Practice management

IMGCAP(1)]The accounting field may appear at first to be almost the opposite of sales. After all, you’re not trying to get a hospital to buy the latest x-ray machine. But the truth is: If you’re in business, you’re in sales. That’s the only way you can sustain and grow your accounting practice.

Under pressure from Congress, the Internal Revenue Service has once again extended its moratorium on collection enforcement actions on certain types of tax shelter penalties.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has temporarily stepped aside as chairman of the powerful tax-writing committee amid mounting calls for his resignation.

A former CPA who now owns a medical supply company has been charged in a $7.6 million health care fraud scheme, along with three other defendants.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission plan to collaborate more closely to monitor and regulate the municipal bond market and industry.

The Internal Revenue Service said it has unclaimed refunds totaling more than $1.3 billion awaiting nearly 1.4 million people who did not file a federal income tax return for 2006, including over $150 million in the state of California alone.

The Internal Revenue Service has made an administrative determination to accept the position that medical residents are excepted from FICA payroll taxes based on the student exception for tax periods ending before April 1, 2005, when new IRS regulations went into effect.

New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs has investigated nearly 800 income tax preparers in a month-long investigation and issued 2,010 charges for violations, including illegally advertising refund anticipation loans as “instant” or “rapid” refunds.

IMGCAP(1)]To gather information for law enforcement, particularly drugs and organized crime, Congress has long required U.S. persons owning or having signatory authority over foreign financial accounts to file a report with the Department of the Treasury disclosing information about the accounts.

A California tax preparer was sentenced to more than five years in prison and ordered to pay $377,468 in restitution after she was convicted of tax fraud.

Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to extend unemployment benefits, a 65 percent subsidy for COBRA health insurance for the unemployed, and a large set of tax breaks that expired at the end of last year.

The Internal Revenue Service has released statistics indicating a drop-off in both the number of tax returns filed for 2008, and the amount of income, showing the effects of the recession.

Accounting firm Clayton & McKervey has opened a Chinese Web site to attract Chinese businesses expanding to the United States.

Freed Maxick & Battaglia has hired PR strategist and communications professional Emily Alexandria Burns as the firm’s e-marketing and communications specialist.

BizActions, a company that provides customized e-mail newsletters that CPAs can send to their clients, has introduced Dashboard 2.0, the latest version of its desktop application that displays organized, up-to-date information about clients’ newsletter readership.

The Internal Revenue Service has temporarily suspended the requirement to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts for the 2009 and earlier calendar years, for people who are not U.S. citizens, residents or domestic entities.

The Justice Department has asked a federal court to stop two Miami-based tax return preparers from improperly claiming the First-Time Home Buyer Credit.

Inmates at a county prison just outside Key West, Fla., received up to $100,000 from the IRS after filing for over $1 million in fraudulent tax refunds.

The Senate’s latest stimulus effort, a “jobs bill” named the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, passed this week with a 70 to 28 margin.

ConvergenceCoaching has brought on Jack G. Lee III as a new partner in the CPA firm leadership and marketing coaching group.