Tax practice

And so it begins, the time of year when you’re likely to get inundated with appointment requests and phone calls from your small business clients, looking for advice to help them save money and protect them from potential IRS penalties as they close out the books for 2014.

ClientyWhys has launched TaxBuzz.com, a free online directory of tax professionals.

Next month, the IRS will auction off Darryl Strawberry’s right to receive payments under his deferred comp agreement with the New York Mets.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

An tax preparer was sentenced to 57 months in prison for filing false claims with the Internal Revenue Service using the identification of a dead tax return preparer whose practice he had acquired and preparing false documents for numerous fraudulent loans and tax returns.

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

The Tax Court held that the owner of a construction company who paid to sponsor his son’s motocross racing activities could deduct the payments since he was able to show that this helped him bring in business.

The Internal Revenue Service is joining with several national tax and accounting organizations to give taxpayers new options and tips on selecting reputable tax professionals and avoiding unscrupulous preparers.

The Internal Revenue Service has decreased its oversight of charities in recent years due to budget cuts and political pressure.

The IRS is freezing hiring, stopping most overtime pay and warning that it won’t answer about half the calls it will receive during the upcoming tax-filing season.

The $1.1 trillion spending bill passed by Congress this week and signed into law by President Obama on Tuesday contains a provision directing the Treasury Department to implement uniform standards for taxpayers claiming refundable credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit to stem improper payments.

Congress’s long-awaited passage of tax extenders legislation provides a short-term extension through only the end of this year of dozens of familiar tax breaks for businesses and individuals, along with a new savings program for the disabled.

The U.S. Senate sent a $42 billion package of tax incentives to President Obama for his signature, reviving dozens of lapsed breaks for 2014 and setting them to expire two weeks from tomorrow.

The Internal Revenue Service received fewer phone calls from taxpayers this year than in recent years, according to a new government report, but the percentage of callers seeking help who received it remained low while wait times remained high compared to prior years.

Companies planning for a merger or acquisition have various issues to consider as they prepare for the transaction. One of the issues is golden parachutes.

Federal prosecutors in Iowa have agreed to drop a controversial civil asset forfeiture case in which the Internal Revenue Service seized nearly $33,000 from the owner of a Mexican restaurant whose cash deposits at her bank had aroused suspicion of criminal activity.

U.S. life insurers take billions of dollars in undeserved tax deductions by shifting capital to states with looser reserve requirements and the practice should be halted by the Internal Revenue Service, a New York regulator said.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

In the waning days of the congressional term, a lawmaker has introduced legislation that would offer a reduced tax rate of 8.75 percent on corporate profits repatriated from abroad and use the money to pay for infrastructure improvements.

The Internal Revenue Service released a revenue procedure Friday providing rules for the nationwide rollout of post-appeals mediation for both Offer in Compromise and Trust Fund Recovery Penalty cases.