I don't have much in common with my friend Rob. Rob (I'm changing his name here so he won't yell at me) owns a 60-employee roofing company near me in Oreland, Pa. I run a 10-person information technology consulting firm. Rob has tattoos snaking up both of his arms. I have a mosquito bite on my left shin. Rob spends his days outside, in all weather, climbing up buildings and trading dirty… Read more

WASHINGTON - An Internal Revenue Service watchdog warned Wednesday that the burdens on small businesses from a new reporting requirement in the recently passed health-care law may outweigh any benefits from increased tax compliance. About 40 million businesses, charities, and other entities will be required to report payments to vendors starting in 2012, the IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service… Read more

The new federal health-care law may pose compliance challenges for taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service, an IRS ombudsman reported Wednesday. The agency, which will be responsible for administering major aspects of health insurance finance, is neither structured nor funded to effectively oversee social programs, the National Taxpayer Advocate Service said in a news release.… Read more

CHICAGO – Emergency rooms, the only choice for patients who can't find care elsewhere, may grow even more crowded with longer wait times under the nation's new health law. That might come as a surprise to those who thought getting 32 million more people covered by health insurance would ease ER crowding. It would seem these patients would be able to get routine health care by visiting… Read more

Among the ironies of President Obama's style is that he regularly denounces big business even as big business has been one of his closest allies. But that may change, at least judging by the Business Roundtable's high-profile second thoughts on Tuesday. "We see a host of laws, regulations and other policies being enacted that impose a government prescription of how individual industries… Read more

To listen to President Barack Obama, corporate America is a juggernaut, a force of calculating capitalists who ceaselessly plot against his national reforms. To listen to Ivan Seidenberg is to wish the president were even a little right. Mr. Seidenberg, officially Verizon's CEO, moonlights as chairman of the influential Business Roundtable, the "association of chief executive officers of… Read more

The enactment of ObamaCare comes with a price tag that Americans simply cannot afford — massive tax increases that will kill jobs and hurt American families, debt that threatens to crush future economic growth and burden our children with a bill they can’t pay, and a health care system in which Washington, not patients and doctors, is in charge of medical decisions. This government… Read more

JUAN MANUEL SANTOS has demonstrated that pro-American, pro-free-market politicians still have life in Latin America. Mr. Santos, who romped to victory in Colombia's presidential runoff on Sunday, has no interest in courting Iran, unlike Brazil's Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva. He has rejected the authoritarian socialism of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. A former journalist with degrees from the… Read more

Eighty years ago, on June 17, 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff, significantly raising the duties on imported goods. Hoover and his congressional allies thought that reducing imports would strengthen the economy. Instead, it contributed to a collapse in world trade and the spread of protectionism around the globe. The lessons from this policy mistake… Read more

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress from Iowa, Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin secured extra money in the new health care law to reward low-cost hospitals in their states, which they said had long been underpaid by Medicare. But it now turns out that New York will get more of the money than any other state, and some of the chief proponents of the bonus payments will not receive any.… Read more