The Latest

I met someone last week and asked how she was doing with her accountant. She said everything was fine, but reduced the three interim quarterly visits to once every four months.

The Internal Revenue Service has extended its hold on certain tax refunds for returns filed by nonresident aliens and other foreign taxpayers on Form 1040NR beyond the usual 180-day limit in order to give extra scrutiny to the refund claims, leaving many undocumented immigrant workers waiting up to 360 days to get the tax refunds they filed this year.

Rager, Lehman & Houck, P.C., a regional accounting firm with offices in Pennsylvania and Maryland, has merged in Dallavalle & Co. P.A., a firm in Frederick, Md., effective Nov. 30, 2015.

CliftonLarsonAllen has announced its fourth merger since last week, combining with Accounting Management Solutions.

CPA.com and Vertex SMB announced the launch of a new cloud-based program providing tools and training for CPAs to create or expand a sales and use tax compliance and advisory practice in their firms.

The Private Company Council is calling for the removal of the effective dates of four accounting standards updates.

Xero unveiled the new feature Search for Xero, which improves the workflow and experience for customers with the ability to search across the cloud accounting software’s entire platform and all of a business’ financial records.

Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission recommended fining Toshiba Corp. about 7.37 billion yen ($60 million) for falsifying earnings, the largest financial penalty ever sought by the watchdog.

Generation Opportunity, a national, nonpartisan youth advocacy organization, announced last week that their November Millennial Jobs Report revealed that 13.1 percent of 18-29 years olds are currently unemployed. The data is non-seasonally adjusted and is specific to the 18-29 age group.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.