Tax practice

Time again to address the annual most important detail of your practice: How much should you raise your fees?

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases (and names).

Nine individuals have been indicted in two separate conspiracies in Portland, Ore., each of them claiming more than $1 million in fraudulent tax refunds, according to the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation unit.

The IRS released an advanced copy Thursday of Rev. Proc. 2014-54, which provides guidance on certain changes in method of accounting for dispositions of tangible depreciable property.

Despite their high payouts, international stocks and funds can come with big tax bills, but there are ways to offset those hefty levies.

Large partnerships, including private-equity firms and hedge funds, are often so complex that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service can’t audit them effectively, the Government Accountability Office found.

Congress made some moves this week in working on tax extenders, even though it is not expected to pass any legislation until after the midterm elections.

The Fifth Circuit rejected both the Internal Revenue Service and the Tax Court’s valuation of art contained in an estate, finding an estate’s valuation to be supported by the evidence.

Maintaining healthy client relationships is important for CPAs, particularly when their tax clients need some help with their tax planning that may require outside expertise.

Taxpayers are expected to receive a modest amount of tax relief in 2015, thanks to the annual inflation adjustments provided under the Tax Code.

Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., has introduced a bill that would help low-income married couples deduct twice as much of the interest charged on their student loan debts.

The Internal Revenue Service is being urged to improve its efficiency in auditing the growing number of large partnerships, in a new government report.

The chairman of the House Small Business Committee, Sam Graves, R-Mo., has introduced legislation to streamline and simplify the loan application process at the Small Business Administration by requiring the agency to permit the use of electronic signatures and electronic records.

If there were ever a politically opportune time for Congress to remove the National Football League’s tax exemption, it would seem to be now.

Bloomberg BNA has given tax practitioners and taxpayers a head start on their 2015 tax year planning, releasing a detailed projection of inflation-adjusted tax items for next year on Wednesday.

Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., has introduced legislation that would amend the Tax Code to disqualify movie and TV producers from receiving tax credits from the federal government if any of the production is done outside the United States.

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

WalletHub, a personal finance social network, has released an analysis of the rates at which S&P 100 companies are taxed at the state, federal and international levels and found they were on average paying more in taxes last year than in 2012, although some are still paying extremely low rates.

The House passed three pieces of legislation Wednesday aimed at limiting the authority of the Internal Revenue Service in response to scandals involving the extra scrutiny given to political groups applying for tax-exempt status as social welfare organizations.

The tax-avoidance strategies that companies like Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. use to escape more than $100 billion a year of levies in the U.S. and Europe are under threat from a plan drawn up by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.