Finance

President Obama has not yet formally unveiled his plans for stirring up the sleeping job market through business tax breaks and infrastructure spending, but his ideas are already provoking skepticism.

The former treasurer of the National Republican Congressional Committee has pleaded guilty to embezzling $844,718 from various political committees, including his own.

President Obama is scheduled to deliver a speech Wednesday in which he will reportedly propose a series of business tax cuts, along with new infrastructure spending.

The Labor Department reported Friday that non-farm payroll employment fell by 54,000 in August, largely because of government layoffs, including 114,000 temporary workers hired for the census being laid off, along with state and local government workers.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has written to Congress with a draft bill that would amend the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to allow it to make its disciplinary hearings of accounting firms and auditors public.

It’s been five years since former Senator Connie Mack, then chairman of the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, said the panel would “take a fresh look at the existing Tax Code and will formulate options for making the tax system simple, fair and productive.”

President Barack Obama blasted Senate Republicans for obstructing his administration’s top legislative priority: a bill providing tax cuts and a $32 billion lending fund for small businesses to spur job growth.

Vice President Joe Biden held a roundtable discussion with workers and small business owners at Pete’s New Haven Style Apizza, a local restaurant in Washington, D.C., that has benefited from the small business provisions in the Recovery Act, as he argued for passage of a bill that would provide tax breaks and a $30 billion lending fund for small businesses.

IMGCAP(1)]As more people have become aware of the tax burden and unintended consequences resulting from the provision in the health care reform law mandating expanded Form 1099 information reporting, a consensus has been building to repeal this provision. The only current debate appears to be “how?”

The Internal Revenue Service plans to do more to ensure that tax-exempt political organizations fully report their contributions and expenditures to the IRS on time, according to a new government report.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, pushed for an extension of the Bush tax cuts on Tuesday, but questioned the need to pass over 70 other tax break extensions that failed to pass in the Senate in June.

The Government Accountability Office is making changes to Government Auditing Standards, commonly known as the Yellow Book.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the federal budget deficit for 2010 will exceed $1.3 trillion—$71 billion below last year's total and $27 billion lower than the amount that CBO projected in March 2010, when it issued its previous estimate, but that projection is predicated on the Bush tax cuts and other tax breaks expiring.

Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., has introduced legislation that would provide additional assistance for workers who have exhausted their unemployment insurance and are living in states like Nevada with elevated unemployment rates.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., has proposed a set of tax breaks to encourage investment in the commercial space industry as a way to cushion the blow from recent cutbacks in the space program.

Senator Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., introduced a bill earlier this month that would cut taxes for businesses that hire new workers who have been looking for work the longest and provide emergency assistance for struggling families looking for work by creating an additional tier of benefits for those who have exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits.

Russell W. Hinton of Atlanta and Peter Hughes of Orange County, Calif., are the 2010 recipients of the American Institute of CPAs’ Outstanding CPA in Government Award.

A group of Democratic senators has written to the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission urging the SEC to require more complete and accurate corporate accounting disclosures, especially of off-balance sheet transactions.

Political fundraisers in the accounting profession began shifting their largesse toward congressional Democrats after they won control over both the House and the Senate four years ago.

Henny Youngman, the aptly-named "King of the OneLiners," used to joke that his accountant recently had reviewed hisfinances and assured him that he had invested enough money to live comfortablyfor the rest of his life.