Business Highlights

NEW YORK — Gap Inc. said it will reorganize its stores this fall into four different sections based on merchandise categories, adding that it will update its fashions more often.

Beginning in July, an in-store denim "shop” will sell skirts and jeans in a greater variety of washes and fits Cynthia Harriss, president of U.S. Gap stores, told investors Tuesday at a conference in New York hosted by Piper Jaffray Cos.

An activewear shop will focus on key items such as sweatshirts and hoodies. And a "clean” shop will sell items including black pants, khakis, skirts and woven tops. A T-shirt shop will likely be placed at the front of the stores in the summer months, but the shops will rotate positions with the seasons, Harriss said.

The new organization scheme, which is already reflected in the way the San Francisco-based company has reorganized its merchant and design teams, will focus on "constant innovations” that replenish fashions more often, as opposed to "big seasonal flows” and collections that would dominate stores for an entire season at a time in past years, Harriss said.

Northwest Airlines flight attendants reject wage cuts

MINNEAPOLIS — Northwest Airlines Corp. flight attendants rejected a pay cut package on Tuesday, setting up a possible showdown with the nation’s fifth-largest carrier. The Professional Flight Attendants Association said 80 percent of its members voted against the deal. Soon after, Northwest said in a bankruptcy court filing that it would move "soon” to impose its terms on flight attendants with or without the judge’s permission. The union has not disputed Northwest’s legal right to do that.

Northwest said in the filing that it would prefer that Judge Allan Gropper rule on its earlier request to impose terms on flight attendants.

The union said it wants to talk.

"PFAA is prepared to immediately return to negotiations with the company in order to reach a fair and equitable agreement as soon as possible,” union President Guy Meek said in a hotline message to members.

Lawsuits say company failed to provide promised tax help

NEW YORK — A company whose nationwide advertising offered tax delinquents a chance to settle with the IRS for "pennies on the dollar” collected hefty fees but often couldn’t deliver on its promises, according to a pair of lawsuits.

New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs filed a lawsuit Monday accusing American Tax Relief of bombarding households with junk mail that exaggerated what it could do for clients with big tax debts.

Separately, a Brooklyn woman filed a class action lawsuit June 1 claiming she and other clients paid thousands of dollars to the Los Angeles firm and wound up with the same debts with which they’d started.

"They never helped me at all,” said Willie Mae Brown, a retiree who says she paid the company $5,000 to help resolve what was then a $50,000 tax debt.

Brown, 53, said she later learned she didn’t qualify for the Internal Revenue Service settlement program the company was pitching to its clients. She eventually had to pay the IRS about $80,000.

"They lied to me, up until the very end,” Brown said.<