Finance

The House Ways & Means Committee will begin marking up a small business tax package today, according to committee chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

The complexity of the tax code, the widening tax gap and private debt collection sit atop National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson's list of the most serious problems facing taxpayers.The recently released report also cited the oversight of unenrolled return preparers, correspondence delays, concerns about the Office of Appeals, and lengthy processing times for injured spouse relief.

Resurgent House Democrats are on a collision course with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the need for restrictions on corporate executive compensation - an issue Republican lawmakers managed to keep bottled up despite repeated reports of corporate pay abuses during the last Congress.Leading the charge for reform is corporate America's worst congressional nightmare: Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, who has long championed legislation to force the SEC to take a stronger stance against excessive compensation for boardroom big shots.

Companies don’t believe broad-based tax reform is coming anytime soon, though they do think that the change of control in Congress will have a significant impact on tax policy, according to a survey conducted by a Washington law firm.

A provision in the president's budget proposals could shelter 529 college-savings plans from being counted in determining federal student financial aid.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has taken National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson to task over her recent annual report to Congress.

President Bush’s 2008 budget has tabbed $11.4 billion for the Internal Revenue Service, a direct appropriation increase of 6.3 percent from the agency’s 2007 budget.

Everyone in Washington seems to be in agreement that there needs to be a better way of closing the tax gap, but like the other problems facing the Internal Revenue Service, there’s seems to be little Beltway consensus over how to meaningfully tackle the problem.It wasn’t lost on me that the same week that the IRS released its 2008 budget proposal --complete with a number of legislative proposals, a Congressman and the National Taxpayer Advocate continued to spar over the future of one of the agency’s newer attempts to combat the tax gap -- the outsourcing of simple collection cases to private companies as part of a pilot program.

As part of the White House’s proposed $2.9 trillion budget plan for the 2008 fiscal year, President Bush announced an effort aimed at significantly tightening the tax gap.

Besides rising pay for directors, a recent study found that the proportion of S&P 500 companies with classified boards dropped by 8 percent last year, leading to the majority of those companies holding annual elections for all of their directors.

With all the talk about curbing exorbitant executive compensation packages and increased disclosure, I was reminded of an incident nearly 25 years ago, when I was accidentally sent a paycheck intended for Lenny, my supervisor.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Whistleblower Office opened for business this month. The congressionally mandated program is designed to receive information that helps uncover tax cheating and provide appropriate rewards to whistleblowers.

A new industry group is looking to make inroads in building support for its policy positions in Washington.Launched on Tuesday, the Center for Audit Quality will focus on topics such as auditor protection from lawsuits, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and how companies report financial information.

In an effort to explain by example, or at least by handpicked scenario, the Treasury Department has released more details outlining the possible application of President Bush’s plan for a standard health insurance deduction.

The odds are looking better for Senate approval of legislation to increase the minimum wage. But reconciling that bill with a House version -- containing no tax breaks for businesses -- figures to take some negotiating.Senate debate on the bill ended Tuesday with an 87-10 vote, and final Senate passage of the bill is expected this week.

Fannie Mae’s chief executive received a compensation bump of about 25 percent in 2006 -- including salary, stock and bonuses.

The Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board said that the agency still has a ways to go before fully reaching the vision outlined in the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998.

As someone who’s held a driver license since Richard Nixon was in the White House, it’s hard for me to drum up any sympathy for the big oil companies.

More new tax laws, continued new e-filing mandates, an expected increase in total returns, and a delay in processing are certain to mark the start of the 2007 tax filing season.Recent changes in the tax law, primarily those involving three tax deductions - for state and local sales tax, higher education tuition and fees, and educator expenses - mean that the Internal Revenue Service will not be able to process some individual returns until early February. "We will not be processing any returns, whether they are filed electronically or on paper, that contain the extended tax breaks until early February," confirmed IRS spokeswoman Nancy Mathis. "We estimate the number of returns affected by this delay is approximately 930,000 returns out of 136 million returns we expect to be filed."

Victims of the alternative minimum tax quirk that taxes nonexistent income of incentive stock options when the stock loses value received a welcome holiday gift from Congress.As one of its final actions before adjournment, the 109th Congress passed the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, one of the provisions of which includes a scaled-down version of legislation originally sponsored by Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, to fix the problem at the intersection of the AMT and stock options. The new law provides relief to many victims by accelerating the refund of stranded ISO overpayment credits that, under previous law, would not be returned within the taxpayer's lifetime.