The allure of some sort of tax holiday on repatriated earnings, which I covered in this blog back in June 2011, remains strong. In October, members of the House of Representatives’ Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscal conservatives, added their support behind H.R. 1834, or the “Freedom to Invest Act of 2011,” as this article from the Win America Campaign describes. The legislation would, among other things, extend the election allowed to a U.S. corporation to deduct dividends received from a controlled foreign corporation.

In a letter to the members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – the now defunct “Super Committee” – the Blue Dogs also stated, “As you consider tax reform, we urge you to include a temporary change to the tax code that allows businesses to repatriate money trapped overseas as part of reform or as a bridge to comprehensive reform.” The letter went on to say that “experts agree that temporarily lowering tax barriers will bring earnings back home, and therefore strengthen our economy.” more

Earlier this month, a joint hearing of the Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Ways and Means focused on the tax treatment of financial products. The goals: to consider how Congress should respond to the potentially inconsistent tax treatment of economically similar financial products, and to determine how well the tax code has responded to the evolving financial products market, according to the Hearing Advisory.

Among those testifying was Thomas Barthold, chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. Barthold provided some context to the discussion, describing the astronomical growth in some derivative products. For instance, over the past twelve years, the notional amount outstanding of swaps (not including credit derivatives) jumped tenfold, from $14.3 trillion in 1998 to $149 trillion in 2010. Barthold also discussed several issues that arise when determining how to tax financial products. One issue: some instruments have characteristics of both debt and equity, which generally are taxed differently. more

Just what issues and challenges are likely to impact corporate treasurers in 2012? The folks at tech giant Sungard have identified the top treasury trends for the coming year. Among them:

1. An increased focus on assessing risk holistically. Several drivers are behind this trend, says Paul Bramwell, Sungard’s senior vice president of treasury solutions. One is simply an increased awareness of the risks – FX, interest rate, credit, among others – to which their organizations are vulnerable. Of course, the global financial crisis highlighted the need to focus on risk over the past few years. In addition, ongoing questions about the viability of the euro, as well as fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, are adding to the uncertain environment. Treasurers want to know where their cash will be today, tomorrow and in the future, in order to make sure that they’ve planned adequately for any upcoming debt repayments or business flows they need to accommodate, Bramwell says. more

Most small business owners surveyed by the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS), a trade association for more than 500 public sector pension funds in the United States and Canada, want to provide their employees with some sort of retirement plan. In fact, 82% support the concept of a new retirement plan that would provide employees with a guaranteed monthly benefit for life after they leave the work world. What’s more, more than two-thirds say they would be interested in adopting such a plan for their own businesses, according to Employee Benefit News.

At the same time, just one in five small business owners surveyed offer employees a 401(k) or other employee self-funded retirement plan, a recent survey by Nationwide found. more

If you’re a CFO with a smaller company that’s about to undergo an IRS audit, you’ll want to take note of several statistics highlighted in a recent report, “Steps Can Be Taken to Enhance the Quality of Audits Involving Small Corporate Returns,” from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

To determine the quality of the audits performed by IRS auditors, TIGTA researchers at the IRS’ Small Business/Self-Employed headquarters reviewed 51 audits – not a statistically valid sample, they acknowledge – from a universe of nearly 7,000 audits completed between August 2010 and May 2011. The inspectors uncovered potential quality concerns in 19, or 37%, of the audits. Many involved issues between the corporate return and other, related returns, such as those for employment taxes or a shareholder’s individual tax return. more