Tax strategies

In the world of trust and estate administration, where tax planning typically involves special attention to federal tax law compliance, it’s easy to lose focus on state income taxation issues. And while some states do not tax income related to trusts, states that do tax trust income have a variety of rules and criteria for which trusts are subject to tax.

The U.S. economy will be between 1.5 and 2.6 percent smaller over the long-term because other nations’ corporate tax rates are considerably more competitive, according to a new study by Ernst & Young and the RATE Coalition, a group lobbying for lower corporate tax rates.

Headquartered in a former Rothschild chateau in an affluent Parisian neighborhood, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is best known for earnest conferences on economic and social policy.

Europe’s drive to rescue Cyprus risks undermining a region-wide deposit guarantee plan, a key tenet in the battle to contain the debt crisis, and casts doubt on the ability of the weakest lenders to retain deposits.

The Tax Policy Center estimated Friday that the tax provisions of the budget plan introduced this week by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would reduce tax revenues by $5.7 trillion over a 10-year period, requiring a corresponding amount of tax increases and/or spending cuts to keep it “revenue neutral,” or risk a substantial expansion of the budget deficit.

A coalition of charities has expressed concerns about a Senate budget proposal that could potentially place a limit on charitable deductions.

Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee said Thursday they plan to begin developing a proposal for overhauling the nation’s Tax Code.

A majority of business leaders believe tax reform should be separated from reforms to government entitlement programs and deficit reduction, according to a new poll.

Ten multinational U.S.-based corporations, including Apple, Merck, Microsoft and Pfizer, each increased their foreign profits by $5 billion or more last year, continuing a trend in which U.S. corporations held more of their money in low-tax countries.

House Republicans and Senate Democrats are introducing competing budget plans with starkly different tax proposals.

The chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Dave Camp R-Mich., released a set of proposals Tuesday discussion draft aimed at reforming the tax laws for small businesses.

John Paulson, a lifelong New Yorker, is exploring a move to Puerto Rico, where a new law would eliminate taxes on gains from the $9.5 billion he has invested in his own hedge funds, according to four people who have spoken to him about a possible relocation.

The IRS recently made it clear that even if taxpayers engage a third party to perform a cost segregation analysis, they cannot avoid penalties for aggressive positions taken in the cost segregation report.

Small business owners prefer a Tax Code with low rates and fewer deductions, according to a new survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, but their bottom line is whether their taxes rise or fall.

With lawmakers under pressure to find ways to reduce the deficit while avoiding the more painful spending cuts in the sequester, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing to examine how to reduce the deficit by eliminating wasteful spending in the Tax Code.

Taxes are increasingly spreading beyond national and state borders to make more of a global impact, affecting economic activity across the world.

The Internal Revenue Service said that budget sequestration would require reductions in refundable credits for certain tax-exempt bonds and the refundable portion of the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit for some small tax-exempt employers.

President Obama said that he hoped to work with members of both parties in Congress to stop the damaging impact of the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts that officially began on Friday.

The number one concern of leading business tax executives for the year ahead is that in light of the current political and fiscal environment, Congress will enact revenue offsets to fund other legislative initiatives rather than make the U.S. tax system more competitive.

Will Rogers has been quoted as saying, “The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” Earlier this year, Congress passed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which may have prevented us from falling off the fiscal cliff, but further complicated the already complex world of income taxation of estates and trusts.