Practice management

Thousands of firms are working through the succession and retirement of senior partners and deciding along the way whether or not they can pull it off internally and stay independent.

You’ve been patient, e-mail after e-mail and letter after letter. Still the client’s fees sit unpaid for almost half a year. Last season’s delinquents still have a couple months to go, but soon it may be time for you to call in help.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

My childhood dream had two parts. One was to have my own CPA practice and the other was to own a bunch of businesses. The CPA part worked out great. The businesses part did not.

The House of Representatives voted to prevent companies that move their tax addresses from the U.S. to Bermuda or the Cayman Islands from winning some federal contracts.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to let companies write off more than half the cost of investments in the first year, providing a tax boost to businesses.

An Internal Revenue Service employee has been suspended for 100 days without pay for urging taxpayers to re-elect President Obama in 2012.

Lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate are advancing dueling measures today that would provide a short-term cash infusion through May 2015 to a fund covering the federal share of road, bridge and mass-transit projects.

Highlights of some of our favorite tax-related blogs from the past week.

The Internal Revenue Service is being urged to modernize the process of filing amended tax returns in a new government report that estimates the IRS could be losing billions of dollars from erroneous tax refunds claimed on amended tax returns.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

American manufacturer Ingersoll-Rand Co. forged the tools that carved the Panama Canal and shaped Mount Rushmore. When it shifted its legal address to Bermuda in 2001 to reduce taxes, the maneuver sparked bipartisan outrage in Congress.

The Association for Accounting Marketing has announced its board of directors and president for the term beginning July 1.

Better management of correspondence audits by the Internal Revenue Service could improve tax compliance and reduce the burden on taxpayers, according to a new government report.

The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance said it has helped 42,415 taxpayers who called its Taxpayer Information Center with language assistance in 79 different languages.

Recent highlights from some of favorite tax bloggers.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to put in place new procedures starting next January to limit the number of refunds electronically deposited into a single financial account or pre-paid debit card to three, as part of an effort to combat fraud and identity theft, including fraud committed by unscrupulous tax preparers.

One time I had three clients who were on the board of directors of the same NYSE-listed company. Two of them questioned every bill and every hour spent, and their fees were fairly low for people of that caliber. The third person did not seem to care what he paid, and his fees were quite high.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Taxpayer Advocate Service could improve its processing of so-called “systemic burden” cases that involve instances in which an IRS process, system or procedure has not operated as intended, according to a new report.

Check out the digital edition of the July 2014 issue of Accounting Today.