Jennifer DePaul

States will have to bolster their rainy day funds in the future to withstand the fiscal impacts caused by the Great Recession, according to a report on the lessons learned from the financial crisis.

By 2016, assuming a healthy stock market, public pension plans should be slightly more than 80% funded using either the market or actuarial value of assets, a new report said.

The National Council of State Housing Agencies is asking the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department to include guidance on tax-exempt bond and low-income housing tax credit issues in their 2013 - 2014 priority list.

Taking advantage of historically low interest rates and accelerating infrastructure projects, America's 30 largest cities refinanced $13.9 billion in existing debt in 2012, the largest amount in two decades, a Pew Charitable Trusts report found.

Tax law changes allowing the tax credits of tax-credit bonds to be stripped and sold separately to investors have increased the risk for improper or fraudulent tax credit claims, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a June 26 report.

Nearly a dozen state and local groups are urging Congress to restore significant cuts that were made to the clean water and drinking water state revolving fund programs in the latest appropriations bill.

Leaders from a coalition of more than 60 state and local groups and associations met with Reps. Randy Hultgreen and Dutch Ruppersberger to thank them for their continued support in preserving tax-exemption for municipal bonds.

If the top individual tax rate were lowered to 25% from the current 39.6%, as favored by Republicans, and the alternative minimum tax were repealed, it would cost $3.77 trillion over 10 years, a new Joint Committee on Taxation report said Wednesday.

The National Association of Water Companies is urging the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to change the remedial actions that must be taken when bonds no longer meet private activity bond restrictions, claiming the current ones deter or burden public-private partnerships.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, under fire for a plan to keep committee members' proposals for overhauling the Internal Revenue Code secret, may release portions of the legislation after the August recess.

The Senate Appropriations Committee did not approve an amendment Thursday that would have prevented the federal government from bailing out states and localities that are in default, are at risk of default or are likely to face bankruptcy.

Congress should consider eliminating tax exemption and privatizing infrastructure to subject it to property taxes in order to broaden the tax base, a director from the right-leaning think tank, Cato Institute, said this week.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Ma., is planning to unveil an "aggressive" tax reform and infrastructure proposal at the end of September that would renew the Build America Bond program and other tax credit bonds.

The Alaska Student Loan Corporation is challenging the Internal Revenue Service's decision that $529.1 million of education loan revenue bonds are not tax exempt.

States can adopt several practices to help municipalities in financial distress avoid having to file for bankruptcy protection, The Pew Charitable Trusts said in a report released Tuesday.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Tuesday in a speech in the Senate that the committee will vote on a tax reform bill this fall.

The Internal Revenue Service's Office of Appeals is recommending that the agency issue a new determination letter in order to reinstate the tax exemption of approximately $8.5 million charter school project revenue bonds issued for the LEAP Academy University Charter School in 2003.

A Florida community development district's lawyer is urging the Internal Revenue Service's chief counsel to reconsider a ruling against the CDD, arguing it is incorrect, biased, lacks legal analysis and ignores precedent.

Just three months after the operator of the parking garages at New York's Yankee Stadium defaulted on its debt, it faces another obstacle, this time with the Internal Revenue Service.

A new report by a budget group might bring a sigh of relief to muni market participants as it outlines alternatives to raising revenue that don't include curtailing tax-exempt bond interest and other tax expenditures.