WASHINGTON — Congress seems increasingly reluctant to let taxes go up, even on wealthier Americans. Worried about the fragile economy and their own upcoming elections, a growing number of Democrats are joining the rock-solid Republican opposition to President Barack Obama’s plans to let some of the Bush administration’s tax cuts expire. Democratic [ Read More → ]

What’s stopping small businesses from hiring? One popular story line of the recession is that small businesses, which employ about half the workforce, are afraid to hire because they don’t know what health-care reform and tax changes will mean. Based on that narrative, some stock market observers predict that the November [ Read More → ]

NEW YORK — The developers planning to build a $100 million Islamic center near the World Trade Center site still have financial hurdles to clear: They haven’t finished buying all the property they want for the project and are nearly a quarter-million dollars behind on real estate taxes and late [ Read More → ]

New research from MSN Money suggests that UK taxpayers are wasting billions every year due to simple acts of carelessness or forgetfulness. MSN has coined these costly mistakes ‘idiot taxes’, a catch-all term for all those forgetful and stupid acts, like putting the wrong fuel in a car engine and locking [ Read More → ]

WASHINGTON — Prospects are bleak for fixing Social Security’s financial problems as the government retirement insurance program celebrates its 75th anniversary this week. Many Democrats adamantly oppose any cut in benefits to reduce cost and some won’t accept a gradual increase in the retirement age, something that was done in the [ Read More → ]

As and his adversaries look for winning themes in the run-up to the November congressional election, both sides are noisily clamoring to prove their support for a critical constituency: America’s small-business owners. At the White House, the president’s advisers are urging Democrats to portray Republicans as supporters of big corporations [ Read More → ]

NEW YORK (AP) — Small business owners who want to give their companies a midyear financial checkup may find it hard to forecast what the rest of the year will bring. It’s not just the economy that’s unpredictable, there’s also uncertainty about the tax laws. This may complicate the decisions that [ Read More → ]

The Associated Press WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund is calling for the United States to make a stronger effort to curb its budget deficits. The IMF said Thursday that in addition to cutting government spending, the Obama administration will have to consider raising taxes to get the U.S. deficit down to [ Read More → ]

Households are paying £84 a year in ‘hidden taxes’ on their energy bills to help meet the cost of combating climate change. But mounting pressure could see these taxes more than double to £176 a year within the next decade, warns uSwitch.com. Households currently spend an average £1,194 a year on [ Read More → ]

We are just months removed from one of the worst years for corporate idends on record. Uncle Sam is expected to take another big bite out of that income in 2011 in the form of sharply higher taxes. And yet idend investing has rarely looked better. This year [ Read More → ]