Tax Strategies

The prospect of the enactment of a value-added tax in the United States is getting closer – five years and counting, according to a Tax Governance Institute survey.

President Obama described a series of proposals aimed at encouraging companies to add more jobs, including tax cuts for small businesses.

Senate Finance Committee ranking member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has introduced a bill that would make permanent a number of education-related tax relief measures dating back to 2001, when he was committee chairman, and increase others.

Large corporations have dominated the use of the research tax credit, with 549 corporations with receipts of $1 billion or more claiming over half of the $6 billion of net credits in 2005, the most recent year available, according to a new study by the Government Accountability Office.

Fifty-seven percent of the senior business executives surveyed by KPMG’s Tax Governance Institute expect some type of value-added tax to be introduced in the U.S. within five years, and 18 percent anticipate a VAT within 10 years.

A group of Democratic lawmakers has introduced legislation that would impose a tax on Wall Street securities transactions.

The White House convened a jobs summit in which President Obama heard from business and union leaders about various proposals for reducing unemployment, including tax incentives for job creation.

The House voted to set the inheritance tax at 45 percent permanently for estates larger than $3.5 million.

Leaders of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship have introduced legislation that would make permanent the $250,000 Section 179 expensing limits for small businesses created under the Recovery Act.

Businesses will have to act soon on a bevy of tax breaks before they expire at the end of the year.