With the Senate’s 61-37 vote in favor yesterday, President Obama’s $838 billion economic recovery plan now moves on to possibly contentious House-Senate negotiations. The bill’s tax incentives for businesses have emerged relatively unscathed from the Senate’s scrutiny, and since they coincide at many points with those of the House bill, the chances are good that corporate taxpayers will see at least some benefit from the legislation.

Here are some of the major business tax provisions, based on the Senate Finance Committee’s summary of the amended bill: more

Yesterday, UK bank leaders were publicly flayed.

Today, U.S. bank titans face the music, and MSNBC is covering it live. more

Joe the Plumber, meet Jeff the Commuter.

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s aside last week that he had no idea how to buy a train ticket (he boarded Amtrak rather than jetting from the New York metro area to Washington) sticks in my craw. I’ve been poring over every imaginable GRC angle on executive pay in the past week, and Immelt’s throwaway comment keeps lingering, like a sore. more

My last column on the COBRA provision of the House stimulus package struck a nerve with Business Finance readers. But to anybody who hasn’t slept through the last few years, it should come as no surprise. Older workers (who are still shy of Medicare age), who’ve always depended on the employer-based healthcare system and who’ve lost or fear they’ll lose their jobs, are running scared. They face a triple whammy: They’re unlikely to get another job that provides health insurance, can’t qualify for or afford private insurance — and often can’t afford COBRA’s current high costs.

But in the Senate version of the stimulus package, which was cleared for final voting today, the COBRA provision is somewhat different than the House bill. Still, some form of COBRA subsidization is likely to be in the final legislation because, according to Capital Checkup, it’s less controversial than other provisions of the stimulus package. more