Finance

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has unveiled a stripped-down version of the draft jobs legislation that was proposed only hours earlier by the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Finance Committee.

Senate Finance Committee leaders publicly released a draft Thursday of the widely anticipated jobs bill they plan to introduce, including payroll tax provisions and the extension of a number of tax breaks that expired last year.

The Senate has unanimously approved a bill that would prevent small businesses from incurring large tax penalties aimed at large corporations and wealthy individuals who invest in tax shelters.

Federal financial regulatory agencies and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors have issued a statement aimed at encouraging more banks to lend to small businesses.

Senate Democrats have begun circulating a draft version of the jobs bill they plan to introduce, with a series of tax breaks and tax extenders designed to lure Republican support.

There’s a certain amount of suspense these days in our nation’s capital about what’s going to happen not only with health care reform, but also financial regulations.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Jim Webb, D-Va., have introduced legislation that would impose a tax on large bonuses paid by Wall Street banks and other firms that received more than $5 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program in 2009.

Despite its massive tax increases, the President’s 2011 Budget Plan contains a number of revenue provisions calculated to encourage business expansion and move the economy upward.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Chilean Finance Minister Andrés Velasco signed a new income tax treaty between the United States and Chile to provide certainty and stability of tax treatment for U.S. and Chilean cross-border investors.

The United States and Hungary have signed a new income tax treaty that brings an existing agreement signed by the two countries in 1979 into closer conformity with current U.S. international tax policy.

An unenthusiastic Senate granted Ben S. Bernanke a secondterm as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, with a 70-30 vote underscoring thecriticism leveled at the central bank for its part leading to the financialcrisis.

The economy grew at afaster-than-expected 5.7 percent clip in the fourth quarter, the fastest pacein roughly six years, according to figures from the Commerce Department.

While there were no real surprises in the State of the Union speech, it did flesh out some tax proposals that will be acted on in the days ahead, according to observers.

President Obama is widely expected to call for a three-year spending freeze on key areas of his discretionary budget during the State of the Union address on Wednesday evening, but critics are already warning that now is not the time to cut spending just as the country is emerging from a recession.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden previewed some of the major themes in the president’s upcoming State of the Union address, including a proposal to increase some tax credits for middle-class families.

The Internal Revenue Service listed the guidelines for the tax deductions that taxpayers can take for the contributions they make toward Haiti earthquake relief this year.

The eligibility period for COBRA subsidies for laid-off workers has been extended through February, with 15 months of subsidy available now to those who qualify.

The Senate has unanimously passed legislation that allows taxpayers to deduct charitable contributions to aid victims of the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

President Barack Obama proposed new restrictions Thursday on the size and scope of financial institutions to limit their ability to engage in risky trading practices.

The House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation Wednesday that would allow individuals who make charitable contributions to victims of the earthquake in Haiti to claim an itemized charitable deduction on their 2009 tax return instead of having to wait until next year to claim the deductions on their 2010 tax return.