Tax strategies

The unfinished business awaiting Congress during the lame duck session this month includes the expiring 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the normal extender items, the estate tax, and, many tax professionals believe, a ban on tax strategy patents.

A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators has written to the co-chairmen of the federal deficit commission asking them to consider raising the gas tax to finance highway construction nationwide.

Payroll and benefits outsourcing provider ADP is nowoffering enhancements in its Taxware Enterprise System with Data Editor - itssales, use, and value added tax system - which includes a hosted version of theproduct.

President Obama and congressional Republicans are laying out their positions more openly on the fate of the expiring Bush tax cuts as they prepare for negotiations later this month.

President Obama urged Republicans in Congress to agree on a compromise on the soon-to-expire tax cuts, even as the prospects for an agreement remained uncertain.

President Obama, chastened by Democratic losses in the midterm elections, said Wednesday he would work with Republican leaders in Congress on the Bush tax cuts and other issues after a “shellacking” in the midterm elections.

Obama administration officials awarded $1 billion in therapeutic discovery project tax credits and grants to nearly 3,000 companies around the country to support promising biomedical research projects.

California voters rejected ballot measures that would legalize and tax marijuana sales, while Washington State voters defeated a proposal to impose a tax on upper-income taxpayers, and Massachusetts voters said no to a ballot question that would have lowered state sales taxes.

Republicans will gain greater leverage in Congress now that they have won control of the House and captured more seats in the Senate, giving them more influence over tax policy and financial regulation.

President Barack Obama reiterated his proposals for cuts in business and individual taxes and called on Republicans and Democrats to work together after the elections.

President Barack Obama visited a Maryland factory Friday and promoted his proposal for allowing businesses to deduct the entire cost of their purchases of new equipment through the end of next year.

Reports have surfaced that the federal debt commission (officially known as the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) is considering the heretofore unimaginable elimination of popular tax breaks, including deductions on mortgage interest, as part of its report due on December 1.

Suppose the White House budget director abruptly resigned, with precious little explanation given for his departure?

It’s been five years since Connie Mack, as chair of President Bush’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, said that it would “take a fresh look at the existing Tax Code and will formulate options for making the tax system simple, fair and productive.

Vice President Joe Biden indicated that the White House could be ready to make a deal with Republicans on expanding the level of income that would qualify for the Bush tax cuts extension.

While we await the lame duck Congress to find out if and how much our taxes will rise next year, it might be well to remember that government — and the programs it loves to fund — will only keep growing until it runs out of funding. Hardly any government will willingly reduce programs, cut funding, or otherwise act within reasonable limits.

The worldwide decline in top personal income tax rates over the past seven years has come to an end, as this year’s average rate increased 0.3 percent globally.

While some states are now passing legislation that favors lenders, at the same time there are tantalizing federal and state tax benefits being offered to distressed homeowners who are facing foreclosure or considering short-selling.

Recently, I received a blast e-mail from a group who identified themselves as "concerned citizens" of my town. Without getting into shopworn specifics that most of you would not care about, these self-appointed monitors of fiscal prudence decried rising taxes and exhorted the local government to rescind a quasi-moratorium on development in order to generate more tax revenue.

Online bookkeeping service Outright.com has signed a partnership with H&R Block aimed at helping small-business owners deal with the increasing complexity of income taxes.