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A proposed infrastructure spending plan may be hammered out without a measure raising the gasoline tax, a key Republican lawmaker said Sunday, suggesting the removal of an obstacle to a nearly $1tn infrastructure plan pushed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), one of the lead Republicans in the group, said a higher gasoline tax may not be in the final package, citing opposition from the Biden administration. “But the administration, therefore, will need to come forward with some other ideas without raising taxes,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. In addition to measures to raise the gas tax by indexing it to inflation and charging fees on electric cars, the draft of the plan proposed increasing funding at the IRS to collect more taxes owed, creating public-private partnerships, and repurposing existing federal funds to pay for the plan. The White House has opposed indexing the gas tax to inflation and charging fees to electric vehicles to raise revenue for the plan, instead proposing that additional revenue come from enhanced IRS enforcement, according to a person familiar with the talks.

 

Wall Street Journal

The Oregon Senate on Thursday morning narrowly passed a plan to scale back a tax break for businesses with more than $5m in annual profits and tighten employment requirements, while slightly reducing tax rates for businesses with income up to $1m a year. Under Oregon’s pass-through business tax break, owners of partnerships and S corporations with $251,000 to $500,000 in income, including lawyers and doctors, can pay a tax rate of 7.2%. Meanwhile people whose income comes from wages are taxed at 8.75% for a single filer with $9,200 to $125,000 of income and 8.75% for joint filers with $18,400 to $250,000 of income. The pass-through business tax break cost the state approximately $125m in lost revenue in 2019 and saves a similar amount for the taxpayers who benefit from it. Senate Bill 139 is not expected to make a huge change to those numbers. In 2021-2023, legislative economists predicted it could result in an additional $41.7m in state tax revenue and that figure could go up to $60m in 2023-2025.

 

The Oregonian

Republicans on the Wisconsin Legislature's budget committee have voted to cut income taxes and property taxes by $3.3bn over two years and promised to soon approve the elimination of a business tax - a plan they say would save the typical family more than $1,000. The GOP would accomplish the income tax cut largely by reducing the tax rate for people making $23,930 to $263,480 from 6.27% to 5.3%. Democrats on the committee complained that three-quarters of the income tax cuts would go to people making $100,000 or more. They said Republicans could easily cut taxes for people in the lowest income brackets but passed. The budget now goes to the full Senate and Assembly, with the first floor votes expected during the last week of June.

 

Green Bay Press Gazette

US News and World Report

A jury has found New Mexico's former state tax chief guilty of embezzling more than $25,000 from a trucking business while she served in former Gov. Susana Martinez's cabinet. Demesia Padilla could face up to 18 years in prison when she is sentenced for her conviction Friday on embezzlement and intent to defraud charges.

 

U.S. News

The Virginia Society of CPAs Educational Foundation announced its college scholarship recipients for the 2021–22 academic year. The foundation awarded a total of $59,250 in undergraduate, graduate and doctoral scholarships this year to 26 accounting college students across the state. The foundation also awarded a VSCPA Minority Scholarship this year, bringing the total number awarded to four. Virginia Tech student Elizabeth Michalowicz also received the inaugural Samuel A. Derieux, CPA, Memorial Scholarship this year. Derieux, who passed away March 8th 2020, was a Richmond-based retired CPA who was a VSCPA past president and longtime member, as well as the only CPA to serve as both president and chair of AICPA.

 

Accounting Today

Mark McKinley has been named the sixth chief executive of Rea & Associates, effective November 1st. Mr McKinley joined the firm as a staff accountant in 1994 and was promoted to West Central Ohio regional president in 2017. He will replace Don McIntosh, who has led the firm since 2017.

 

The Daily Jeffersonian

An Ohio company that operates dozens of US shopping and strip malls  has filed for federal bankruptcy protection, citing a drop in foot traffic at its properties during the coronavirus pandemic, according to court records. Washington Prime Group filed a petition for Chapter 11 protection earlier this month in federal bankruptcy court in Texas. The company has entered into a restructuring agreement with creditors, led by SVPGlobal, that includes $100 million in new financing. The company said in a statement that business at its properties will continue uninterrupted.

 

US News and World Report

The Supreme Court has sided with Nestlé and Cargill in a lawsuit that claimed the companies knowingly bought cocoa beans from farms in Africa that used child slave labor. The justices ruled 8-1 in favor of the food companies and against a group of six adult citizens of Mali that claimed they were taken from their country as children and forced to work on cocoa farms in neighboring Ivory Coast. Justice Clarence Thomas said: "Although respondents' injuries occurred entirely overseas, the Ninth Circuit held that respondents could sue in federal court because the defendant corporations allegedly made ‘major operational decisions' in the United States. The Ninth Circuit erred by allowing this suit to proceed."

 

US News and World Report

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is preparing to require public companies to disclose more information about how they respond to threats linked to climate change. Gary Gensler, the agency's new chairman, has said climate-related disclosure is a top priority, and President Biden plans to meet with top financial regulators to discuss the issue. The SEC has already sought industry input for a rule proposal that could be issued by October. The SEC has broad authority to require disclosures by companies selling securities. But how it elicits specific information about climate change, whose impact on every company’s bottom line isn’t always clear, is likely to become a political lightning rod and set off a burst of lobbying in Washington. The challenge, regulators and corporate officials say, is identifying which measurements are necessary to help investors gauge a company’s financial prospects, and how to set requirements that are flexible enough to generate specific, and not generic, information about corporate risks. “It’s a generational project unlike anything the SEC has ever undertaken,” said Robert Jackson Jr. , a former SEC commissioner. “It requires a great deal of expertise at the staff level and an enormous amount of market outreach.”

 

Wall Street Journal

Emburse, a provider of expense management and accounts payable automation, has launched Emburse Pay - B2B Payments, a tool providing an integrated payables solution for teams to easily manage and track the entire invoice approval and payment process. It allows organizations to save time, lower costs, increase efficiency and enhance the user experience. Finance teams can more easily track and confirm receipt of payments, reducing potential delays and friction with vendors. 

 

CPA Practice Advisor

A new survey from Benevity reveals that while nearly half of employees can remember their companies making commitments about racial justice following the murder of George Floyd, only 26% believe those commitments were completely fulfilled, compared to 61% of employees who can't say if their companies fulfilled their commitments. Over 70% of employees agreed that it’s important to have difficult conversations in the workplace about racial and social justice. More than half (69%) also said they would recommend their companies to others if addressing those issues is prioritized. Over a third of employees said they would quit if their workplace doesn’t do so. The corporate world has long struggled with a lack of diversity in its ranks, and a report compiled by the Alliance for Board Diversity and Deloitte recently showed that while the boards of Fortune 500 companies are improving in their diversity, that progress is still slow. These companies often tap the same pool of candidates, and of their newly appointed officials, white women greatly outnumbered people of color.

 

USA Today