It’s Monday, September 25, 2017, and these are the headlines you might have missed last week:

GOP eyes corporate tax rate of 20 percent, retreating from Trump’s lofty goal

Interesting article over at the The Washington Post on the GOP’s plan to cut the top corporate tax rate of 35% down to 20% – that’s higher than the 15% tax rate promised by the Trump administration. Even though revenue collected through corporate taxes only amounts to 9% of total receipts, this plan would add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. However, GOP lawmakers project this loss in revenue will be made up through increased economic activity. That equates to sustained 6% GDP growth over the next decade – up from the current 2.6% growth rate.

Trump and the GOP wasted precious tax-reform time on another health care failure

John Harwood of CNBC talks about how the GOP wasted precious time attempting another Obamacare repeal bill, time that should have been focused on tax reform. However, what he fails to note is how much the repeal of Obamacare has to do with tax reform. Billions of dollars in tax revenue is tied up in the funding of these programs and failing to address health reform first makes tax reform all but impossible.

Rules would allow truncated taxpayer IDs on Forms W-2

In an effort to reduce fraud and identity theft, the IRS is proposing regulations that would allow employers to report truncated tax identification numbers. This would change the 9 digit social security number to 5 asterisks or Xs, followed by the last 4 digits of the employee’s social security number (XXX-XX-1234). Read the full story at The Journal of Accountancy.

Tax Fraud Blotter: ‘Good will gets 40 months’

Just a quick note: I was trying to find a picture that would best represent fraud or theft for this next article and I kept finding stock photos of guys wearing hoodies on their laptop…with their hoodie on. Can they not afford heat? Anyway, Jeff Stimpson has a great article over at Accounting Today (click here to read the full story). He covers some of the latest tax frauds, and the stories are interesting, to say the least.