Washington DC

Three areas are new additions to the work plan of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Business Operating Division, IRS officials said.

FINRA found, and the SEC upheld, muni and other rule that violations Thaddeus North failed to prevent as chief compliance officer.

The Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration plans to audit the IRS' use of a much-feared enforcement tool under which it can impose penalties for the misconduct of municipal bond transaction participants such as underwriters, lawyers, municipal advisors or their firms.

The memo appears to respond to a March 29 written request by the National Association of Bond Lawyers to Christie Jacobs, director of the IRS Indian Tribal Governments/Tax Exempt Bonds Office to clarify the new law.

The defense team accused the SEC of a "gross abuse of power."

The pilot program began in May, but was not officially announced by the IRS until last week.

The first meeting for several new board members included discussions with other regulators and groups, the MSRB said Monday.

The number of MSRB-registered dealers has fallen by almost one-third since 2009 and FINRA and the MSRB have some concerns about it.

The municipal securities market is slowly looking more like the stock market.

The pre-trade information available on alternative trading systems to broker-dealer participants would likely benefit all municipal securities investors if made more publicly available, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s chief economist said in releasing a report Thursday that is to be presented to a market structure advisory group next week.

Sergio Marxuach and other officials of the nonpartisan, San Juan-based Center for a New Economy said federal spending on disaster recovery has been slower than in other areas also struck by hurricanes in 2017.

The newly-minted water infrastructure law is good news for state and local governments looking for more avenues to finance water projects.

An IRS letter ruling in 2016 affirmed that so-called platform employers such as Uber and Lyft have a special safe harbor for not issuing 1099s for drivers until they hit $20,000 in income or 200 transactions .

A muni advisor facing an enforcement action could use a Supreme Court decision on gambling as a defense, a bond lawyer says.

The impact of the 2008 crisis led Congress and the MSRB to reshape many of the ways business is done in the municipal bond market. Part 1 of The Bond Buyer's series on the decade after the financial crisis.

The new GASB standards apply to Other Post-Employment Benefits, or OPEB, which mostly pertain to retiree health benefits, but also can include dental, vision, disability and death benefits.

Regulators already have a template around which to build an exemption from Volcker for tender option bonds, wrote SIFMA's Michael Decker.

The MSRB needs to better explain the mock advertisements in its compliance resource, a pair of industry groups told the board this week.

With Democratic majority, Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, a supporter of tax-exempt bond financing, would chair the Ways and Means committee.

In their pleading, banks said the plaintiff is "precisely the sort of 'busybody' " that is prohibited from making such claims.