Tax practice

The Internal Revenue Service has released the spring 2015 issue of the Statistics of Income Bulletin, which features preliminary data for individual income tax returns filed for tax year 2013, indicating that taxpayers were earning more income and relying less on unemployment insurance as the economy recovered from recession.

Thomson Reuters has added content on like-kind exchanges to its Checkpoint Catalyst tax research system to help tax practitioners secure tax deferrals for their clients.

The Internal Revenue Service’s collection employees might not be taking all the actions they could to collect tax debts owed by defunct companies before closing out the cases, according to a new report.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has written to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for answers about the massive data breach that the IRS disclosed this week.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation unit was among the law enforcement agencies involved in indicting nine officials from FIFA, the international soccer federation that hosts the World Cup, along with five corporate executives involved in a massive bribery scheme.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

The Tax Court recently ruled against the IRS over what constitutes a “present interest” in a Crummey trust.

The Internal Revenue Service warned of a huge data breach of its online Get Transcript application that allowed the tax returns of approximately 104,000 taxpayers to be accessed by identity thieves.

The most common errors tax pros run across in prior years' returns

Bloomberg BNA releases its annual state tax survey

If your business has formed a captive insurance company that has elected small insurance status under section 831(b) of the Internal Revenue Code, you may be hearing from the IRS.

The Internal Revenue Service is reminding businesses in U.S. territories that they need to file Form 8300 if they engage in cash transactions of $10,000 or more.

A Florida CPA has been arrested and charged with using her tax preparation business to facilitate an income tax refund fraud scheme.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, have re-introduced a bill aimed at preventing fraud in the provision of Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers to undocumented immigrants.

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

Government contractors working on the Internal Revenue Service’s main communications portal for taxpayers and tax professionals might have overbilled the agency hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a new report.

Members of NCCPAP, the National Conference of CPA Practitioners, made their views known to congressional staff and IRS officials during meetings in Washington D.C. last week.

The IRS is refunding test fees to those who took the Registered Tax Return Preparer test.

A phone call between a taxpayer and an Internal Revenue Service collection employee was broadcast on Howard Stern’s Sirius XM radio show when the IRS employee accidentally put himself on hold after calling into Stern’s show.

The House of Representatives voted to revive the tax credit for corporate research and make it a permanent feature of U.S. law.