Finance

Legendary economist Milton Friedman once joked that you could take any three letters from the alphabet, scramble them in any order you want, and you'll end up with an acronym for a federal agency we could do without.

For the second year in a row, monthly Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits for more than 58 million Americans will not automatically increase in 2011, the Social Security Administration said Friday, but Congress will try to pass a law to provide seniors with the extra money anyway.

Attorneys general in all 50 states have joined together to investigate widespread use of fake documents and signatures in mortgage foreclosures by lenders across the country.

IRS OFFERS GUIDANCE ON ECONOMIC SUBSTANCE

Four members of Congress have written to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman asking him to investigate potential tax irregularities by three tax-exempt groups that run college football bowl championships.

Patrice Tierney, the wife of Rep. John F. Tierney, D-Mass., has pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns in connection with an offshore Internet gambling scheme.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, criticized the U.S. Small Business Administration after it missed a deadline to send comments to the Treasury Department and the IRS about a controversial new 1099 reporting requirement for businesses.

At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge has halted the business operations of American Tax Relief, a company that heavily advertised its ability to help taxpayers who were in trouble with the IRS and allegedly bilked consumers out of more than $60 million by falsely claiming it could reduce their tax debts.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has agreed to the request from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, and six other committee members to conduct an investigation of whether Obama Administration officials illegally accessed and disclosed confidential taxpayer information involving a particular taxpayer.

The lame duck session slated to begin in mid-November leaves Congress a massive amount of unfinished business.

The American Institute of CPAs and 18 other groups have written a letter to congressional leaders encouraging them to ban tax strategy patents before adjourning.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman requesting him to investigate the use of tax-exempt groups for political advocacy.

Senate Republicans blocked a bill on Tuesday that would have denied tax breaks to companies that move jobs offshore and provide companies with a two-year holiday from their share of Social Security payroll tax withholding for each employee they hire to replace a worker at a foreign-based facility.

The Senate debated a bill on Monday that would give companies a two-year holiday from their share of Social Security payroll withholding for each employee they hire to replace a worker at a foreign-based facility.

President Obama signed the Small Business Jobs Act into law on Monday, providing $12 billion in tax breaks and a $30 billion lending fund for small businesses.

Senate Democrats plan to hold a vote on the Bush tax cuts extension soon after the mid-term election in November, congressional leaders indicated.

The Internal Revenue Service has begun filling in some of the blanks in the structure of its proposed regime for regulating tax return preparers.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has begun an investigation of the tax status of earnings by Prudential Financial on survivor death benefit accounts for life insurance policies it sold to members of the armed services.

Senate Democrats have decided to wait until after the mid-term election in November to hold a vote on legislation to extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which are due to expire at the end of this year.

The Senate Finance Committee held hearings Thursday on tax reform and the lessons learned from the Tax Reform Act of 1986 in the wake of a recently published report from a presidentially appointed panel.