Talking Tax

The market for special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, was all the rage over the last year, with exponential asset growth in just a few months plus the involvement of celebrities like R&B singer Ciara and former Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez. Then, last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission threw a sudden damper on it: new accounting guidance that forced many SPACs to issue finan...

The Biden administration has given a boost to a years-long effort toward global agreement on digital tax rules as negotiators work to strike a deal in the coming months. Since she took office, Janet Yellen’s Treasury Department has started to reshape the conversation on both elements of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s two-part plan for a global tax overhaul. Treasury’s...

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) is among lawmakers from high-tax states who want to repeal the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes paid. Individuals in Democratic states like New York and California have seen their tax bills go up as a result of the cap, which was part of the 2017 tax law. Suozzi is leading the fight against the cap, trying to pressure the Biden administration and leaders...

President Joe Biden this week outlined his plan to increase taxes on wealthy individuals as a way to pay for investments in childcare and education. An almost doubling of the federal capital gains tax rate and a provision curtailing a tax break on property transferred to heirs at death are among the changes in the American Families Plan. But noticeably absent are any increases to the estate tax—ei...

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider a case Monday involving a California law requiring nonprofits to disclose the identities of their major donors to state officials. Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a Charles Koch-backed nonprofit, and the Thomas Moore Law center argue that the law violates the First Amendment and have asked the high court to review a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals fo...

It has been a challenging year for the IRS, which is dealing with yet another prolonged tax-filing season while also distributing pandemic relief payments to hundreds of millions of people. Those challenges come at a time when the agency has struggled for years to carry out its core duties of auditing returns, collecting taxes, and answering its phones due to underfunding and staffing shortages. P...

The cannabis industry is booming, but a provision in the federal tax code is holding it back, two attorneys in the industry said. The provision, Section 280E, doesn’t allow for tax deductions or credits stemming from trafficking in controlled substances, such as cannabis. The provision means some cannabis businesses owe more money to the IRS than they bring in, and is a frequent subject of litigat...

President Joe Biden this week unveiled his plan to pay for sweeping infrastructure investments by raising taxes on corporations. The proposals include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, imposing a 21% global minimum tax on U.S. companies, and giving the IRS more resources to crack down on tax evasion. In this week’s episode of Talking Tax, reporters Allyson Versprille and Colin Wilhelm speak t...

Once again, we are in the middle of a protracted tax filing season. And for yet another year, tax execs closed the books virtually. This week on our podcast Talking Tax, we hear how the season is going for corporate filers. Host Amanda Iacone speaks with Rema Serafi, national managing partner for tax at KPMG, about how tax directors are coping with having to close the books while their teams are w...

The IRS announced this week that it would push back the deadline for some individuals to file and pay their taxes, a move that comes as the agency and taxpayers are grappling with changes in the new pandemic aid law. In this week’s episode of Talking Tax, reporter Amanda Iacone speaks with Scott Berger, a tax principal at the firm Kaufman Rossin, about how the delayed deadline may affect his clien...

We are in the heart of tax filing season in the U.S. and, so far, it appears to be going much better than last year. That, however, is an extraordinarily low bar, given that last year's season ran up against the outset of a global pandemic. On this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, we launch a two-part series looking at how tax season is going and whether any of the problems from last ye...

A $1.9 trillion stimulus package that includes a third round of direct cash payments to American households will likely wind up on President Joe Biden's desk within the next few weeks. The direct payments are politically popular, but will they become a regular tool in U.S. fiscal policy, even after the pandemic? And if so, is that a good thing? Even among liberal-leaning economists, there is no co...

Retail investors had the opportunity to make a lot of money thanks to recent spikes for GameStop, AMC, and other stocks. New traders who cashed out big gains in 2020 could face complications this tax season. Many novice traders used the online trading app Robinhood. The company missed a Feb. 16 deadline to send those clients tax documents needed for this filing season. For this episode of our week...

The U.S. has fallen behind other countries’ efforts to police the use of sales-suppression software known as tax zappers. That’s according to Richard Ainsworth, a tax law specialist and adjunct professor at New York University Law School and Boston University School of Law. When a retailer plugs a tax zapper into a register, the technology can essentially make certain transactions disappear. Busin...

"In retrospect, I had no idea what I was getting myself into." Lafayette "Chip" Harter joined the Treasury Department in 2017 as deputy assistant secretary for international tax affairs. He quickly became the Trump administration's point person on negotiating with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is trying to broker an international agreement to rewrite decades of g...

President Joe Biden's campaign promises to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy got a big boost when Democrats swept the Georgia runoffs, giving them control of both the House and the Senate. One of Biden's major tax proposals, pitched as part of his "Made in America" plan to boost manufacturing, is to overhaul the 2017 tax law's international provisions. New Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyd...

The architects of the 2017 tax code overhaul had lofty goals: They predicted the law would make filing your taxes easier, boost wages and investment, and cut tax rates without increasing the deficit. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 made broad changes to the tax system, lowering corporate and individual rates, boosting the standard deduction, creating new incentives, and overhauling the way multi...

The second round of the Paycheck Protection Program reopened with fewer bumps for struggling businesses and small lenders that work with under-served communities. The program, revived by the latest Covid-19 relief law, facilitates government-backed small business loans that can be forgiven if used to cover employee salaries and other eligible expenses. The relaunch gave a head start to small lende...

The pandemic-induced economic downturn has been a huge challenge for states trying to make their budgetary ends meet. Now, some lawmakers are looking to offset a drop in sales taxes and other revenue with new levies on digital advertising. Darcy Kooiker, a partner with Armanino in Bellevue, Wash., who specializes in state and local tax issues, says several states are already trying to roll out tax...

The stimulus bill signed by President Trump was significant not just for its size but also because many lawmakers inserted tax items into the bill they'd been wanting for some time to become law. On the latest episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, host Amanda Iacone talks with Capitol Hill reporter Kaustuv Basu about what was in this bill and about why it will likely be far from the last fin...

The economic fallout from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic will shape the world of taxes at the international, federal, and state levels in the coming year. That's according to three tax attorneys we spoke to about what to expect in 2021. For this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, reporter Jeff Leon talks to these attorneys about how jurisdictions across the globe will respond to the con...

Who says taxes are boring? Today on a holiday edition of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, we bring you a few of the more humorous tax disputes of this year. Bloomberg Tax reporter Hamza Ali joins us to talk about a man who saved on his tax bill by mathematically proving he was a terrible gambler, a juice cleanse that may or may not be medicinal, and an extraordinarily costly instance of a postal d...

Despite historic and decisive victories at the Supreme Court, same-sex couples are still not fully equal with different-sex couples in the eyes of the U.S. tax code. That’s the conclusion of University of Pittsburgh law professor Anthony Infanti, who specializes in the intersection of tax policy and gender and sexuality. Infanti speaks with Bloomberg’s Yuri Nagano on our weekly podcast, Talking Ta...

Teslas and other electric vehicles may be helping to solve the problem of climate change—but they’re also creating a new problem for state and federal transportation budgets. That’s because these budgets are funded largely from revenue generated by taxes on gasoline. States are trying to figure out how to fund new roads or maintain existing ones if gas-fueled cars are getting phased out. Sahas Kat...

The Supreme Court this week heard its biggest tax case of this term and, based on how the oral argument went, the IRS could be headed for a significant loss. On this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, host Jeffrey Leon talks to Bloomberg Tax reporter Aysha Bagchi, who is covering the case, CIC Services v. IRS. She says some of the justices made comments suggesting they were inclined to ru...