The bill is in the mail. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has begun mailing invoices to the nation’s 5,200 publicly held companies as well as another 3,300 investment firms and issuers of equity, all of whom will foot the bill for the board’s $68 million operating budget.Created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the PCAOB was created to oversee the audits of publicly traded companies.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) has introduced a bill that would provide at least $120 billion in tax relief for businesses over the next 10 years.Congress is under pressure from the World Trade Organization to discontinue a U.S. export credit that provides a subsidy to U.S. manufacturers who sell their goods abroad. Finding a means to replace the advantages provided by the export credit is the impetus for the proposed business tax relief legislation.Representative Thomas's bill, H.R.

The Senate is offering a compromise, and Democrats promise negative publicity, but House Republicans appear to be holding out for an expanded Child Tax Credit that seems unlikely to make it into law this summer.The U.S. House and Senate have been at odds over efforts to further expand the recently expanded Child Tax Credit so that it includes low-income families who would receive the credit as a tax refund whether or not they paid tax to offset the credit.

The Internal Revenue Service has finalized its regulations relating to catch-up contributions to employer-sponsored tax-deferred retirement plans for taxpayers over age 50. The final regulations take the place of proposed regulations issued in the fall of 2001.Catch-up contributions to tax-deferred plans were introduced in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. For 2003, eligible taxpayers may contribute as much as $2,000 as a catch-up contribution. The amount will increase by $1,000 each year until it reaches $5,000 by 2006.

Pressure on the Internal Revenue Service is growing as more lawmakers and lobbyists voice support to withdraw a regulation that would force U.S. banks to declare to the IRS any bank interest paid to non-U.S. citizens.Interest income paid by U.S. banks to nonresident aliens is not taxable in the United States. But a proposed regulation (REG-133254-02) would provide such information to the IRS.

In an effort to crack down on identity theft, a new law went into effect in California last week that puts the impetus on businesses to notify their customers in that state if they even suspect that personal information may have been compromised. The law, expected to be a model for pending federal legislation, came in response a hacking incident in which the personal records of 265,000 state employees were compromised last year.

The Department of Labor has filed suit against Enron Corporation and individuals who were directors and other executives of the now bankrupt conglomerate, alleging that the company violated pension laws by mismanaging employee retirement funds.The lawsuit calls for Enron to pay company employees hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of a company policy that prevented employees from changing their invested retirement money from company stock to a different investment. Enron prevented employees from selling the Enron stock in their 401(k) plans until they reached age 50.

The Department of Justice has banned sales of a controversial tax strategy book, arguing that the book is not protected by the First Amendment because it encourages the unlawful action of not paying income taxes. In a different case a federal judge ordered a Georgia man to stop promoting a slavery reparations tax credit and to turn over a list of his clients."The tax division is focusing on promoters of tax-evasion schemes," said Eileen J.

Seeking new ways to encourage taxpayers to file their returns electronically, the House of Representatives on Thursday voted 252-170 to pass a bill that would change the deadline for filing annual individual income tax returns from April 15 to April 30. The catch is, the returns have to be filed electronically in order to take advantage of the new deadline.Lawyers and accountants have voiced opposition to the measure, indicating their concern that changing the date will only confuse taxpayers.