President Obama urged Congress to agree to a deal to extend the Bush-era tax rates for the middle class on Wednesday, while agreeing to consider other tax reform measures for wealthier Americans.

Nearly eight in 10 small business owners are aware of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” according to a new poll that also found they are concerned about the impact of the combination of tax increases and automatic spending cuts that are set to take effect on Jan. 1 if Congress and the President can’t agree on a plan to reduce the deficit by year’s end.

Lowering the corporate tax rate on retailers could create more than 327,000 jobs in the first year, save consumers $10.2 billion, and increase salaries and wages by more than $10 billion, according to a new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, commissioned by a retail trade group.

The Internal Revenue Service has made progress in deploying its Modernized e-File system, according to a pair of new government reports, but unresolved performance issues are hampering the retirement of its older legacy systems for processing tax returns.

With tax cuts galore expiring at the end of the year, and steep cuts in both defense spending and discretionary spending on the horizon, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are doing a complicated dance at the edge of the so-called fiscal cliff.

White House officials have quietly lobbied Wall Street and the business community over the last several months to support President Barack Obama’s plan to impose higher taxes on the wealthy to cut the deficit and avert going over the fiscal cliff.

A Thomson Reuters tax analyst is offering end-of-year tax-planning tips for U.S. corporations, detailing various options based on possible legislative actions in Congress.