Practice management

Accountants who meet with business clients to deliver tax returns during busy season are understandably pressed for time and attention. These brief meetings, however, are an important part of developing and cementing your role as a trusted advisor, and they can pave the way for cross-selling additional services to existing clients.

The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing last week to discuss the perennial issue of the tax extenders, the temporary tax provisions that expire year after year and are usually renewed.

President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, reported adjusted gross income of $481,098 for 2013, down 21 percent from last year, according to tax returns released yesterday by the White House.

U.S. states are trying to capture corporate income taxes lost to offshore havens, wary of companies exploiting rules that let them channel cash abroad and weary of congressional inaction.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases, including one preparer who is alleged to have sent in a false return for her dead mother.

Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen addressed a special thank you to the tax community in an email to tax professionals Friday, noting that their work is “critical to running the tax system and helping the nation.”

Write-ups are extinct. When I started in 1963, most small CPA firms primarily did write-ups. After I started my practice in 1969, it became an embarrassment to say I did write-ups. It connoted something beneath my “professional” status. I think a problem today is that write-ups no longer exist for younger staff.

The Internal Revenue Service has released the 2014 version of “The Truth about Frivolous Tax Arguments,” a document that describes and responds to some of the common frivolous tax arguments made by those who oppose the federal tax laws.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel has recently investigated several cases in which Internal Revenue Service employees allegedly engaged in partisan political activity in the workplace, advocating in support of President Obama.

The United States is working with other countries on multinational corporate tax issues, including the increasingly thorny issue of base erosion and profit shifting.

While the tax code definition of useful life for business assets is intended to correspond to their actual life, this isn’t always the case.

The Internal Revenue Service said Thursday it has initiated more than 200 new investigations this filing season into identity theft and tax refund fraud schemes, and the IRS Criminal Investigation unit has started 295 new identity theft investigations since January, pushing the number of active cases to more than 1,800.

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

The AICPA recently issued an Accounting and Valuation Guide on assets acquired to be used in research and development activities, replacing a practice aid it issued in 2001 for in-process research and development.

The House Ways and Means Committee voted Wednesday to send a criminal referral letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking him to determine whether Lois Lerner, the former director of the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations unit, violated the law.

The Internal Revenue Service did not pursue up to $53 million in potentially improper claims for the Qualified Retirement Savings Contributions Credit, according to a new government report.

A new Web site provides a state-by-state guide to tax laws and regulations for LGBT couples.

Thomson Reuters has published a special report on the 3.8 percent net investment income tax that was included as part of the Affordable Care Act, which tax preparers will be calculating for the first time on their clients’ 2013 returns.

The top lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee disagreed over whether extending tax breaks for research and international finance operations should be offset to prevent the U.S. budget deficit from growing.

Every accountant who wants to thrive, or at least survive in the ultra-competitive economy of today, must make sure that they take all the necessary steps to achieve maximum efficiency in all areas.