Finance

A study by Grant Thornton found that only 843 U.S. corporations out of nearly 10,000 took advantage of a one-time dividend deduction that rewarded them for repatriating their foreign profits, giving them deductions totaling $265 billion.

The House passed a bill promising relief for another year from the spread of the alternative minimum tax, but the bill already faces opposition from the White House.

The House Ways and Means Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee held hearings on bills that would encourage employers to automatically enroll their employees in individual retirement account plans.

Questions about economic stimulus payments and tax rebates kept the phones buzzing at Internal Revenue Service offices and cost the IRS a considerable chunk of its budget.

Calculations of economic stimulus payments by the Internal Revenue Service may have been wrong in nearly 400,000 cases.

The House Ways and Means Committee has passed a bill aimed at forestalling the spread of the alternative minimum tax for another year.

A provision in a bill that recently made its way through the House would correct the imbalance between tax payers and preparers that was created by legislation last year.Changes to the Tax Code by the Small Business and Work Opportunity Act of 2007 tightened the disclosure requirements for tax preparers under Code Sec. 6694 by requiring preparers to disclose any tax positions taken by a taxpayers that didn’t meet the code’s “more likely than not” standard.

With the 2008 presidential election looming, proposals that could turn the most sanguine tax accountants into habitual nailbiters came under serious discussion on both sides of Capitol Hill.In the Senate, congressional leaders called together a panel of top economists to help plot a course for tax reform next year, but the discussion produced more conflict than consensus.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced the Energy Independence and Tax Relief Act of 2008 as Democrats and Republicans haggle over how to pay for extending expiring tax provisions.

Presidential hopefuls Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., clashed over their tax plans, trading accusations of hikes in capital gains and Social Security taxes.

Senate Republicans have defeated a proposal to charge oil companies a windfall profits tax.

The American Institute of CPAs' Tax Division presented Alan Einhorn with its 2007-2008 Distinguished Service Award at its spring meeting.

The Senate Finance Committee held hearings on small business tax issues as part of a series of hearings on tax reform.

A report from Ernst & Young describes the potential adverse impact on the U.S. economy if the research and development tax credit is not renewed.

The U.S. Tax Court has proposed amending its rules and procedures for whistleblower award actions.

The huge farm bill working its way through the final stages of the House/Senate Conference Committee appears to have preserved at least a few tax provisions. In March, the conference committee had stripped out the tax provisions that had originated with the Senate Finance Committee. However, when it came time to count votes, negotiators decided that some of the tax provisions had to stay in.The farm bill can be looked at as a net tax increase, with the somewhat unusual feature for legislation in recent years of providing for more revenue-raising offsets than tax incentives. The negotiators have agreed on $1.4 billion in tax incentives and $10 billion in offsets. The figure of $1.4 billion is a significant reduction from the $2.4 billion in tax incentives originally proposed by the Senate Finance Committee.

In a good news/bad news scenario for many publicly traded companies, a recent poll of financial executives showed that while the costs of audit fees rose in year-over-year comparisons, there was a marked decline in Sarbanes-Oxley 404 compliance expenses.According to a recent survey of 185 companies conducted by Financial Executives International, larger companies, or accelerated public filers — which comprised about 90 percent of the respondents — spent an average of $3.6 million on total audit fees last year, up nearly 2 percent from 2006.

Cindy McCain, wife of presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has released the opening two pages of her 1040 return for 2006 after coming under pressure for refusing to provide details of the sources of her income.

The National Conference of CPA Practitioners held a quarterly meeting in Washington to meet with various senators and representatives as well as the Internal Revenue Service, and talk about tax policy.

The Senate has approved a bill offering more than $1.2 billion in tax relief to veterans and military families.