Michael Cohn

The Internal Revenue Service has found that changes in Form 8863, Education Credits, are delaying more than 600,000 tax returns, many of which appear to come from H&R Block.

Taxes are increasingly spreading beyond national and state borders to make more of a global impact, affecting economic activity across the world.

Less than two months ago Washington escaped from the doomsday scenario of the looming “fiscal cliff.” Now it faces the threat of the less colorfully named “sequester” or “sequestration,” depending on who’s talking about it, but somehow the dire warnings of impending disaster are beginning to sound unconvincing.

Even though President Obama indicated only last Friday that the fiscal cliff deal likely to be produced by the January 1 deadline would be a basic package, lawmakers managed to come out with a surprisingly comprehensive set of tax provisions, some with long-lasting effects.

Wednesday was a red-letter day for many accounting departments, as December 19 was the busiest day for submitting expense reports.

The so-called fiscal cliff has politicians in Washington performing the political equivalent of a soap opera as they leave the country in suspense about whether they will manage to resolve a self-inflicted crisis in time to avoid a recession next year.

It seems almost unimaginable for Hostess Brands to be going out of business, but the company seems determined to receive court approval of its bankruptcy plans, which will cost the jobs of more than 18,000 workers.

With tax cuts galore expiring at the end of the year, and steep cuts in both defense spending and discretionary spending on the horizon, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are doing a complicated dance at the edge of the so-called fiscal cliff.

The Internal Revenue Service’s decision to modify the timelines for withholding agents and foreign banks to comply with the stiff new due diligence requirements under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is providing them, as well as taxpayers and preparers, with some welcome relief.

Koltin Consulting Group CEO Allan Koltin described the best practices of high-performing accounting firms and partners during a keynote speech at Accounting Today’s Growth & Profitability Summit on Tuesday.

Financial whistleblowers are beginning to be treated with more respect by government agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The American Institute of CPAs appears to be making progress on a Financial Reporting Framework for Small and Medium-sized Entities that it has been developing in the wake of the Financial Accounting Foundation’s decision to set up a Private Company Council, and plans to expose the framework by the end of the month.

Korean pop sensation Psy has been shattering YouTube records with his infectious “Gangnam Style” music video, which could offer some lessons for accountants whose outreach efforts often go overlooked.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is provoking a retrospective look at the good and bad after-effects of the landmark legislation.

Politicians and policy makers always seem to be talking about “broadening the tax base” and “eliminating tax loopholes,” but rarely do we hear specifics.

I meant to write about the latest corporate-sponsored holiday, National Fight Procrastination Day, when it occurred last Thursday, but I just didn’t get around to it.

Fifty years after the untimely death of film legend Marilyn Monroe, the courts are apparently still hearing challenges over her estate and her taxes.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently issued rule requiring companies to disclose their use of minerals from the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo could be an early indication of a future direction of regulators, prodding companies into providing more disclosures of environmental, social, humanitarian and labor issues.

A new report from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board indicates that auditing firms have apparently ignored or forgotten the lessons that came out of the Bernard Madoff scandal and similar financial frauds of recent years.

Deloitte opened its Deloitte University facility about a year ago and it’s already using the campus to host forward-looking discussions on talent development.