Tax practice

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.

The surge in U.S. companies avoiding taxes by taking a foreign address has been condemned by President Barack Obama and stirred a policy debate in Congress. What’s often overlooked is that these “inversions” are typically a final step in a hopscotch of multinational tax dodging.

The U.S. House of Representatives rejected an $11 billion bill that would have provided tax incentives for charitable donations of food, money from retirement accounts and land-development rights.

The Internal Revenue Service used its legislative authority to hire employees at salaries higher than those typically given to senior executives in the federal government, according to a new government report that found the practice appropriate, even though Congress has now stepped in to change it.

With the advent of the holiday season, now may be just the time to market yourself and your staff to potential clients, according to Chuck McCabe, president and chief executive of Peoples Income Tax and The Income Tax School.

Outgoing House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., officially introduced Thursday the comprehensive tax reform package he has been laboring over in recent years.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has released a report highlighting billions of dollars in tax breaks for “special interests.”

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

The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee have introduced bipartisan legislation to protect taxpayers against the inappropriate use of civil asset forfeitures by the Internal Revenue Service.

As year-end approaches, it would be worthwhile for practitioners to consider whether corporate clients could benefit from the following “last minute” tax-saving moves, including adjustments to income to preserve favorable estimated tax rules for 2015, deferral of certain advance payments to next year, and fine-tuning bonuses to make the most of the Section 199 domestic production activities deduction.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued an announcement extending the “deemed compliant” status of countries that are treated as if they had an intergovernmental agreement with the U.S. Treasury Department in place for purposes of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.