Finance

Tax accountants who help U.S. taxpayers hide their income in foreign banks are in the crosshairs of a new push by Congress and the Obama administration to crack down on offshore tax haven cheats.

The House voted to approve health care reform, moving the legislation now to an uncertain outcome in the Senate.

President Barack Obama has signed the extension of the First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit, along with an extension of unemployment benefits.

The American Institute of CPAs and Financial Executives International have written to Congress to express their objections to proposed legislation that would displace the SEC from its role of overseeing the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

Congress has passed a bill on unemployment that would require electronic filing by all return preparers “except those who neither prepare nor reasonably expect to prepare ten or more individual income tax returns in a calendar year.” The measure is effective for returns prepared after Dec. 31, 2010.

The Senate voted by a 98-0 margin to extend the First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit while also expanding the credit to existing homeowners who want to move to another residence.

The House Financial Services Committee voted to exempt small and midsized public companies from Sarbanes-Oxley audit requirements.

Financial planning trade groups have written a letter to congressional leaders protesting an amendment that would extend the regulatory authority of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to cover investment advisers who are associated with broker-dealers under FINRA authority.

Washington, D.C. - Americans may be in for shocking news soon. Under a new standard issued by the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board, the federal government is going to have to issue annual reports on its fiscal sustainability.

House Democrats unveiled their health care reform package after assembling the various components passed this summer by three separate committees.

The House overwhelmingly approved legislation to reform small business lending and spur job creation.

Democratic leaders of key House and Senate committees have introduced legislation to force foreign financial institutions, trusts and corporations to provide information about their U.S. account holders, grantors and owners.

The House Financial Services Committee has approved the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency by a vote of 39 to 29 to safeguard consumers against excessive credit card rate hikes, overdraft fees and predatory lending practices.

The First-Time Homebuyer Credit program that kept the housing industry afloat this year also led to hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent or erroneous claims.

The First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit program may have helped boost the sagging housing market this year, but it also seems to have encouraged a lot of fraudulent activity.

The House Financial Services Committee has approved legislation that would require regulation of the over-the-counter derivatives market.

Accounting firm Crowe Horwath has created a Web-based system to help state and local agencies that receive federal funding from the economic stimulus package comply with the complex reporting requirements.

The Senate Finance Committee has approved its long-awaited version of the health care reform bill by a 14-9 vote.

Democratic lawmakers turned back efforts by House Republicans to depose Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee after revelations of his tax and financial disclosure lapses led to an expanding ethics investigation.

The wheels can sometimes grind slowly at the Treasury Department, and never more so than in getting the program up and running for relieving banks’ balance sheets of mortgage-backed securities and other undesirables.