Michael J. Bologna
Michael J. Bologna is a senior correspondent at Bloomberg Tax, covering state and local tax policy for Bloomberg Industry Group. He has more than three decades of experience as a financial, legal, and legislative journalist and has received awards for investigations into tax shelters, corporate tax evasion, and tax whistleblowers. His current work combines day-to-day coverage of state tax systems with an investigative approach to how governments design and enforce complex tax regimes.
State and local tax legislation and enforcement
Bologna’s core beat is state and local taxes, where he tracks legislation, litigation, and revenue agency actions across multiple jurisdictions. His reporting follows tax bills from introduction through enactment, emphasizing how statutory language, fiscal projections, and enforcement tools fit together for both tax authorities and taxpayers.
As part of Bloomberg Tax’s national tax team, he writes regularly on state tax debates in legislatures and courts, reflecting how policy choices translate into concrete compliance obligations for businesses and individuals.
In coverage of Illinois legislation that imposes new taxes on digital advertising, social media platforms, prediction markets, and cryptocurrency investors, he explains how a single omnibus bill is projected to yield more than $800 million in new tax revenue to support a multibillion-dollar state budget. He focuses on the mechanics of these measures, describing how separate levies on targeted advertising, digital asset activity, and social media platforms will be structured and administered within existing tax systems. Across this work he stays close to the statutory text and budget context, giving readers a clear sense of who pays, when they pay, and how the money flows into state coffers.
Digital economy taxes and emerging tax bases
Bologna devotes sustained attention to the taxation of the digital economy, including targeted digital advertising, social media services, digital assets, and online prediction markets. His reporting on Illinois’s SB 3019 details how the state plans to tap these activities through distinct taxes and fees, describing both the projected revenue and the policy rationale for extending legacy tax systems into new digital markets. He highlights how these measures fit into broader revenue strategies, such as financing a $55.9 billion state budget, and what they signal about other jurisdictions’ potential approaches to digital tax policy.
Beyond individual articles, he uses Bloomberg Tax’s Talking Tax platform to explore digital tax issues in conversation with practitioners and policymakers.
In one episode he interviews a state tax official about how states should tax digital products and services, probing the risks for both governments and taxpayers if they fail to craft thoughtful, legally defensible rules for digital taxation. Through these pieces he positions digital tax policy as a fast-moving frontier in state and local taxation, connecting technical design choices to practical compliance and litigation risk.
Worldwide combined reporting and multinational taxation
Bologna extends his state tax coverage into multinational territory when state rules intersect with global corporate structures, particularly on worldwide combined reporting and income shifting.
On Talking Tax he has moderated discussions with state lawmakers pursuing worldwide combined reporting as a way to curb income shifting by multinationals, drawing out both their policy goals and the technical mechanics of these reforms. He uses these conversations to illuminate how states weigh competitiveness, fairness, and administrability when deciding whether to require worldwide combination or stick with water’s-edge approaches.
In covering these initiatives, he focuses on how new reporting regimes would change the tax base for multinationals and what that means for state revenues and corporate planning. His work underscores the tension between closing perceived avoidance opportunities and maintaining systems that taxpayers and tax administrators can operate without excessive complexity.
Multistate Tax Commission and state uniformity
Coverage of the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC) is another consistent strand in Bologna’s beat. He reports on the MTC’s efforts to promote uniform and consistent tax policies across states, with particular attention to how model rules and coordinated enforcement actions affect both revenue agencies and multistate taxpayers.
In interviews with MTC leadership, he explores how the commission’s mission to harmonize state practices intersects with the practical challenges taxpayers face in achieving full compliance.
These pieces frequently examine how guidance, audits, and joint projects under the MTC umbrella influence day-to-day compliance in areas such as apportionment, nexus, and emerging tax bases. By documenting the interplay between individual states and the MTC, he shows how de facto national standards can emerge in a system formally governed by separate state tax codes.
