Jennifer DePaul

The IRS is auditing $105 million of general obligation building bonds that North Las Vegas issued in 2006.

The Internal Revenue Service has closed an audit without changing the tax-exempt status of $219.22 million of bonds that were issued by the curators of the University of Missouri in 2006.

CHICAGO — Bond lawyers are beginning to require that underwriters sit down with members of the issuer’s finance team to discuss how they determined the issue price for the bonds, an IRS official said at a seminar held here on Wednesday.

As GASB prepares to vote on new standards for public pension fund accounting that would shed light on unfunded liabilities, a recently formed state and local task force is developing guidance to keep governments focused on their annual required contributions.

The IRS will begin limited-scope examinations of bond anticipation notes in July and then examinations of filed 8038-T forms on arbitrage rebate, an IRS official said.

CHICAGO — The Government Finance Officers Association's debt committee on Saturday updated its 14-year-old best-practices document on issuing taxable municipal debt.

The Internal Revenue Service will begin limited-scope examinations of bond anticipation notes in July and then examinations of filed 8038-T forms on arbitrage rebate later in the year, an IRS official said at a conference Sunday.

WASHINGTON — Congress will likely pass a separate bill to extend expired and expiring tax law provisions, some of which are bond-related, before the end of the year, the chairman of a House Ways and Means panel told reporters after a hearing Friday.

WASHINGTON — The Council of Development Finance Agencies will unveil a draft legislative proposal Friday that would ease tax-law restrictions for small industrial development bonds, which are used to finance manufacturing facilities.

WASHINGTON — Overall, state income and sales tax collections for the first quarter increased by 4.1% compared to the same quarter last year, the Rockefeller Institute of Government said in a report Thursday.

A tax-exempt bond advisory group to the IRS found that some of the agency's bond-related forms are overly burdensome for issuers and recommended that some questions be eliminated.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has notified Cañon City, Colo., that it has closed an audit without changing the tax-exempt status on $12.73 million of certificates of participation issued in 2008 to provide financing for improvements to its water treatment facility.

WASHINGTON — The chairman of a House Ways and Means Committee panel will hold a hearing on June 8 to examine a host of expiring tax provisions while the panel’s ranking Democrat called for renewal of the Build America Bonds program as part of a larger jobs bill.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department are seeking public comments on the arbitrage restrictions that pertain to tax-exempt bonds.

State aid and property taxes are dropping simultaneously for the first time since 1980, while demand for government services continue to rise, according to a report published by the Pew Center on the States Friday.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s proposal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for households with incomes earning up to $1 million annually would have a marginal impact on municipal bond demand, market experts said.

Identical bills proposed by House and Senate lawmakers to provide rules of the road for taxing digital goods and services would immediately and significantly reduce state and local tax collections, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warns in a report.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $3.19 billion of gas project revenue bonds that the Tennessee Energy Acquisition Corp. issued in 2006.

Four groups representing localities are forming an advisory council as part of the Streamlined Sales Tax agreement to focus on local tax issues and to push for Congress to approve online sales-tax legislation.

WASHINGTON — States slowed their borrowing dramatically, with a growth of only 2.5% in 2011, despite low interest rates, according to a new Moody’s Investors Service report.