Tax Strategies

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.

The race is on for wealthy Americans to save on taxes before Jan. 1.

President Barack Obama, fresh from his re-election, turned his attention Friday to the economy, offering to talk with Congress about how to avoid the prospect of automatic tax increases on the middle class.

With the election out of the way and efforts taking shape in Washington to resolve the threat of automatic tax increases and the fiscal cliff, CPAs and certified financial planners are recommending ways to protect their clients no matter what Congress and the Obama administration ultimately decide to do about the tax laws for next year.

It may be some time before Congress and the Obama administration decide what to do about the tax rates for next year, so it’s a good idea to plan for various alternative scenarios just in case.

Corporate enterprise tax software provider Vertex Inc. has released Vertex Tax Accounting, a product designed to improve global provisioning as well as provide a source for modeling tax planning strategies.

The election results, while no surprise, have pretty much left us where we were in terms of tax policy, according to Roger Harris, president of Padgett Business Services.

In the aftermath of the elections, the payroll tax cut appears to be one of the likely casualties of the scramble to resolve questions over expiring tax cuts and the looming fiscal cliff during the lame-duck session of Congress.