Tax planning

So far, 2008 has not been a year for major tax legislation.Nor, being an election year, are the remaining six months likely to offer major legislation. Two bills that did make it through Congress prior to Memorial Day included tax provisions focused on farmers and alternative energy and on military personnel and veterans. The farm legislation required the override of a presidential veto and included a procedural snafu where one of the non-tax titles of the legislation was not forwarded to President Bush along with the rest of the legislation. Barring any litigation over that issue, the enactment date of the legislation is May 22, 2008.

A judge has granted permission for actor Wesley Snipes to travel to London and Bangkok so he can work on two upcoming films.

The state of e-services today can be compared to where e-filing was about five years ago.“If you look back five years, what we were saying about e-filing would sound a lot like what we’re saying about e-services today,” said Roger Harris, president of Padgett Business Services and former chair of the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council. “As practitioners and the IRS worked together, a lot of problems were solved. And today e-filing is the normal way of doing business. It will be the same with e-services.”

The Internal Revenue Service plans to hold a conference call on July 8 with the six largest audit firms to convince them to do more to help track the use of secret foreign bank accounts for tax evasion.

The Internal Revenue Service has moved the extended due date for partnership, estate and trust tax returns from Oct. 15 to Sept. 15 to avoid overlapping with the extended deadline for individual taxes.

H&R Block reported that its fiscal 2008 revenues rose 10 percent to $4.4 billion, thanks to growth in its tax services business and the sale of its troubled Option One mortgage unit.

Actor Wesley Snipes has asked a Florida judge to allow him permission to temporarily leave the U.S. to complete work on two of his movies while his tax conviction is being appealed.

Accounting Today is issuing a call for nominations for its annual Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting list.

A committee of tax experts delivered an annual report to Congress recommending improvements in the IRS's Web and electronic filing services, including one suggestion that would punish tax preparers who don't file individual returns electronically.

A former Internal Revenue Service agent has pleaded guilty to soliciting a $5,000 bribe from a small business he was auditing.

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that tax rebate checks and economic stimulus payments have boosted personal income, disposable income and personal consumption expenditures significantly since April.

The Senate Finance Committee held hearings on reforming international tax rules, looking at the ways the federal government taxes the foreign income of U.S. taxpayers and businesses.

The Internal Revenue Service has reversed itself on the rolling-average method of valuing inventory and will now consider it valid for tax purposes.

The prison sentences of a father-and-son pair of former cable television executives have been reduced by three years after an appeals court dismissed one of the two bank fraud counts for which they were convicted.

A study by Grant Thornton found that only 843 U.S. corporations out of nearly 10,000 took advantage of a one-time dividend deduction that rewarded them for repatriating their foreign profits, giving them deductions totaling $265 billion.

The House passed a bill promising relief for another year from the spread of the alternative minimum tax, but the bill already faces opposition from the White House.

The House Ways and Means Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee held hearings on bills that would encourage employers to automatically enroll their employees in individual retirement account plans.

The Internal Revenue Service should make several changes in its electronic filing system to address concerns raised by the American Institute of CPAs and others, according to two new reports.

A Russian appeals court has given PricewaterhouseCoopers' Russian firm the right to appeal a tax evasion case involving the firm's audits of the bankrupt Yukos oil company.

Vertex has acquired Levyti Consulting's Global Tax Office software and plans to market the product with its own global income tax and compliance systems.