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An IRS official filed a complaint alleging that he was told that at least one Treasury Department official tried to interfere with an audit of President Trump's or Vice President Pence's tax returns, according to The Washington Post, citing people familiar with the complaint. The whistleblower spoke to the Post and confirmed that he had filed the complaint to Congress's tax-writing committees and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. “I steadfastly refuse to discuss the substance or details of the complaint, but I have some legitimate concerns about reckless statements being made about whistleblowers,” he told the Post. The...

The distinguished judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit have considered how much Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have paid the Treasury Department to compensate the taxpayers for the giant bailout which kept Fannie and Freddie in existence and business. The court observed in its September 6 judgment: “The net worth sweep transferred a fortune from Fannie and Freddie to Treasury.” Specifically, “Treasury had disbursed $187 billion and recouped $250 billion.” The “net worth sweep” is the dividend on the senior preferred stock in Fannie and Freddie acquired by the Treasury in the bailout. Originally set...

Washington – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced coordinated actions to bring additional financial pressure upon those who manufacture, sell, or distribute synthetic opioids or their precursor chemicals. OFAC identified Chinese national Fujing Zheng (Zheng) and the Zheng Drug Trafficking Organization (DTO) as significant foreign narcotics traffickers pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act). OFAC also designated one additional Chinese national, Guanghua Zheng, for his support to the Zheng DTO’s drug trafficking activities, as well as one Chinese entity, Qinsheng Pharmaceutical Co....

The U.S. Treasury Department has incorrectly labeled China a manipulator of its currency. An important distinction exists between devaluing a currency and currency depreciation. Devaluing implies the People’s Bank of China actively manipulated the value of the Chinese renminbi to gain unfair advantage for its exports. Depreciation simply means the renminbi has lost purchasing power relative to the U.S. dollar, based on market forces. There’s no indication that China is actively devaluing its currency. However, according to the Treasury Department, China met a broad definition of manipulation laid out in the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, which says...

There is some $15 trillion in government debt that now yields less than zero, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan believes there’s no reason why U.S. government bond yields couldn’t join much of the developed world in the subzero world.

Democrats in the House have been demanding six years’ worth of POTUS Donald Trump’s tax returns because they say they need them in order to perform their ‘oversight’ role regarding — something — but the president has so far refused to cave to the demands. Last week, the Treasury Department also refused to comply, citing case law and other constitutional provisions that preclude Congress’ right to review the tax returns of any U.S. citizen (which, of course, the president is not just any U.S. citizen). Treasury’s refusal led House Democrats to huff and puff, with Judiciary Committee chair Jerrold Nadler...

The suicide of Alan Krueger, a former Obama and Clinton adviser who killed himself this weekend, has shocked the worlds of politics and business where he was universally revered. Krueger, 58, had a new book coming out in June and was still a member of faculty at Princeton University in New Jersey. He lived at home with his wife Lisa, with whom he has two children, Benjamin, 28, and Sydney, 26. He is survived by them, his elderly parents and siblings. The family confirmed that he killed himself in a statement that was released by Princeton on Monday but no...

The Treasury Department will auction $84 billion in notes and bonds next week in its quarterly refunding auctions, keeping the same size as in its prior offerings, the government said Wednesday. With Congress facing a March 1 deadline to raise the debt limit, Treasury said that it can use certain “extraordinary measures” to continue to finance the government on a temporary basis. Treasury said it was too early to provide “a more precise forecast” on how long the extraordinary measures will last.

As reported in Table IV of the Daily Treasury Statement, the U.S. Treasury collected approximately $21.672 billion in taxes on Christmas Eve, the first business day of the partial federal “shutdown” that began at midnight last Friday. Those Christmas Eve tax collections brought total federal tax revenues for fiscal 2019, which began on Oct. 1, to approximately $666.482 billion. On Friday, Dec. 21, the last day before the partial government shutdown, the Treasury collected approximately $10.876 billion in tax revenues, according to the Treasury statement for that day. That brought total tax collections for fiscal 2019 to approximately $644.811 billion—at...

