Tax practice

Most taxpayers have at least a vague understanding of the principle that gifts do not constitute taxable income, while payments for services are taxable. Unfortunately for exotic dancer and professional adult entertainer Veronica Fairchild, there is no middle ground which would allow her to include in income some of the money she received from a client as payment for her services, while she characterized the bulk of what she received as gifts.

Relatively few employers are claiming the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit under the Affordable Care Act, according to a new government report.

The National Retail Federation is urging Congress to reject any form of consumption tax as it considers a variety of tax reform proposals in a hearing Tuesday.

A Washington-based watchdog group is taking aim at Donald Trump, accusing his foundation of making political contributions that may have violated its status as a tax-exempt charity.

The Internal Revenue Service has released the Top 10 Identity Theft Prosecutions for Fiscal Year 2015 to highlights its efforts to combat tax refund fraud and identity theft.

Last week I met with a client for one hour to get his tax information. This is a client I have had since 1972.

The Internal Revenue Service is doing a better job of controlling its spending on conferences after the IRS faced ridicule three years ago for spending on an embarrassing series of training videos for conferences.

Democratic Presidential hopeful and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has urged the Treasury to block Pfizer’s planned corporate inversion.

A federal court has barred the owner of a dozen Liberty Tax Service franchises in the Los Angeles and Las Vegas areas after discovering rampant tax fraud, while a Maryland grand jury has indicted the owner and several tax preparers at some Liberty Tax franchises in Baltimore.

The Internal Revenue Service has raised interest rates for the calendar quarter beginning April 1, 2016, the first change to interest rates since the fourth calendar quarter of 2010 when the federal short-term rate decreased from 1 percent to 0 percent.

A roundup of some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

The number of presidential candidates has been steadily winnowing down in recent weeks as they suffer defeats in the primaries and caucuses, and so too their tax plans have been falling by the wayside.

If you’re in the tax preparation business, chances are you’ve had a client experience tax-related identity theft.

Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse has updated its Taxpayer Returns online tool with data through filing year 2014.

Fees are the fuel that keeps your practice running, yet many preparers hesitate to shake up fee structures no matter what those structures depend on.

The Internal Revenue Service has updated its venerable tax guide for this tax season.

In a media blitz last October, the billionaire investor Carl Icahn pledged to create a $150 million political organization to muscle an overhaul of the corporate tax code through a gridlocked Congress.

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

Although a recent ABC News/Washington Post Poll found just 6 percent of voters who lean Republican and 4 percent of those who lean Democrat rank taxes as the most important issue impacting their vote, one in five public company tax directors feel differently.

Nearly a quarter of Americans think it’s acceptable to lie to the Internal Revenue Service about under-the-table income.