Practice management

When Matt Camden, chief information officer at UHY Advisors in Chicago, faced an audit server outage in one of his New England offices over a February weekend, he was able to restore his data in a period of 11 hours."Two of our disks failed, which is a terrible thing to happen," Camden recalled. "All we had to do is put new server hardware in place, which is our responsibility, then we got the data back up, loaded it, and it worked like a charm." He credited his online data protection company, EVault, for the rapid restoration process.

IRS REVISES OFFER IN COMPROMISE APPLICATIONWASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service announced that its revised taxpayer application for an offer in compromise, Form 656, is now available. The Form 656 package was last revised in 2004 to help taxpayers prepare an offer correctly and completely.

Strategies for the use of tax-deferred like-kind exchanges have grown over the years from almost exclusively a real estate concern to one in which billions of dollars of business tangible personal property are traded each year. While the main battle continues to be waged over what dissimilarities in property are allowed and still qualify as "like kind," another fight has developed over how the property received in a like-kind exchange is to be depreciated.After tinkering with the depreciation rules in 2001 and 2004, the Treasury issued final regulations early in 2007. In its preamble to the final regs, the Treasury admitted that confusion and resulting inconsistency among taxpayers had developed. The final regs appear to do little to end those problems.

Recently, a managing partner shared with me his answer to the question, "When does turnover begin?" His reply was, "At the beginning."Duh! Why didn't I think of that? So, if employee turnover begins with the selection process, what steps can we take to improve it? There are many steps in the recruitment and selection process - and as they say, the devil is in the details. Here are some suggestions:

The Government Accountability Office said that the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t appear to be in a position to develop its own software for tax preparation anytime soon.As part of its partnership with the Free File Alliance, in exchange for a number of tax prep providers agreeing to provider their software free of charge to certain taxpayers, the IRS has agreed not to develop its own software. But because increased electronic filing would reduce the agency’s processing costs, reduce transcription errors and speed up refund turnaround, the GAO was looked to examine the benefits and costs of the agency creating its own online tax prep offering.

In an annual ritual, many small businesses rush out after tax season to take their accountant's advice on the tax benefits of incorporation, and business software and services company Intuit has relaunched its online incorporation and document-filing services site to coincide with the rush.

A combination of both strong economic growth and low unemployment helped keep state tax rates flat for 2006. Nevertheless, some states are continuing to mine tax-related revenue streams."Currently, there are several states that are looking to improve their tax structure," explained Curtis Dubay, an economist at the Tax Foundation.

One of my former employers has been the occasional subject of this column -- particularly when the topic centered on how not to run a business.

The American Enterprise Institute has released a new public opinion study that focuses on Americans’ historical attitudes to taxes.The study, “Public Opinion on Taxes,” was compiled by senior fellow Karlyn Bowman, who used available polling data to examine how attitudes toward paying taxes have changed over the past half century.

The Internal Revenue Service is reminding taxpayers to file their tax returns by the April 17 deadline and to pay as much as they can of any taxes they owe to minimize any accrued penalties and interest.

The Internal Revenue Service has submitted its Taxpayer Assistance Blueprint to Congress, as part of its response to Capitol Hill’s demand for the development of a five-year plan to improve the delivery of taxpayer service. The blueprint contains the joint response of the IRS, the IRS Oversight Board and the National Taxpayer Advocate. The groups all said that the document represents the most extensive IRS research ever conducted into the needs, preferences and behaviors of taxpayers and partners who assist them in complying with the tax laws, such as volunteer and paid tax return preparers.

The Internal Revenue Service announced that more than 1 million business taxpayers have electronically filed tax returns so far this year.

Along with making the case to keep executive compensation the way it is, the Financial Executives International recently said that investors are not well served by the complexity of financial reporting and released a four-point plan to address the problem.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight says that changes still need to come at mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Internal Revenue Service has begun to urge taxpayers who need additional time to complete their tax return to submit their request for an automatic extension electronically by April 17.

For the procrastinators among us -- well, for those of us who don’t prepare taxes for a living, of course -- the concerns of tax season probably didn’t take hold until recently.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service issued final regulations on the treatment of nonqualified deferred compensation plans and arrangements under Section 409(a) of the tax code.

The Internal Revenue Service has updated the list of areas included as being within the "North American area," referred to in Section 274(h) of the Internal Revenue Code.The section of the tax code limits deductions for expenses incurred in connection with a convention, seminar, or similar meeting held outside the “North American area.” In a recent revenue ruling, the agency updated the list of all geographical areas currently included in the North American area for purposes of the section.

Husband and wife grape-growers in Geyserville, Calif., got some mixed news last week, after the U.S. Tax Court took a closer look at how they could depreciate improvements made to their vineyard.The court found that although Leo and Evelyn Trendadue properly classified wine grape trellises on their land as farm machinery or equipment, because the irrigation systems and well the couple built on their property have a longer class life (20 years, as opposed to 10 years) those enhancements should be classified -- and depreciated for -- as permanent land improvements.

According to published reports, House Democrats are preparing legislation to permanently shield all but the wealthiest of taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax.According to the New York Times, the plan is still in its early stages, but would have the end goal of exempting millions from the tax -- although how exactly the revenue loss would be offset remains to be determined. The newspaper said that by the close of May, House Democrats hope to draft a permanent overhaul of the AMT that would exclude anyone who earns less than about $200,000 a year -- which covers about 97 percent of taxpayers.