Tax

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., yesterday introduced another bill containing tax incentives for renewable energy and extensions of expiring tax breaks. Meanwhile, House members Wednesday night signed off on separate bills that would create a one-year "patch" to the alternative minimum tax and a new federal program that would authorize up to $13 billion of private-activity bonds to finance disaster relief.

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has introduced legislation to extend expiring tax provisions and provide tax incentives for renewable energy sources and disaster relief that contains fewer bond provisions than similar legislation approved by the Senate Tuesday.

The House yesterday passed legislation to fund federal government operations at their current levels after the end of this fiscal year, Sept. 30. The continuing resolution also includes $6.5 billion in bond-related development grants.

The Senate late yesterday signed off on a tax package that, among other bond-related provisions, would authorize the use of qualified private-activity bonds without regard to a state PAB cap for seven counties in Texas and Louisiana hit by Hurricane Ike.

Two senators have introduced a bill mirroring legislation pending in the House that would increase demand for municipal bonds by easing restrictions on the ability of banks to purchase them.

CHICAGO - Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service officials said Friday that they plan to quickly finalize recently proposed regulations on the public approval requirements for private-activity bonds, so that issuers can take advantage of the new rules.

CHICAGO - The Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt bond branch has established a task force to identify and notify bondholders when the IRS has issued a proposed adverse determination letter warning that the bonds they hold may be taxable.

The Internal Revenue Service published a notice yesterday showing the additional amount of tax-exempt housing bonds that each state and territory can issue under the $11 billion of extra private activity bond volume cap for housing that was authorized by Congress in legislation enacted July 30.

WASHINGTON - Senate Finance Committee leaders yesterday announced a bipartisan agreement on a tax package that would extend expired tax provisions, patch the alternative minimum tax, provide bond-related incentives for alternative energy, and create new categories of tax-credit and tax-exempt bonds for Midwestern states hit by disasters.

SAN FRANCISCO - The Internal Revenue Service will not conduct enforcement audits on those charitable, nonprofit organizations that could not show how they were complying with the tax laws and rules pertaining to their tax-exempt bonds in an agency survey, an IRS official told bond lawyers meeting here late Friday.

SAN FRANCISCO - The Internal Revenue Service may survey a larger group of nonprofit organizations or conduct "compliance checks" to better determine the extent to which they are complying with the tax laws and rules pertaining to their outstanding tax-exempt bonds, the director of the agency's tax-exempt bond office said Friday.