Tax practice

The Internal Revenue Service has posted an updated Foreign Financial Institution Agreement on its Web site for implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA.

The American Institute of CPAs has sent a letter expressing strong concern with the Internal Revenue Service’s proposed voluntary certification program for tax return preparers, saying it “would cause significant legal problems that may ultimately frustrate the IRS’s goals, confuse the public, and lead to litigation.”

The IRS Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee presented its 2014 Annual Report to Congress during a public meeting Tuesday, with recommendations including the creation of an online IRS account for individual and business taxpayers and tax professionals.

U.S. lawmakers argued late into the night over a computer hard drive that crashed in 2011, taking the controversy surrounding the Internal Revenue Service to a new level of acrimony.

A central character in the 14-month dispute in Congress over the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of Tea Party groups is a computer hard drive.

To everyone but tax attorneys, the disclaimers referring to “Circular 230” that appear in the legends of most law firm e-mails are inscrutable as well as ubiquitous. The Internal Revenue Service has now changed its rules so that those disclaimers can be deleted permanently.

Bloomberg BNA has released FATCA — Information Reporting and Withholding Under Chapter 4, a new report portfolio in which international tax practitioners from PricewaterhouseCoopers analyze the reporting and withholding requirements imposed by the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act on both financial and non-financial institutions.

Love them or hate them, there’s one thing everyone can agree upon about the major government-mandated changes sweeping through the world of health care insurance: They’re confusing. And since so many of the changes involves taxes, don’t be surprised if your clients expect you to have all the answers.

The House Ways and Means Committee chairman called for a special prosecutor to probe the Internal Revenue Service’s loss of e-mails from the time the agency gave extra scrutiny to Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases, including a surprising number of cases involving fraudulent families.

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

The Supreme Court has held that a taxpayer has a right to conduct an examination of Internal Revenue Service officials regarding their reasons for issuing a summons when he points to specific facts or circumstances plausibly raising an inference of bad faith.

Several due dates for those with offshore accounts are approaching, with far-reaching consequences for those who don’t comply.

The Internal Revenue Service generally took reasonable steps to plan for the required sequestration spending cuts in its fiscal year 2013 budget, although it needed to cut back on staffing for taxpayer service, collections and enforcement activity, according to a new government report.

Supreme Court overturns an appeals court opinion that would have allowed taxpayers to examine the IRS agents who summon them to find out if they have improper motives.

The House Judiciary Committee has approved legislation by a wide margin that would prohibit states from taxing Internet access.

The Internal Revenue Service needs to improve its processes for disposing of unneeded computers, printers and servers, according to a new government report.

The Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday it would make major changes in its offshore voluntary compliance programs to provide new options to help both taxpayers residing overseas and those residing in the United States.

Congressional Republicans said Tuesday that the Internal Revenue Service has lost emails from six other officials besides Lois Lerner, the former director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations unit.

Congressional Republicans are demanding answers from the Internal Revenue Service after the agency lost more than two years of e-mails requested by lawmakers.