Tax practice

Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., who chairs the House Small Business Committee, has sent a letter to Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen asking the IRS to do more outreach and education to help small businesses deal with the new forms required for the Affordable Care Act.

The IRS, aiming to facilitate U.S. treatment regarding two popular Canadian retirement plans, has simplified procedures for Americans in those plans.

Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen has written a letter to the leaders of Congress’s main tax committees urging them to decide soon on what to do about extending dozens of expired tax provisions, or else next tax season and the processing of tax refunds could be delayed.

A tax return preparer in East Orange, N.J., has pleaded guilty to willfully preparing false tax returns for clients.

The U.S. Supreme Court turned away an appeal by a Verizon Communications Inc. unit in a $51 million fight over taxes on a now-obsolete service used to connect to the Internet with a dial-up modem.

The Internal Revenue Service failed to comply with Freedom of Information Act requirements for about 11 percent of the requests it received for information, according to a new report.

A Rhode Island man has been sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison for threatening to assault and murder an Internal Revenue Service agent and his family.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s proposed rules to prevent companies from taking a foreign address have ended one deal and forced another to get more expensive financing.

The IRS seeks applications for vacancies on its Advisory Committee on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities, which provides a venue for public input on relevant areas of tax administration.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

Our new weekly roundup of tax-related investment strategies and news your clients may be thinking about.

QuickBooks maker Intuit and American Express now offer eligible preparers the option of putting some clients’ IRS refunds on a new American Express Serve Card, a reloadable prepaid account.

H&R Block is debuting a new program to encourage consumer savings at tax time, working with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the U.S. government agency charged with making financial markets work for American consumers, to encourage consumers to use tax refunds to build savings.

One of the efforts states are making to increase their revenue stream is to tighten up their enforcement of worker misclassification.

The Internal Revenue Service has released proposed regulations to address the tax treatment of distributions from designated Roth IRA accounts under tax-favored retirement plans.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued final regulations on the deductibility of expenses for lodging when an individual is not traveling away from home, permitting them in some cases for taxpayers who pay or incur local lodging expenses.

Ford Motor Co. lost another bid to recoup $445 million in interest on overpayment of income taxes, with an appeals court in Cincinnati, Ohio, blaming inconsistent tax agency rules for its denial.

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

The Internal Revenue Service has strengthened the security of its e-Services registration process for tax professionals and taxpayers as identity theft and data breaches have become a greater concern.

While coping with a series of budget cuts and employee reductions in recent years, the Internal Revenue Service managed to increase the total dollars it received and collected for the third consecutive year, according to a new government report.