The leader of a top US standard-setter wants his board to take the next step in using emerging technology to craft accounting rules for local and state governments. Joel Black, chair of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, said a key priority for the board this year is shifting gears from monitoring emerging tools such as artificial intelligence to preparing for its future integration. In his final two years as leader, Black said he intends to craft an enduring focus on how technology can make financial reporting more efficient. GASB establishes standards for state and local government ..read more

President-elect Donald Trump's plans to deconstruct the federal workforce would take a bite out of IRS efforts to answer taxpayer phone calls and enforce compliance for tax cheats. After getting billions in funding from the 2022 tax-and-climate law, the IRS started a long-needed rebuild, including bringing on more workers. Between Oct. 1, 2021 and Sept. 30, 2023, the IRS processed nearly 53,000 new hires, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a September report. But Trump's promises to end remote work for federal workers and reinstate a policy that would make it ea ..read more

Jan. 3 marks the beginning of the next Congress, where Republicans will lead both chambers and control the White House. Democrats being out of power has big implications for tax policy, as GOP lawmakers heading into the new year debate what to renew from the 2017 GOP tax law, known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The TCJA was passed with no votes from Democrats and benefits skewed toward the wealthy and corporations. Incoming GOP leaders have proposed breaking their top priorities into two bills and moving them through Congress using the reconciliation process. The first would jump-start Preside ..read more

Online retailers that rely solely on third-party logistics providers like Amazon for tax compliance may still face tax liability for direct sales through their own websites. Many states enacted marketplace facilitator laws in the years since the Supreme Court's 2018 ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair, shifting tax collection responsibilities to platforms like Amazon or Walmart. But individual vendors can still face additional tax obligations because of direct sales, how their inventory is controlled, or state-specific sales thresholds. As of October, most of the 24 states in the Streamlined Sal ..read more

A new White House administration and Republican-led Congress are slated to disrupt how the IRS operates. Republicans' taste for cuts to the agency's annual appropriations and the tens of billions of added funding from the 2022 tax-and-climate law is putting the IRS and the Treasury Department on offense, as they make a case for why a well-funded IRS is good for everyone. The Treasury Department has warned that further clawbacks would mean customer service—a bipartisan concern—as well as enforcement efforts, would take a hit. Bloomberg Tax's Erin Slowey spoke with Charles Rettig, a shareholder ..read more

Fuel producers are trying to prepare for a tax credit regime change, even though the Treasury Department has failed to issue rules around those credits. The clean fuel production tax credit under Section 45Z takes effect next year, replacing a longstanding blenders credit. The new credit gives tax breaks to fuel according to its carbon intensity score. But the yet-to-be-released Treasury and IRS rules will explain how to calculate that score. Debbie Gordon, leader of RSM US LLP's excise and energy tax practice, told reporter Erin Schilling on this week's episode of Talking Tax podcast that fue ..read more

US companies are ramping up their efforts to lobby Congress on the international tax provisions they'd like to see in a comprehensive 2025 tax bill.   Among their priorities is retaining the current rates on foreign income, which were included in Republicans' 2017 tax law and are poised to increase in 2026. But there are open questions about how lawmakers can pay for these extensions and make good on President-elect Donald Trump's domestic corporate tax proposals. On this week's episode of "Talking Tax," reporter Lauren Vella sits down with Rohit Kumar, co-leader of PwC's National Ta ..read more

The European Court of Justice's ruling against Apple Inc. over a $14.4 billion Irish tax bill stunned members of the international tax community, who said it throws the high court's precedent on tax state aid cases into disarray. The EU high court ruled last month that the company's tax positions in Ireland, which were agreed to by Irish authorities in 1991 and 2007, amounted to illegal state aid. EU law stipulates that member states shouldn't give companies preferential treatment—state aid—over other businesses. Unlawful state aid could come in the form of preferential tax benefits. The decis ..read more

A pair of high-profile fraud trials are competing for headlines out of New York courtrooms, with accountants serving as marquee witnesses. Accounting has been a common theme across both the criminal trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces federal fraud charges for allegedly siphoning customer funds from the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange, and the civil trial of former President Donald Trump, who is accused by the New York attorney general of inflating the value of real estate on years of his financial statements. As financial frauds have become more complex, accountants increasingly pl ..read more

The new CEO of Deloitte's tax practice is grappling with many of the same challenges as the Big Four firm's clients: rapid shifts in how tax practitioners work thanks to artificial intelligence, a shortage of skilled staff, and reforms that will impose a new global minimum tax. Companies are starting to get their arms around the new rules that will impose a 15% global minimum tax and whether they should tackle implementation in-house or seek outside help, said Carin Giuliante, chair and CEO of Deloitte Tax LLP. Giuliante, the first woman to lead the firm’s US tax practice, took the helm in Jun ..read more