Jennifer DePaul

Bond lawyers welcomed the favorable conclusion from the IRS' Chief Counsel Office that the bond insurance premium for Build America Bonds is a capital expenditure.

Steven Miller will become acting IRS commissioner after Doug Shulman finishes his five-year term on Nov. 9.

The IRS will soon publish a report about their findings from 300 questionnaires they sent out last year to governmental and 501(c)(3) issuers about their advance-refunding procedures and post-issuance compliance, an agency official told bond lawyers at the NABL conference.

Vicky Tsilas, assistant branch chief for the Internal Revenue Service's Office of Associate Chief Counsel, has been named associate tax legislative counsel in the Treasury Department's Office of Tax Policy.

A panel of experts discussed the threats to tax exemption at the NABL's bond attorney's workshop in Chicago. Citi Research has released a new report which urges market participants to make their case to lawmakers for the need to preserve tax exemption.

The National Association of Bond Lawyers elected new officers and announced three new board members here on Wednesday. Scott R. Lilienthal, a partner at Hogan Lovells LLP in Washington, D.C., who had been president-elect, became president, replacing Kristin Franceschi, a partner at DLA Piper LLP in Baltimore.

The IRS will begin sending out online questionnaires to 501(c)(3) and governmental issuers next year requesting information about their post-issuance compliance practices.

The Internal Revenue Service is examining almost $40.63 million of variable rate student loan bonds and notes issued by the Oklahoma Student Loan Authority in 2002.

The New Hampshire Health and Education Facilities Authority has proposed paying the Internal Revenue Service an undisclosed payment under the voluntary closing agreement program to settle tax law issues with $135.4 million of adjustable rate education loan revenue bonds it issued in 2011.

New York residents shoulder the highest state and local tax burdens at 12.8%, the Tax Foundation found in a new study.

The IRS is auditing $650 million of general obligation school bonds Clark County, Nev. School District issued in 2007 and $50 million of general obligation water and sewer bonds Fernley, Nev. Issued in 2007.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $110.4 million of communication system revenue bonds that were issued in 2007 by Lafayette, La. to finance startup costs of the city-owned utility that sells television, Internet and telephone services to residents.

The 100 largest public pension plans reported assets of $2.71 trillion and accrued liabilities of $3.6 trillion, so that they were underfunded by $895 billion during the past year, according to a new report.

Robert Henn, acting director of the Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt bond office, will retire from the agency at the end of the year.

Former congressional tax counsels John Buckley and Jon Traub on Tuesday sparred over the recent experiment by the Joint Committee on Taxation to see how much marginal tax rates could be reduced if certain major tax expenditures, including tax exemption, were eliminated.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has issued a fact sheet of frequently-asked questions to help resolve confusion over their new public pension accounting and reporting standards.

Municipal analysts and market participants offered mixed views about how municipal bonds would fare under the tax proposals of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama.

States have been operating in fiscal year 2013 for three months already and tax growth is expected to rise in between 1% and 4.9% in nearly three-quarters of the states for the third consecutive year, according to a new report.

After serving two five-year terms, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board Chairman Robert Attmore has announced he will retire in 2013.

Taxpayers for Common Sense proposed $2 trillion in deficit reductions, including slashing the deduction of state and local general sales taxes to save more than $23 billion over 10 years.