Tax planning

The Internal Revenue Service intends to improve international tax administration in an effort to reduce the tax gap.

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.

Intuit said it plans to avoid the electronic filing delays that kept many last-minute tax returns from being processed last April.

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.

As tax prep suites have evolved to meet the needs of the particular market segment targeted by each product, practitioners now have a variety of products from which to choose - each of which will do the job."The desktop market is becoming extremely competitive, with each producer giving as much new functionality and offering it as cheaply as they can," said John Vora, chief executive of Parsippany, N.J.-based TaxSimple.

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.

Former football player O.J. Simpson, singer Dionne Warwick and comedian Sinbad were among the celebrities who showed up on California's Delinquent Taxpayers list.

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.

The Social Security Administration said monthly benefits would increase 2.3 percent for more than 54 million Americans in 2008.

Scandal-scarred health care provider HealthSouth scored $440 million in a tax recovery from the Internal Revenue Service despite the company's acknowledgment of financial fraud.

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

Ernst & Young has been named by a law firm that has filed a submission with the Internal Revenue Service's Whistleblower Office, claiming that one of the accounting firm's Fortune 500 clients improperly reduced its taxes by $1 billion through a series of transactions.

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 KPMG tax shelter case got underway with jury selection and a drastically reduced set of defendants.