Investigative state tax reporting and FOIA-driven work
Investigative projects are a persistent feature of Bologna’s career, especially stories on fraud, abusive tax shelters, and corporate tax evasion. He has received awards for this work, reflecting a long-running focus on exposing schemes and abuses that undermine state and local tax systems.
His professional profile and public statements emphasize a deep interest in freedom-of-information practice and public records, signaling a reporting style that leans on document-driven investigations and transparency in tax administration.
Alongside daily coverage and enterprise investigations, Bologna writes a regular State of Tax column that pulls together developments in legislation, litigation, revenue agency initiatives, and Multistate Tax Commission projects across the state and local tax landscape. Through that column he offers synthesis rather than commentary, organizing disparate developments into coherent narratives about where state tax policy is heading and how enforcement trends are evolving. Across his body of work, he stands out from a generic finance reporter by pairing technical fluency in state and local tax law with sustained, records-based scrutiny of how those laws are implemented, enforced, and occasionally exploited.
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Abigail Summerville
Abigail Summerville brings a leveraged finance background to her work covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions for Reuters. She reports on deal-making and capital markets across food, beverages, spirits, personal care, skincare, bath products and pet food. Her stories focus on transaction terms, ownership stakes, valuation, debt structures and funding sources. She often breaks news on potential sales and strategic reviews before formal announcements. Notable coverage includes Sazerac’s acquisition of Au Vodka, Blackstone’s exploration of a ZO Skin Health sale, CVC’s efforts to sell the parent of Dr Teal’s, and Colgate-Palmolive’s planned divestitures. She also covers consumer IPOs, including Jersey Mike’s and Black Rock Coffee, and co-writes Wall Street market reports. She joined Reuters in 2022 after three years covering leveraged finance and primary debt markets.
Adekunle Agbetiloye
Adekunle Agbetiloye is a senior reporter who connects capital flows, hard numbers and energy transition to the wider African economy. He works at Business Insider Africa, covering how money, technology and energy reshape economic growth, jobs and living conditions. His beat spans the African economy, technology, energy transition, climate change, startups and critical minerals, with a focus on concrete deals and data-led stories. He reports on African startup funding cycles, sovereign wealth funds, billionaire investors, multilateral and private investment programs, energy and power markets, Bitcoin mining, and economic policy choices. His work follows how governments finance spending, manage debt and respond to social pressure, and how sector snapshots and health and development metrics reveal links between macro indicators, corporate strategy and everyday costs.
Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi connects Social Security, retirement programs and economic policy directly to the financial security of ordinary Americans, showing how macro decisions hit household budgets. She is associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch at CBS News, covering business and personal finance with clear, accessible explanations of complex money issues. Her core beat is Social Security and retirement, interest rates and inflation, and how policy, markets and company strategies affect workers, retirees, savers and investors. She reports on benefit adequacy, looming Social Security cuts, COLA changes, Federal Reserve rate decisions, fuel costs, trade tensions and labor’s share of income, always framing coverage around pocketbook impacts. Her background includes retirement reporting fellowships, prior staff reporting on technology, media and business, an Institutional Investor book on affluent investors, and freelance work for national outlets. She also writes science fiction and fantasy and is a Nebula Award finalist.
Alex Harring
Alex Harring turns fast-moving market, economic and corporate developments into clear pre-market briefings that show what will matter when U.S. trading opens. He is a markets and economics reporter for CNBC’s digital platforms and writes Morning Squawk, a flagship daily newsletter that gives readers five key things to know before the stock market opens. His beat spans financial markets, investing, consumer trends and the U.S. economy, with coverage of central bank decisions, inflation, corporate strategy, sector moves and geopolitical shocks. He focuses on how policy, data and earnings shape equities, interest rates, currencies and investor positioning, linking price action with underlying drivers in real time and in reported features. Harring’s background reporting on corporate news, business and the economy across print, digital, broadcast and streaming informs his habit of connecting markets, companies and geopolitics in one frame.