Tax

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department Wednesday highlighted guidance on tax-credit stripping, Build America Bonds, and other programs stemming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as high priorities in its 2009-2010 priority guidance plan.

WASHINGTON — Alliance, Ohio, disclosed last week that the Internal Revenue Service has concluded an audit of $50 million of hospital revenue bonds it issued in 2003 with no change to the tax-exempt status.

WASHINGTON — Treasury Department officials yesterday touted Build America Bonds as one of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s success stories and a driver of public and private investment, but could not quantify exactly how much the program is costing the federal government.

WASHINGTON — The American Bar Association’s section on taxation has asked the Treasury Department to clarify a number of points in tax-regulatory guidance of Build America Bonds and other new programs under the ­American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to ensure issuers don’t do ­anything when issuing the bonds or ­spending the proceeds that could jeopardize the federal subsidy on the bonds.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department this week allocated $29.1 billion to state and local housing finance agencies for temporary new-issue bond purchase and liquidity programs, but some small HFAs are warning the fees they would have to pay to participate in the purchase program are prohibitively expensive.

The Indian Wells, Calif., Redevelopment Agency disclosed late Tuesday that the Internal Revenue Service has initiated an audit of $68 million of tax-allocation bonds it competitively sold in 2006.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration yesterday announced the formation of a multi-agency task force that will investigate and prosecute “significant” financial crimes and civil violations tied to the financial crisis and the government’s economic recovery programs.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has six “significant deficiencies” that prevented it from having effective internal controls over its financial reporting as of Sept. 30, 2009, the Government Accountability Office warned in an audit released this week.

WASHINGTON — State and local housing finance agency officials generally applauded the allocations they received from the Treasury Department for the new-issue bond purchase and temporary credit and liquidity programs, saying they were close to what they requested and should boost ailing housing programs.

WASHINGTON — The top lawyer for the House’s tax-writing committee said yesterday that it is a given the Build America Bonds program will be extended beyond its current deadline at the end of 2010 and that there is a strong argument for it to be made permanent as soon as possible.

WASHINGTON — Market participants are pushing for states or the federal government to take a “programmatic” rather than a piecemeal or project-by-project approach to financing infrastructure through public-private partnerships.

WASHINGTON — The American Bar Association Section of Taxation sent a report to Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service officials last week outlining its thoughts on various issues tied to stripping the tax credits from tax-credit bonds and selling them separately.

DALLAS — The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program is likely here to stay, though it is unclear how much funding it will receive in the future, federal officials said here yesterday.

WASHINGTON — Michael Mundaca, President Obama’s nominee to become the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary of tax policy, told the Senate Finance Committee yesterday that the Build America Bonds program is “too successful to simply allow it to expire.”

WASHINGTON — Treasury Department officials are warning state and local housing finance agencies that the Obama administration’s recently unveiled temporary bond purchase program is oversubscribed and that agencies will likely receive less assistance than they requested as a result.

WASHINGTON — A large local school district that cannot issue the qualified school construction bonds the Internal Revenue Service allocated to it will lose the allocation unless it transfers it to the state, which can then carry it forward indefinitely, an IRS attorney said last week.

A major component of the compliance questionnaire the Internal Revenue Service plans to send to issuers of Build America Bonds will examine how issuers are complying with the rule that all BAB project proceeds go towards capital expenditures, an IRS official said here Friday.

PHOENIX — The issue of how much information should be disclosed for certain variable-rate demand obligations has put the National Association of Bond Layers at loggerheads with the Securities and Exchange Commission staff for years. The ongoing dispute boiled over once again during NABL’s Bond Attorneys Workshop here this week.

WASHINGTON — Some municipal issuers and their advocates yesterday came out swinging against the Securities and Exchange Commission.

WASHINGTON — Financial advisers in the municipal market would have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission under an amendment added to the Investor Protection Act of 2009 yesterday by House Financial Services Committee members.