Finance

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.

The Senate Finance Committee wrapped up its grueling work on the health care reform bill late Thursday evening after turning back a tax-related amendment.

Among the revenue proposals detailed in the administration’s fiscal 2010 budget are some provisions that might negatively affect small businesses and tax preparers. The American Institute of CPAs has weighed in on a number of these, including the codification of the economic substance doctrine, information reporting on payments to corporations, increasing the level of the information penalties, and expanding the requirement for electronic filing by return preparers.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has introduced his own version of long-awaited health care reform legislation, without a public option for health insurance.

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has declared Sept. 13 to 19 to be Virginia Certified Public Accountants Week.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has released the executive summary of a report from its inspector general detailing the agency’s failures to stop Bernard Madoff from carrying out his Ponzi scheme.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is distributing more than $35 million to over 98,000 investors who were harmed by accounting fraud at Cardinal Health.

Most CPA executives do not support a major government role in health care reform, according to a new survey.

The Government Accounting Standards Board has drafted proposed standards for local government bankruptcies, and is giving interested parties until August 28 to comment.

The Treasury and Energy Departments plan to give $2.3 billion in tax credits from the Recovery Act to manufacturers of clean energy equipment.