Peter Schroeder

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Tex., has introduced legislation that would authorize the use of Build America Bonds for the purchase or construction of land, buildings or other facilities located near a convention center.

WASHINGTON — A draft version of a Senate jobs bill widely circulated Tuesday included provisions that would allow several tax-credit bonds to be treated like Build America Bonds through the end of 2010, with issuers receiving a direct subsidy payment from the federal government instead of providing investors with a tax credit.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service is asking issuers of Build America Bonds and tax-credit bonds to weigh in on how much of a burden it is to file two new information returns for the bonds that will be released later this week.

WASHINGTON — The current Build America Bond program is costing the federal government roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars a year, according to the Obama administration’s recently released budget documents.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration would like to make the Build America Bonds program permanent at a lower, so-called revenue-neutral subsidy rate, but the remainder of the proposed fiscal 2011 budget does not include any proposals to extend other stimulus programs due to expire at the end of the year.

WASHINGTON — The Senate Thursday approved legislation to raise the debt limit to $14.3 trillion and ensure the Treasury Department will be able to keep open into 2011 its window for state and local government series securities, which municipal issuers purchase for refunding escrows to avoid earning arbitrage.

SAN ANTONIO — Legislation recently introduced in Congress suggests that traditional tax-credit bonds may be replaced by bonds offering Build America Bond-style direct subsidies to issuers, an Internal Revenue Service attorney said last week.

WASHINGTON — Harvard University has been tapped for one of roughly 40 audits the Internal Revenue Service is conducting this year to examine the financial and business practices of tax-exempt colleges and universities.

WASHINGTON — A Wells Fargo & Co. shareholder has filed suit against 13 top officials at the bank, alleging they committed a breach of fiduciary duty, abuse of control, and gross mismanagement by permitting the bank to continue to participate in sale-in, lease-out transactions after the federal government warned they were illegitimate tax shelters.

The National Congress of American Indians is urging Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to look into the Internal Revenue Service’s “unequal treatment of tribal government entities” for projects financed with tax-exempt bonds.

The Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt bond branch will have to remain watchful that bond programs authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are not used beyond their legal limits, according to a report released yesterday by the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration.

A nonprofit student loan bond issuer has been granted a 45-day extension to make a carryforward election of its unused private-activity bond volume capacity by the Internal Revenue Service, after a personnel shake-up at the corporation resulted in a failure to file the paperwork on time.

WASHINGTON — The Joint Tax Committee is estimating that the wildly popular Build America Bond program will cost $12.5 billion from fiscal 2009 through fiscal 2013.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration provided state and local housing finance agencies with a total of $23.5 billion of assistance under bond purchase and liquidity programs that have run their course, the Treasury Department announced yesterday.

The Court of Federal Claims has rejected Wells Fargo & Co.’s attempt to claim a $115 million tax deduction stemming from 26 sale-in, lease-out transactions, 17 of which involved public transit agencies, saying that the deals lacked economic substance.

WASHINGTON — An American Bar Association section is asking the Treasury Department for guidance on how to comply with stimulus law provisions designed to encourage banks to purchase more tax-exempt bonds from small state and local issuers.

WASHINGTON — The Senate’s top Republican taxwriter has introduced legislation that would block the stripping and selling of tax credits from three kinds of tax-credit bonds. At the same time, Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service attorneys are working to write stripping rules sought by muni market participants who contend they are needed to jump-start the programs.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department may not modify a planned test of proposed solid-waste bond rules criticized by market participants, but could provide a remediation process for issuers that run afoul of the test, department officials indicated yesterday.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt bond office plans to move full-speed ahead in 2010, now that it has cleared some administrative hurdles in incorporating large new stimulus programs into its workload and put to work newly trained hires that have nearly doubled the size of the TEB unit.

Legislation passed by Congress last week will allow the Treasury Department to keep open through February its window for state and local government series securities, which municipal issuers purchase for refunding escrows to avoid earning arbitrage.