New York State

After rejecting a plea deal that would have let him avoid facing public trial, Representative Charles Rangel (D – NY) has been charged with 13 separate ethics violations by the House Ethics Committee, the culminatio

Despite promising state workers last year that there would be no layoffs, Governor David A. Paterson stated on Monday that times have changed since then and that New York may have to cut jobs anyway, buttressing earlier statements made by state budget director Robert Megna last week on the same topic.

A recently released report from New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli shows that the majority of the contracts made by state Department of Taxation and Finance went towards banking or information technology services. Auditors examining the department’s 81 contracts for personal and miscellaneous services found that more than 98 percent of them were devoted to either banking or information technology needs. The contracts, put together, totaled about $563 million.

A House investigative panel has concluded that Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) violated a range of ethics rules, after a two-year investigation, according to the New York Times.

The investigative panel did not disclose to the Times any details about the nature of the violations that it found, but one House official who has been briefed on the findings told the paper that they included some of the most serious allegations that had been examined.

Figures released today by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli show that the state has ended the first quarter of the fiscal year with a negative balance, something that a statement from the comptroller’s office said has only happened one other time in modern history (we’re still waiting on a call back from the comptroller’s office to let us know when the first time was).

NYSSCPA leaders and members who attended the three-day annual Leadership Conference in Verona, N.Y., came together to discuss ways to improve the NYSSCPA’s service to different segments of its membership and advocate for the important issues facing the profession.

A number of new task forces were introduced by NYSSCPA President Margaret A. Wood and approved by the NYSSCPA’s Board of Directors at its meeting July 13, and the leadership discussed a number of new initiatives focused on increasing membership and member participation.

For the first time since the third quarter of 2008, the overall tax revenues for states rose 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2010 on a year-over-year basis, according to the latest State Revenue Report from the Rockefeller Institute of Government.

After winning seven World Series championships with the New York Yankees, the team’s billionaire owner George Steinbrenner managed to get a win in death, this time against the tax man. By dying this year, he kept his heirs from getting tagged with a 55 percent estate tax.

Many New York CPAs are finding that more and more small business owners are turning to them for help since banks and financial institutions tightened their lending restrictions.