Tax

The House passed a bill aimed at shoring up the mortgage industry and preventing foreclosures after the president dropped his veto threat.

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on the use of offshore corporate tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, on the heels of hearings elsewhere in the Senate on individual tax havens in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The New York State Society of CPAs submitted comments to the Securities and Exchange Commission on the proposed requirement for filing financial statements in Extensible Business Reporting Language, saying it makes sense for the 500 largest companies to file in XBRL by the end of the year, but that smaller companies should not be held to any deadline just yet.

The American Institute of CPAs has named two recipients of its Outstanding CPA in Government Award and said it has leased more than half its office space in New Jersey.

John Gimigliano, former senior tax counsel of the House Ways and Means Committee and staff director of the Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures, has joined KPMG.

Executive CPA leaders from 81 of the top 100 accounting firms in the U.S. visited Capitol Hill to discuss some of the key legislative issues confronting the accounting profession.

H&R Block has named a new president and CEO, Russ Smyth, the former president of McDonald's Europe.

Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network have settled tax charges with federal prosecutors and agreed to pay between $2 million and $9 million to the Internal Revenue Service.

Joe Francis, founder of the Girls Gone Wild video series, pleaded not guilty to two counts of federal tax evasion, saying he was being victimized by the Internal Revenue Service's whistleblower program.

Eight state CPA associations have signed deals with LeapFile, a company that provides secure file transfers, to offer some of its services to their members for free.