The passage of the new Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has given the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) an expanded role in the regulation of the nation’s financial sector, with new powers and abilities that include overseeing the creation of 95 new rulemaking procedures, more than any other federal agency.

In accordance with the requirements of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was recently signed into law, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it is making it easier for the public to provide comments as the agency sets out to make rules and amendments.

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.

Small non-profits at risk of losing their tax-exempt status because they failed to file required returns for 2007, 2008 and 2009 by May 17 have gotten a reprieve from the IRS.

The NYSSCPA website is back online after its servers were downed by a daylong network outage. Tecommunications company Verizon told the Wall Street Journal that the outage was a result of equipment failure caused by recent storms. AT&T service in a limited area in east midtown was also affected.

As of approximately 4:30 p.m., the issue appears to have been resolved.

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.

The IRS today released proposed regulations for establishing a fee of $50 for individuals who apply for a preparer tax identification number (PTIN). Certain tax preparers would be required to obtain a PTIN, according to the IRS.

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.

Selling some bonds and need a rating to go with them? In the past, organizations like Moody’s, Fitch and Standard and Poor’s would have said “no problem!” Now that the financial reform law has been signed into law, however, these three agencies, the biggest in the country, are telling sellers to look somewhere else, at least for the time being.