Finance

Testifying before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs about the financial industry bailout package, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke defended fair value accounting, but recommended that banks should be able to sell their assets at the "hold-to-maturity" value to the federal government.

The Treasury Department has expanded its financial bailout program to $700 billion in an effort to relieve banks and other financial institutions of their troubled mortgage assets.

Washington, D.C.-With the hoopla of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions still reverberating throughout the country and the election less than two months away, Accounting Today will examine the tax plans offered by both Democratic nominee Barack Obama and GOP candidate John McCain as each vies to become the 44th occupant of the White House.THE OBAMA PLAN

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board along with regulators, audit firms and investor oversight groups are hailing a decision by an appeals court that upheld the constitutionality of the audit firm overseer.Ending a two-year legal battle, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the manner in which the organization's board members are appointed and overseen under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is constitutional. The decision was split 2-1 among the judges.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., plans to hire a forensic accountant to sort through his tax liabilities as he comes under increasing pressure to step down from his chairmanship of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

Senate leaders in both parties have agreed on patching the alternative minimum tax for another year, passing a set of clean energy tax incentives and extending several expiring tax cuts for businesses and families.

As one investment bank after another falls prey to the expanding crisis in the credit and mortgage markets, accounting regulators are trying to get a handle on the mess.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., revealed a decade's worth of his tax returns Friday, putting pressure on his Republican rival, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, to release her own returns.

The Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations held a hearing on how foreign investors dodge taxes on U.S. stock dividends with the help of U.S. banks and investment houses.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., refused to resign his chairmanship of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee after revelations that he failed to pay taxes on rental income from a vacation villa in the Dominican Islands.

The Congressional Budget Office sees the deficit growing to $407 billion for the year ending Sept. 30 and ballooning to $438 billion next year, with the takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae threatening to send it far higher.

In the first-ever visit to Congress by the American Institute of CPAs’ Major Firms Group, CPA executive leaders from 81 of the nation’s top 100 accounting firms visited Capitol Hill just prior to summer recess.The firms, representing more than 54,000 employees and their clients, discussed with lawmakers those legislative issues that are important to the accounting profession, including tax patents and uniform non-resident tax standards.

Congressman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, never reported rental income from a vacation property he has owned in the Dominican Republic since 1988.

U.S. and foreign tax rules increasingly influence where multinational companies are reporting their income is being earned, according to a new report that may influence tax legislation in Congress.

Congressional tax reformers are taking aim at one of the most cherished tax breaks available to working Americans — employer-paid health insurance coverage.During the latest round of tax reform hearings before the Senate Finance Committee, experts in both taxation and health care presented their case for eliminating — or at least sharply reducing — the federal tax subsidies given for employer-provided health insurance, which now provide the average U.S. taxpayer with nearly $3,000 a year in benefits.

Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said he planned to co-sponsor a bill that will update the deductible cost of operating a vehicle for charitable purposes.

In response to a letter from several members of Congress, the Internal Revenue Service will stop trying to enforce collection of alternative minimum taxes due on incentive stock options for the rest of the month.

The Democratic Party approved its platform at its national convention in Denver, including a number of planks related to taxes.

Congressional auditors have uncovered a series of security breaches at the Internal Revenue Service that may jeopardize taxpayer funds, the privacy of IRS records, and the physical safety of employees at the tax service.In a report to Congress, auditors from the U.S. Government Accountability Office revealed a series of troubling practices, including the failure of managers at many Taxpayer Assistance Centers to adequately guard against internal theft by larcenous IRS employees.

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson’s list of objectives — detailed in the first of her two annual required reports to Congress — zeroes in on the problems that she intends to focus on during the fiscal year ahead.At least one of the objectives — which focuses on the liabilities of incentive stock options under the Alternative Minimum Tax — has a good chance of being resolved, according to Tim Carlson, president of the Coalition for Tax Fairness and pro bono attorney for a number of victims of the anomaly. “Pending legislation will fix it, and it has support from both sides of the aisle,” he said.