of America, is asking Congress to reject President Obama’s plan to levy $3.5 billion a year in new taxes and fees for airlines and passengers, saying it would increase fares or reduce service, resulting in job losses.

As multinational corporations and lobbyists push for a reduction in the corporate tax rate and a tax holiday on repatriated foreign profits, the tax loopholes that have encouraged companies to shift their income abroad have managed to stay largely intact.