Tax

Any legislative attempts to boost the traditional tax-exempt bond market, as well as hikes to the top tax rates, could drive down demand for new tax-credit Build America Bonds, a Congressional Research Service report released this week said.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board yesterday filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission a proposal to establish real-time subscriptions to continuing disclosure documents filed with the Electronic Municipal Market Acces system.

A Securities and Exchange Commission official yesterday said that staff are developing an "action plan" to boost municipal disclosure and accounting standards through new rulemaking or legislation.

CHICAGO - Michigan's Milan Area School District plans to enter the market early next week with nearly $49 million of taxable general obligation Build America Bonds.

WASHINGTON - The Treasury Department should promptly clarify that unused Gulf Opportunity Zone low-income housing tax credits can be recaptured by states and reallocated to other "shovel-ready" projects, and that those tax credits can be exchanged for cash grants, two Louisiana housing finance agencies told federal officials.

BRADENTON, Fla. - Miami-Dade County is preparing to sell $600 million of airport revenue bonds in an offering next week that takes advantage of provisions in the federal stimulus bill that allows the county to sell the debt without being subject to the alternative minimum tax.

Jeremy A. Spector, a partner at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo PC, has been tapped to become the new chairman of the American Bar Association's tax-exempt financing committee on July 1, the law firm announced yesterday.

WASHINGTON - State tax collections for the fourth quarter of 2008 declined for the first time in more than six years, and sales taxes were dealt a record-setting blow during that period, according to a report issued yesterday by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.

SAN FRANCISCO - States will have even more trouble than usual this year estimating capital gains tax revenues, Standard & Poor's said in a report issued last week.

The Vermont Student Assistance Corp. has been notified by the Internal Revenue Service that $165 million of education loan revenue bonds it issued in 1998 may be taxable because of issues related to its tracking of loans and treatment of fees.

The Treasury Department continued its flurry of stimulus-related guidance yesterday, unveiling notices that allocate to states a total of $3.2 billion of qualified energy conservation bonds and that show governments and power providers how to apply for a total of $2.4 billion of clean renewable energy bonds.

WASHINGTON - The Treasury Department Friday released "how-to" guidance on the stimulus law's new taxable Build America Bond and Recovery Zone Economic Development Bond programs, as well as allocations for the qualified zone academy bond and qualified school construction bond tax-credit programs.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has tapped economic adviser and former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to lead a task force that will explore how to streamline the tax code, but it’s unclear if the panel’s recommendations will have any impact on the municipal bond market.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $149.7 million of revenue bonds issued in 2005 by the Maryland Health and Higher Educational Facilities Authority.

House Financial Services chairman Barney Frank and Ways and Means chairman Charles Rangel have asked Treasury Department officials to issue guidance on how states should implement a stimulus law provision that would allow them to exchange up to 40% of their low-income housing tax credits for cash.

Helen Elizabeth Garrett, vice president for academic planning and budget at the University of Southern California, has been nominated by President Obama to become the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for tax policy.

WASHINGTON - The municipal market has not yet warmed to taxable, tax-credit bonds for a number of reasons, but federal lawmakers are authorizing increasing amounts of them, most recently in the new stimulus law, to encourage the development of a market.

The Internal Revenue Service is seeking information from tax-exempt bond issuers about how much of a burden existing arbitrage regulations place on them.

Proposed Internal Revenue Service regulations that would implement a 2005 law requiring all federal, state, and local governmental agencies to withhold a portion of payments to private vendors for tax purposes could result in more costs than benefits, Treasury Department officials are warning.

The Internal Revenue Service yesterday announced it will hold a public hearing on proposed regulations implementing a 2005 law that requires federal, state, and local governmental entities with more than $100 million in annual procurement to withhold 3% of all payments made to contractors for tax purposes.