Tax practice

An Internal Revenue Service employee who prepared tax returns on the side has been arrested on wire fraud charges in Florida.

As we approach the November elections, the end of the year and the beginning of a new tax season, we’re not much clearer on the fate of the provisions that expired at the end of 2013, aka the extenders, that haven’t yet been renewed.

The Internal Revenue Service intends to process complaints against tax preparers from their clients in a more timely way, in response to a new government report that found it had begun work on only about half the complaints it received since October 2012.

Daniel Schwartz, chief executive officer of Burger King Worldwide Inc., said last week he doesn’t expect “meaningful tax savings” when the company adopts a new legal address in Canada through the purchase of a doughnut chain there.

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

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department have released their Priority Guidance Plan for 2014 to 2015, including the treatment of employer-provided meals.

While the effort to pass federal legislation governing sales and use taxes on online purchases appears to have stalled, some states have begun their own initiatives to require online merchants to collect and remit taxes from e-commerce customers across state lines.

The Internal Revenue Service has released the summer 2014 edition of its quarterly Statistics of Income Bulletin, providing data on foreign controlled domestic corporations and municipal bonds from tax year 2011.

Two years after a single vote on the U.S. Supreme Court saved a core part of Obamacare, opponents are trying to topple the measure again, this time using a four-word phrase in the law.

Tax lawyer Robert Wellen’s telephone keeps ringing with calls from hedge-fund executives he’s never met.

A roundup of tax news from the previous month

Regulations open availability of longevity annuity contracts

The profession speaks out in favor of cash accounting

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a notice warning businesses not to get caught in backup withholding if the name and taxpayer identification number submitted on a Form 1099-K doesn’t match the IRS’s other records.

The Internal Revenue Service has released a set of long-delayed draft instructions for the forms that companies need to file to comply with the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

The Tax Court has held that the value of an airline ticket received in the redemption of “thank you” award points from a bank must be included in gross income.

While both houses of Congress have addressed the passage of tax extender legislation, it is unlikely that anything will come of their efforts until after the midterm elections. One of the expired provisions that haven’t yet been extended is the R&D, or research, credit. If any provisions do get extended, this is one that will be in whatever package makes it to the President’s desk for his signature.

H&R Block and Liberty Tax have been expanding from traditional tax preparation services into other areas such as bookkeeping as they reach out to service small business clients year-round, giving traditional accountants some extra competition.

Billionaire Warren Buffett was an ally of President Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and the force behind Obama’s “Buffett Rule,” designed to increase tax bills for the wealthiest Americans.