Tax

Seven former Internal Revenue Service commissioners are decrying ongoing House and Senate appropriations cuts for the IRS, warning they are hurting tax enforcement as well as taxpayer assistance, among other things.

The New Jersey Health Care Facilities Financing Authority appears to be settling a tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over revenue bonds it issued in 1993 for Deborah Heart and Lung Center, which later entered into a total return swap.

Municipal bonds would be hurt under Republican presidential candidates’ tax reform proposals because the plans would lower or eliminate individual and corporate income tax rates, congressional observers said.

Sales of State and Local Government Series Securities will resume Tuesday at noon EST, the Treasury Department said, after President Obama signed legislation Monday that suspends the debt limit through March 15, 2017.

The IAH Public Facility Corp.' $49 million of bonds for a jail in Polk County, Texas, are one of a number of issues that have been audited by the IRS, which has claimed jail bonds are taxable private activity bonds.

The National Governors Association is calling on newly elected House Speaker Paul Ryan to move transportation and online sales tax legislation.

Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service officials appeared open to modifying the proposed issue price rules they released in June, asking muni market group representatives at a public hearing Wednesday about their concerns and recommended changes.

Issuers should monitor bond activity for compliance violations, an IRS tax law specialist said at a Bond Buyer conference in Providence, R.I.

The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service have released final allocation and accounting rules that bond lawyers say will help in administering public-private partnerships for transportation and joint ventures involving hospitals.

The New Hampshire Health and Education Facilities Authority’s decision to withdraw its request to settle under a special voluntary closing agreement program for student-loan bond issuers has paid off.

Under a formula released by the Internal Revenue Service Wednesday, most states are likely to have more new capacity to issue private-activity bonds in 2016 than they did this year.

The House on Wednesday passed a bill that would prevent the federal government from defaulting on Treasury securities held by investors, but President Obama would veto it.

If House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., becomes Speaker of the House, tax reform would become a higher priority in the chamber, tax and municipal bond experts said.

Analysts and bankers questioned the feasibility of a proposal to use a debt exchange to restructure Puerto Rico’s bonds that is under discussion by Treasury Department and territory officials.

The Treasury Department is now estimating that the extraordinary measures it’s been using to preserve the U.S. borrowing capacity since the debt limit was reached will be exhausted by Nov. 3 – two days earlier than a previous estimate.

A bipartisan bill offered in the House would extend the Qualified Zone Academy Bond program by providing $400 million of volume cap for the bonds in each of 2015 and 2016.

In business tax reform it may not be proper to disallow the tax exemption for municipal bonds purchased by corporations, since the exemption is designed to benefit state and local governments, the Congressional Research Service wrote in a recently released report.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $473.05 million of general obligation refunding bonds issued by Nevada’s Clark County School District in 2007.

A Senate Democratic energy bill would create a new type of tax-advantaged bond called Clean Energy Bonds which would have lower subsidy rates than New Clean Renewable Energy Bonds would not be subject to volume cap.

The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service should create guidance to facilitate the development of public-private partnerships, the tax-exempt financing committee of the American Bar Association’s taxation section recommended.