Taxes | featured news

Retail sales barely rose in January as tax increases and higher gasoline prices restrained spending, suggesting a slowdown in the pace of consumer spending early in the first quarter.

President Barack Obama told fellow Democrats from the House of Representatives on Thursday he is willing to agree to a "big deal" with Congress on spending cuts and tax reforms to end the fiscal uncertainty over the U.S. deficit.

California’s top earners are now facing a combined 51.9 percent federal and state income tax — the highest rate in the nation — a cause for grumbling and, maybe, an incentive to move.

China unveiled sweeping tax reforms on Tuesday to make wealthy state-owned firms, property speculators and the rich pay more to narrow a yawning gap between an urban elite and hundreds of millions of rural poor.

Vodafone said Indian officials sent another notice that it owes more than $2 billion in taxes on the 2007 purchase of a stake in an Indian telecommunications company.

Tucked into the "fiscal cliff" tax package approved by Congress are billions of dollars in tax breaks that should make the new year a lot happier for businesses of many stripes, including film producers, race track owners and the makers of electric motorcycles....

...As Americans attempt to decipher how the deal would affect their taxes, they can take heart in knowing that top tax rate for corporations in Uzbekistan — to name just one example — is near 98.5 percent.

The fiscal pact Congress reached hours into the new year will delay $109 billion in automatic across-the-board spending cuts for two months. But it will make a down payment on those reductions that will affect federal operations this year and next.

While the tax package that Congress passed New Year's Day will protect 99 percent of Americans from an income tax increase, most of them will still end up paying more federal taxes in 2013.

Legislation to block the "fiscal cliff" is headed to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature. The bill will avoid, for now, the major tax increases and government spending cuts that had been scheduled to take effect with the new year.