Peter Schroeder

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department should permanently apply existing regulations on issue price to all tax-exempt and direct-pay bonds, while clarifying several aspects of the rules, according to the American Bar Association’s taxation section.

President Obama’s bipartisan fiscal reform commission cited a tax-reform bill that would eliminate tax-exempt bonds and replace them with tax-credit bonds as a potential way forward when it comes to simplifying the tax code and reducing the federal deficit, according to a draft proposal released Wednesday.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s municipal securities division honored Colin MacNaught, the assistant treasurer for debt management in the Massachusetts treasurer’s office, with its 2010 Honor Roll Award at a luncheon Tuesday.

The Internal Revenue Service has completed an audit of $67.6 million of bonds issued by Washington's Vancouver Downtown Redevelopment Authority in 2003 with no change to the bonds' tax-exempt status, the issuer disclosed this week.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday that it is giving tribal governments until the end of 2011 to issue the first $1 billion tranche of tribal economic development bonds, in an effort to save the tribes from having to forfeit any unused allocations at year-end.

WASHINGTON — Market participants hoping Congress will extend the Build America Bond program and other expiring muni provisions before the end of the year can’t count on incoming House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp for support.

If a state authority issues bonds to pay catastrophe insurance claims, they would not qualify as private-activity bonds because they would be backed with generally applicable taxes and not private payments, the Internal Revenue Service concluded in a recent private-letter ruling.

The Internal Revenue Service is seeking applicants for a tax-exempt bond expert to join its Advisory Committee on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities.

The National Association of Bond Lawyers last week awarded Linda Schakel, a partner at Ballard Spahr in Washington, its Frederick O. Kiel Distinguished Service Award.

SAN ANTONIO — Build America Bond issuers could potentially go years without subsidy payments under the examination process the Internal Revenue Service is currently considering for them, bond attorneys meeting here warned last week.

SAN ANTONIO — Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service officials are trying to figure out how to apply long-standing tax requirements to Build America Bonds that, if interpreted broadly, could have major ramifications for certain BABs held by public pension funds and other governmental entities, possibly leading to their extinguishment.

The National Association of Bond ­Lawyers announced Tuesday that it has hired Linda Holtz Wyman as its chief operating officer.

WASHINGTON — The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago has disclosed that the Internal Revenue Service is examining $600 million of Build America Bonds it issued in August 2009 — the second IRS audit of BABs announced in less than a week.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service Monday shed some light on its Build America Bond enforcement efforts, announcing what it hopes to achieve with its audits and how BABs will fit into its voluntary-closing agreement program so that issuers will not lose all their subsidy payments for minor inadvertent violations.

The Internal Revenue Service is kicking off the first round of audits of Build America Bonds and is asking issuers if any potentially related entities, such as pension plans, are buying their BABs, according to issuers and IRS officials.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Energy Information Administration has determined that a legislative proposal to create and authorize $2.4 billion of home energy conservation bonds, as well as new tax credits, would help save 14 trillion British thermal units more than normal expected consumption levels.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has introduced legislation that would remove the volume cap from the clean renewable energy bond program, but prohibit most governmental entities from issuing them.

WASHINGTON — A professional group of accountants is asking the Internal Revenue Service to give large nonprofit hospitals a grace period of at least three years to fix any tax compliance problems that could jeopardize their tax-exempt status.

WASHINGTON — Municipal market participants have many questions about new rules adopted by the Internal Revenue Service that require paid tax preparers to register with it, possibly take competency tests, and pay penalties for improper filings.

WASHINGTON — Municipal market participants should not expect the Treasury Department to simply rubber-stamp the existing tax-exempt bond rules for issue price when it comes to Build America Bonds, a Treasury official told bond lawyers at a recent meeting.