President Obama took to Twitter for the White House’s first-ever Twitter Town Hall, answering questions from his “tweeps” about taxes, the economy and other subjects.

President Barack Obama plans to meet with congressional leaders on Thursday to try to strike an agreement on raising the debt ceiling through a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., offered 18 proposals to cut $1.29 trillion from the federal budget deficit over 10 years, including closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating special tax breaks for wealthy Americans and big companies.

President Obama used his weekly address to say it was necessary to raise taxes on the wealthy to help close the budget deficit.

In March of this year, we devoted this column to the Internal Revenue Service's newly announced 2011 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative for disclosing income from foreign accounts and assets. Key features of the program are an Aug. 31, 2011, deadline, an eight-year disclosure period, a maximum 25 percent penalty for failure to disclose, reduced 12.5 or 5 percent penalties in specified situations, and various documentation and disclosures required with the submission.

IMGCAP(1)]Accountants, insurance professionals and others need to be careful that they don’t become what the IRS calls material advisors.

PDI Global, which is part of the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters, has released its 2011-2012 Tax Planning Guide.