Washington

CHICAGO — Government Finance Officers Association debt committee members on Sunday urged municipal issuers to consider disclosing information about their bank loans online on EMMA in the wake of a Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board notice requesting such information.

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.

WASHINGTON — Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus said Monday that he plans to meet with committee members this week to discuss extending expired and expiring tax provisions “without any games.”

A federal judge rejected a request by the U.S. Justice Department to use sections of certain audio files as evidence in the upcoming bid-rigging trial against former UBS Financial Services bankers Peter Ghavami, Gary Heinz and Michael Welty.

WASHINGTON — Sentencing has been delayed until Oct. 25 for Adrian Scott-Jones, a former guaranteed investment contract broker who pleaded guilty in 2010 to charges of fraud and conspiracy in connection with alleged bid-rigging.

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 District of Columbia's City Council has proposed delaying until Jan. 1, 2013, plans to start taxing non-D.C. bonds purchased by district residents.

In 2011, North Dakota and Oregon enjoyed strong gross domestic product growth, but Wyoming, Mississippi and Alabama suffered shrinking economies. That was among the findings of a study released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis on Tuesday.

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.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay $44.6 million to settle a 2008 class-action lawsuit in which municipal bond issuers accused the firm of bid-rigging of muni contracts.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has delayed sentencing of CDR Financial Services and its founder David Rubin for several months, granting the Department of Justice additional time to complete complex calculations of restitution.

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 MSRB has proposed to discontinue the practice of temporarily masking the exact par value of large muni bond trades disseminated on a near real-time basis over the online EMMA system.

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.

The MSRB has issued a concept release seeking public feedback about whether to require underwriters and municipal advisors to disclose third-party payments on the online EMMA system.