Michael Cohn

The spectacular bankruptcy of MF Global this week has led to speculation about what led to the brokerage firm’s downfall.

The real-life inspiration for one of the card-counting blackjack players in the movie “21” told an audience at the Accounting Today Growth & Profitability Summit in Las Vegas about his system for winning at the casino tables and at life in general.

A few blocks away from the Accounting Today offices, the Occupy Wall Street movement is encamped at Zuccotti Park in New York.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is finding more problems at the audit firms it is inspecting, not less.

As multinational corporations and lobbyists push for a reduction in the corporate tax rate and a tax holiday on repatriated foreign profits, the tax loopholes that have encouraged companies to shift their income abroad have managed to stay largely intact.

I discovered yesterday that a gift card that was supposed to expire this month, according to the front of the card, actually expired over a year ago.

H&R Block has made the decision not to offer refund anticipation loans next year, a result of the RAL business getting a lot harder for tax prep chains to operate in lately.

Taxpayers who have been affected by the wildfires blanketing parts of Texas may qualify for federal tax relief, as President Obama has declared Bastrop County and parts of the Texas hill country to be a federal disaster area.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is creating problems for not only wealthy taxpayers trying to stash their money in secret Swiss bank accounts, but also for Americans living abroad.

The Internal Revenue Service ramped up its use of liens, levies and seizures last year in an effort to close the tax gap, pressuring taxpayers trying to cope with the economic downturn.

President Obama has been pushing to extend the 2-percentage-point cut in the payroll tax through next year, but this is one tax cut that his opponents in Congress may not agree to allow.

Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the credit rating for U.S. debt could put new pressure on the members of the so-called “super committee” in Congress to agree on tax reforms.

Despite the debt limit deal that Democrats and Republicans in Congress managed to hammer out at the 11th hour this week, the U.S. Treasury is still facing the threat of a credit rating downgrade.

As the battle continues in Washington over how to avert a default on the government’s debt obligations, the possibility of imminent tax increases seems to be fading.

The so-called “cut, cap and balance plan” legislation that passed the House would require the passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would mandate a two-thirds supermajority to approve any future tax increases.

Georges Marciano, the co-founder of jean maker Guess?, Inc., recently lost his bid in a federal court to force the Internal Revenue Service to audit his tax returns.

Officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board are heading to China later this month to meet with officials there to try to resolve the growing problems with audits of U.S.-listed Chinese companies.

U.S.-based multinational corporations and their lobbyists are pushing hard for a so-called “tax holiday” that would repatriate the earnings from their foreign subsidiaries, arguing that it would inject up to $1 trillion into the U.S. economy, but the prospects for job growth are murky at best.

At a recent hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman heard from senators that the agency ought to provide taxpayers with its own free online tax software.

The Senate vote Tuesday on repealing the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit failed, but it could be a sign of things to come as the tax reform debate heats up in the midst of talks to raise the debt limit.