Financial Disclosure

Most reporters would love to make $75,000. In a year. So it set my eyes to blinking when I read that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman got paid that much for a single speech, sponsored last week by the San Francisco Bay Area's clean air district.

Wealthy U.S. taxpayers, concerned about an Internal Revenue Service crackdown on the use of secret overseas bank accounts as tax havens, are rushing to meet a Thursday deadline to disclose those accounts or face possible criminal prosecution. The concern was triggered this summer when Switzerland's largest bank, caught up in an international tax evasion dispute, said it would disclose the names of more than 4,000 of its U.S. account holders. The decision shattered a long-held belief that Swiss banks would guard the identities of its American customers as carefully as they did their money, and it raised concern that other international tax havens might be next.

Reversing a long-standing practice, the trade and lobbying arm of the Hollywood studios won't disclose the average costs of making and marketing movies. For years, the Motion Picture Assn. of America has annually released a statistical analysis showing average movie costs of its six members, made up of the major studios and their specialty film labels.

In the latest skirmish over Proposition 8, the state's ethics agency and Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown filed briefs in federal court this week challenging an attempt to change campaign finance disclosure laws. Supporters of the November ballot measure that banned gay marriage went to court earlier this month seeking to throw out a decades-old state law that requires the names and personal information of campaign contributors be made public.

After eight years of budget practices that often camouflaged federal spending, President Obama is planning a new strategy of putting on the books as many costs as possible to demonstrate the extent of the nation's economic troubles, senior White House officials say. Obama's first budget, scheduled to be released in broad outline Thursday, will include at the outset money for the Iraq war, the military buildup in Afghanistan and other expenditures.

The Internal Revenue Service said Thursday that it was considering curbing tax refund loans offered by tax preparers such as H&R Block Inc. and Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc. More than 12 million people take out such loans each year to in effect get advances against their refunds, according to a study by consumer groups, which have long criticized the fees on the loans as excessive. The IRS suspects that some preparers may be inflating refunds to increase the size of the loans they make.

Los Angeles police union officials hoping to sway public opinion against a recent anti-corruption reform have launched a radio ad campaign this week warning that forcing hundreds of narcotics and anti-gang officers to disclose personal financial information will prompt them to leave those specialized units and "cripple the fight against drugs, gangs and crime."

The Los Angeles City Council pulled rank on the civilian Police Commission on Tuesday, moving to review a controversial policy that requires hundreds of anti-gang and narcotics police officers to disclose detailed information about their personal finances. The council's unanimous vote to assert jurisdiction adds to an already fiery debate over the financial disclosure plan, which has angered LAPD officers and their union leaders.

European leaders called Tuesday for expanded transparency in the banking system to make the risks in complicated investment vehicles and troubled loan portfolios clearer to investors and shareholders. Failure by the banking system to step forward would result in more regulation to force them to do so, the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the European Commission warned at a summit in London.

A Los Angeles City Council effort to overturn a Police Commission policy requiring officers to disclose personal financial information seemed destined for failure Tuesday, as civic and reform leaders warned that the council's intervention was undermining the commission's authority over the Police Department.