Domestic Taxes

Food stamp use on the rise, amid slow job growth.

Federal workers submit 86,000 budget cuts, to little action.

Tension creeps in as Cyprus banks reopen.

JOBS Act has yet to deliver.

Through austerity, EU could lose its infrastructure advantage.

“We all have the duty to make sure that taxpayers’ hard-earned money is spent wisely,” Sen. Max Baucus said.

Dow Jones companies paying increasingly low tax rate.

Europe itself helped cause unrest in Cyprus. 

Bank shutdowns making life difficult in Cyprus.

British banks told to find some cash. 

Warren Buffett makes big deal with Goldman Sachs.

Sen. Baucus may have revealed his weakness in tax reform by voting against the budget resolution from Senate Democrats.

More than half of people in the U.S. either didn't notice or said they weren't affected by the recent expiration of the payroll tax cut, according to a new survey.

Bankrate.com, a personal finance site, found that 48 percent of people didn't notice the two-percentage point hike in the payroll tax at the start of the year, and another 7 percent said the change didn't hurt them. Read more...

The vote delivers a huge victory to lawmakers and stakeholders who have devoted more than two years to the effort.

A bipartisan group of 19 senators filed an amendment on Friday that would give states the ability to collect taxes for online purchases. 

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) are leading the charge to line up passage of the measure that would give states greater latitude to collect sales tax from online retailers. 

A vote on the amendment gives supporters a chance to test out exactly where they stand on the matter and whether it is filibuster-proof. 

Because budget resolutions don't become law, the amendment, if approved, would still need to take a separate path to President Obama's desk. 

If there is enough support, lawmakers may try to bring the bill to the floor and skip the committee.

The biggest obstacle is that both parties are at a stalemate on what to do with new revenues.

The Senate rejected an amendment to the budget from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that would have removed Democrats’ call for nearly $1 trillion in new revenue.

Grassley’s amendment failed on a 45-54 vote Thursday night. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) had opposed including the reconciliation in the budget, but he voted against Grassley's amendment.

The Senate Finance Committee released a series of options to potentially make the tax code simpler, as the panel continues to push forward with its tax reform efforts.

In its first paper detailing tax reform options, the Finance Committee says its options could help roll back the amount of time people spend complying with the massive U.S. tax code and reduce the difference between what taxpayers owe and what they pay — the so-called tax gap that was last estimated to be some $385 billion.

But the paper also illustrates the significant challenges that the tax-writing committee faces as it tries to overhaul the tax code, even though there may be more common ground between Democrats and Republicans on simplification than on other big-ticket tax issues.

The nine-page draft, for instance, stresses that neither Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) nor the panel’s ranking member, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), necessarily endorse the listed proposals.