If you plan to buy a new car this year then this couldn’t have come at a more apt time as the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service announced last week that a sales tax break would be levied on new vehicles bought in the United States.

All this is attributed to the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009″ which allows taxpayers to buy a new vehicle without paying the state /local sales/excise tax made this year.

Not only that but states that currently do not levy sales tax such as Oregon, New Hampshire, Montana, Hawaii, Delaware and Alaska qualify for the tax sops as well, says the Treasury and the IRS. What this would mean for you is that vehicles would now be cheaper in these states.

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Former AT&T chairman and CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. would head GM’s board post GM’s bankruptcy protection recovery.

The 67 year old ex AT&T CEO will replace Kent Kresa, though Kresa will continue to serve as the interim chairman of the company till it recovers from bankruptcy. Whitacre was responsible for the company’s sales and acquisitions during his tenure as the CEO and chairman of AT&T and its forerunners from 1990-2007.

Whitacre also serves the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp and Exxon Mobil and the railroad company boards.

Whitacre would form an important part of a newly formed board which would include current board representatives Erroll B. Davis Jr., Kathryn V. Marinello, Philip A. Laskawy, E. Neville Isdell, Intermediate CEO Kresa and CEO Fritz Henderson. It is speculated that the rest of the members who represent the board currently would in all probabilities retire.

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In reaction to President Obama’s proposed plan on changing the income tax deferment rules for corporates, Steve Ballmer the Microsoft CEO warned that Microsoft would move a chunk of it’s operations overseas.

Bloomberg News reported that Ballmer remarked that he would move the jobs overseas if the purported international tax reforms are passed stressing on the fact that the current US taxes make hiring workforce in U.S. expensive.

President Obama believes that under the existing tax law, MNC’s “ship jobs overseas” as companies can instantly deduct costs on foreign investment from their taxes in the U.S. and putt off paying their taxes on profits earned overseas until it gets repatriated back to the country.

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In an announcement today, IRS officials stated that they taxpayers can now depend on the defined “United States person” status as put forward earlier in an instruction to the FBAR form for determining eligibility rules.

This is applicable to the taxpayers who are nearing the 30th June 09 last date for filing the FBAR form.

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Looks like the retail mania of offering discounts has not spared even the United States Treasury either. At a time when the Nationwide Tax Forums commence, the treasury invites professionals in the field of finance, mainly tax planners to register early for one of the 6 forums and avail a discount on the full registration fee. The registration fee amounts to $129 usually.

What exactly does the Nationwide Tax Forum do?

The Nationwide Tax Forum conducts seminars and workshops spread over three days with the aim of educating the population on information relating to tax.

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It is sometimes hard to believe that we still live in the same world where not so long, mutual funds were considered “incomprehensible”, life was a lot simpler with a fixed plan in every student’s mind when they entered graduate school.

The common ingredients to this recipe of a successful life usually consisted of studying hard, working for a well paying job, building a comfortable home to call your own, saving some money for the rainy day and putting some away for the kids when they came along.

In the face of today’s economic meltdown, one would happily trade the present stress for the mindset of the past!

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The time just does not seem right either for school leavers or for those leaving graduate school. With stars in their eyes, these students had worked hard to get into their dream graduate school.

But with recession looming large, just hard work alone is not sufficient as money appears to be the reason many high schoolers are letting go of their dream schools and settling for second best.

A survey predicts that 71% of the high school graduates ruled out their choice of getting into a grad school of their choice because of money or the lack of it! Even parents who would pay any amount for prestige are doing a re think.

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Speaking at the launch of the “Tax Return Preparer Review”, Doug Shulman the IRS commissioner said that by 2009 end, an intensive set of recommendations would be proposed so that IRS could leverage the preparers with goals higher compliance from taxpayers and ensure high levels of moral and ethical conduct for the tax return preparers.

It is anticipated that the recommendation would aim at creating:

• New framework for regulation of the tax return preparers
• Extensive support and reach for tax return preparers
• Training and educational programs for tax return preparers
• Action in cases of a misconduct of tax return preparer

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Ten big banks from the United States have got the green signal from the Treasury Department to repay the $68 Billion of the government bailout money. This comes in wake of the complaints made by the bank officials that the restrictions that the government had imposed made it difficult for these banks to retain the high performing executives.

On receiving the permission to start repaying the money, these banks are now free from these restrictions. Among these banks are, American Express Co, JP Morgan Chase & Co, State Street Corp, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., U.S. Bancorp, Capital One Financial Corp, BB&T Corp and Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

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Last week Bank of America Corp announced that 2 of its directors have resigned from the board committee, bringing the total number of people who resigned since April to five.

The stepping down of Patricia Mitchell and Jackie Ward, effective this June 3rd is no surprise as it was a part of the overhaul process in order to strengthen the financial and banking expertise of the board. It may result in careful examination by directors of the Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis, who had resigned from his role in April.

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