Taxes

Film students and professors from more than a dozen colleges and universities in Massachusetts came to the Statehouse Monday to urge lawmakers to keep the state's film tax credit, saying helps boost their job prospects.

Gov. Tom Wolf's sprawling package of tax changes he is seeking may not necessarily spare lower-income households, as his administration contends, the Legislature's fiscal analysis arm said this week.

With oil prices sinking enough that drillers may soon see a more favorable tax rate, North Dakota lawmakers approved a new framework Friday that cuts the price-triggered exemption in exchange for a lower tax rate.

Indiana lawmakers were grappling Wednesday over where to make cuts in the new state budget with little more than a week remaining in the legislative session while also debating what steps should be taken to help struggling casinos.

An $80 million piece of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's plan for balancing Kansas' next budget is in trouble because a major health insurance company opposes it, and a GOP lawmaker said Wednesday the measure probably should be dropped.

The IRS' overloaded phone system hung up on more than 8 million taxpayers this filing season as the agency cut millions of dollars from taxpayer services.

Republican leaders in the House and Senate are backing Gov. Paul LePage's effort to amend the constitution to abolish the income tax.

Craft breweries, cider drinkers and beer aficionados could benefit from alcohol legislation that cleared first-round debate Tuesday in the Nebraska Legislature.

Proposals to kill Ohio's tax on commercial activity, fund absentee-ballot mailings and allow counties to privatize jails are among dozens of revisions that a legislative panel considered Monday as it prepared to put finishing touches on the two-year, $71.5 billion state operating budget.

The North Dakota House endorsed a bill Monday that will cut an exemption for oil companies if crude prices continue to slide, in exchange for a lower and permanent flat tax rate.

Massachusetts cities and towns already are seeing gambling windfalls even before the first casino has opened its doors.

The IRS wants $3.2 billion to cover back taxes that it says are owed by a prominent Texas businessman and his late brother who the IRS says hid income by setting up overseas trust funds.

Officials with an Illinois-based industrial shelving company say they're expanding in Gary, Indiana.

The House has voted to make permanent a deduction for state and local sales taxes that expired at the beginning of the year.

Connecticut is stepping up the fight against the trafficking of bootlegged cigarettes from low-tax states into lucrative Northeast markets through New York and Boston ports and along Interstate 95.

The House has passed a bill that would repeal the federal tax on estates.

An unlikely coalition from New York's political right and left has called for the suspension of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Start-Up NY economic development program following reports of modest initial success and significant marketing costs.

Wednesday is the deadline for filing income tax returns, a day long associated with the dread of rushing to fill out complicated forms and, perhaps, making a payment to Uncle Sam.

The sponsor of House Republicans' counter-proposal to Gov. Tom Wolf's property-tax relief plan outlined the details Tuesday and said the GOP blueprint would provide a straightforward shift of nearly $5 billion to slash local tax bills.

The state House on Tuesday passed its version of a bill to impose new safety regulations on the increasing amount of oil that is shipped through Washington by rail, boat and pipeline.