Practice management

Employers are able to exclude the value of an employee's use of an employer-provided cell phone from the employee's gross income if the employee keeps careful records distinguishing business and personal calls, according to a recently released letter from an Internal Revenue Service official.

After repeated pleas from tax practitioners, lawyers and others, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service announced that they would extend the final deadline for compliance with new rules on nonqualified deferred-compensation plans for a year, until Dec. 31, 2008.The regulations, which provide guidance under Section 409A regarding the requirements for deferral elections and payment timing in deferred-comp plans, were in response to legislation enacted in 2004. Section 409A has been effective since Jan. 1, 2005, but the IRS did not release the final regulations until April of this year, with an original deadline of Dec. 31, 2007, which many felt was far too early, given the complexity of the plans and the amendments that companies may have to make to them.Over the summer, a number of practitioner groups, including a group of 92 separate law firms, contacted the Treasury and the IRS to press the case for more time.The IRS noted that it plans to follow up Notice 2007-86, which extends the deadline, with guidance regarding a correction program as soon as possible.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Congress should stop dithering on passing a fix for the Alternative Minimum Tax.

Because of the thousands upon thousands of press releases that I have seen, very few impress or take me by surprise. But the one at www.healthsouth.com/who_we_are/press_releases.asp did just that. In the release, HealthSouth Corporation announced that it has received a $440 million tax recovery from the IRS “for overstatements of taxable income attributable to financial fraud perpetrated by members of prior management.” This recovery includes a $296 million tax refund for the tax years 1996 through 1999, and $144 million of associated interest income.

IRS OFFERS FORECLOSURE VICTIMS ADVICEWashington, D.C. - The Internal Revenue Service is reaching out to former homeowners who have suffered foreclosure and now are being hit with taxes on any money they were forgiven on their mortgages.

With 2008 little more than two months away, tax practitioners finally have their clients' attention on the need for year-end tax planning.As in prior years, year-end 2007 presents unique tax planning challenges, as well as traditional opportunities. Especially this year, sunset provisions, phase-ins and phase-outs, and inflation adjustments, as well as retroactive and prospective legislative changes and deadlines set in final regulations, all contribute to chasing a moving target.

You may well ask, where did I find a title like this? I doubt that you have ever wondered what Sir Isaac Newton has to do with running a CPA firm - or, for that matter, any business.While everyone knows Newton as the discoverer of gravity, it's really his three laws concerning the behavior of moving objectives that are meaningful today. Even though these laws were defined 320 years ago, they can help explain the behavior of some of your partners today. His laws of motion apply to physical entities operating in space, and describe how these entities interact. However, they can just as easily be applied to human entities interacting in an environment of workplace change.

The Internal Revenue Service reiterated its demand for casinos and other poker tournament sponsors to begin reporting winnings of more than $5,000 after March 4, 2008.

The Internal Revenue Service position on Circular 230 monetary penalties has generated concern and comments from the American Institute of CPAs, while the American Bar Association Tax Section intends to submit its own comments on the matter.The penalties were announced in Notice 2007-39 earlier this year to implement Section 822 of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, which expanded the sanctions that the IRS can impose for certain prohibited conduct to include monetary penalties.

The Internal Revenue Service said that personal exemptions and standard deductions would rise and tax brackets would widen as it adjusted a variety of tax provisions for 2008 to keep pace with inflation.

The Internal Revenue Service said that Form 1120-A, U.S. Corporation Short-Form Income Tax Return, is now obsolete.

Automatic Data Processing's Small Business Services division released an online payroll system aimed at accountants who service small businesses.

It finally happened: The first Baby Boomer applied for Social Security this week. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a former teacher who was born at one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946, applied for Social Security benefits over the Internet, starting what is likely to be an avalanche of applications for retirement benefits.

The House of Representatives has approved a bill that would ban private tax collections, but the bill's prospects remain uncertain in the Senate.

The Internal Revenue Service is not doing a good job of managing its paper case files, according to a newly released report.

A high-ranking Treasury Department official has warned of the costs of tax-exempt bond financing for projects such as sports stadiums.

Republican presidential candidates debated their tax-lowering credentials at an event sponsored by CNBC, MSNBC and The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday evening.

The Internal Revenue Service has given businesses a simpler process for requesting relief for late elections.

The push to raise taxes on hedge funds, private equity firms and their managers seems to have stalled for this year in Congress.

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would provide relief to homeowners facing the threat of taxes on their foreclosed homes in the midst of the subprime mortgage meltdown.