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called the CEO's of the nation's six largest banks on Sunday amid a continued precipitous decline in the markets in recent weeks.  Reuters: The Treasury said in a statement that Mnuchin talked with the chief executives of Bank of America (BAC.N), Citi (C.N), Goldman Sachs (GS.N), JP Morgan Chase (JPM.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Wells Fargo (WFC.N). “The CEOs confirmed that they have ample liquidity available for lending,” the Treasury said. Mnuchin “also confirmed that they have not experienced any clearance or margin issues and that the markets continue to function properly,” the Treasury said....

You might remember back in May 2018 when sketchy porn lawyer Michael Avenetti was releasing U.S. Treasury notifications on Michael Cohen received from an unknown source within the Treasury Department. You might also remember when New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow wrote a sympathetic article after talking to the leaking treasury official. As a result the Treasury Inspector General began an investigation. Today, a U.S. Treasury employee named Natalie Mayflower Sours-Edwards was arrested and charged with leaking to numerous reporters multiple financial reports about suspicious financial transactions related to: Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, Maria Butina, and others.

Shortened title. Full title: Deep State Treasury Leaker Arrested – Senior U.S. Treasury Official Arrested for Leaking Financial Forms To Media You might remember back in May 2018 when sketchy porn lawyer Michael Avenetti was releasing U.S. Treasury notifications on Michael Cohen received from an unknown source within the Treasury Department [See Here]. You might also remember when New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow wrote a sympathetic article after talking to the leaking treasury official [See Here]. As a result the Treasury Inspector General began an investigation.

A U.S. Treasury Department official has been criminally charged with leaking confidential documents relating to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the Russian embassy and others, to a reporter from digital media company BuzzFeed, Manhattan federal prosecutors announced on Wednesday. Natalie May Edwards, a senior adviser in the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), was arrested on Tuesday and charged with unauthorized disclosure of suspicious activity reports, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman. She was expected to make an initial appearance in Virginia federal court later in the day.

The GOP's long-promised change is an offshoot of a tax overhaul last year that cut corporate rates and winnowed down the number of individual tax brackets. On Friday, the Treasury Department and IRS unveiled the new postcard, which will replace the current forms 1040, 1040A and 1040 EZ.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is optimistic on U.S. economic growth. "We’re excited. This is the six month anniversary of tax cuts. We’re expecting a big second quarter GDP number," he said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday. “Let me just say I have no advance notice of what it looks like.” President Donald Trump signed the Republican tax overhaul in December, which lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. Mnuchin cited the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's projected GDP growth of 4.7 percent for the second quarter. "I have no idea whether it will be that...

Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin: "The United States is engaged in an ongoing effort to counter malicious actors working at the behest of the Russian Federation and its military and intelligence units to increase Russia’s offensive cyber capabilities. The entities designated today have directly contributed to improving Russia’s cyber and underwater capabilities through their work with the FSB and therefore jeopardize the safety and security of the United States and our allies.” “The United States is committed to aggressively targeting any entity or individual working at the direction of the FSB whose work threatens the United States and will continue...

The Treasury Department’s inspector general is investigating whether Michael Cohen’s banking records were leaked after details about Cohen’s financial records were made public Tuesday, the inspector general’s office confirmed to TPM on Wednesday. The Washington Post was first to report that the inspector general’s office had opened the investigation into possible leaks of Cohen’s banking information. Rich Delmar, the counsel to the Treasury Department inspector general, told TPM that in response to New York Times reports on payments that Cohen allegedly received from a Russian oligarch’s U.S. affiliate company, the inspector general is looking into whether Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs)...

WOW! Treasury Department Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) published a list of all people & organizations whose assets have been blocked or frozen as a result of the Dec 21 Executive Order by POTUS The document is 1,108 pages.https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnlist.pdf

Many analysts dismissed “the Kremlin list” the Trump Administration released two weeks ago as a bad joke or worse and thus failed to recognize the extent to which its contents in fact have made Moscow far more afraid of the US president than they were before, according to Liliya Shevtsova. First of all, “by publishing practically the entire list of members of the Russian government and Presidential Administration, the White House shifted from the traditional Western effort of trying to divide the Russian elite into pro-Western and anti-Western factions..." Instead, it properly treated the entire kleptocratic elite as being linked...

The Treasury Department and IRS will seek to prevent hedge funds from exploiting the new tax law to cut their taxes through carried interest, Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday in congressional testimony. Mnuchin was responding to the news reported earlier in the morning by Bloomberg that hedge funds are setting up Delaware LLCs in large numbers to try to avoid the law's limitation on carried interest.