Tax practice

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases, including jail time for the crooked preparer who was caught by a vigilant mail carrier.

As the poet Edgar Guest tells us, “It takes a heap o’ livin’ just to make a house a home,” or, in a case just decided by the New York Court of Appeals, to at least make it a “permanent place of abode.”

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

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen took some time off from his busy filing season schedule to discuss some questions posed by our readers and staff.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service released a final package of regulations Thursday to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and amend the regulations to align them with existing tax rules.

The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hold a hearing next week on a crackdown on offshore tax evasion that has stalled as prosecutors conduct criminal probes of 14 banks, including Credit Suisse Group AG.

The top Republican tax writer in Congress will release a draft plan to revamp the U.S. tax code amid political odds that are stacked against him.

Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen said the IRS is still looking at various options after losing an appeal on its authority to regulate tax preparers, but now sees a further appeal as unlikely.

The Internal Revenue Service has released its annual “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams, cautioning taxpayers to protect themselves against a wide range of schemes ranging from identity theft to tax return preparer fraud this tax season.

Participants in the Internal Revenue Service’s Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program were more likely to disclose foreign bank accounts from Switzerland than other countries, according to a new government report.

General Electric Co. sued the Internal Revenue Service seeking a $658 million refund for overpaid federal taxes and interest tied to losses it claimed from the sale of ERC Life Reinsurance.

The Internal Revenue Service has released a Transfer Pricing Audit Roadmap to help the transfer pricing specialists in its Large Business & International division successfully audit the tax strategies of multinational companies.

Now that clients have access to their transcripts online, tax preparers need to be prepared to answer these six questions.

A proposed Swiss-German tax accord is dead and buried amid growing public opposition in Germany to any agreement that’s seen as too easy on evaders, senior members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition said.

Some Internal Revenue Service executives have incorrectly classified their travel as non-taxable, even though the IRS has written guidance and procedures to inform the agency’s senior executives and managers when their overnight long-term travel reimbursements are subject to employment taxes, according to a new government report.

A chiropractor has been arrested for attempting to bribe an Internal Revenue Service auditor who questioned deductions the chiropractor had claimed for payments to two female patients who had accused him of inappropriately touching them.

Some of our favorite recent cases of tax fraud.

The Internal Revenue Service said Friday that tax filings so far in 2014 have outpaced filings for the same time last year.

Senators Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have introduced bipartisan legislation to reinstate a tax incentive for the production of domestic biodiesel fuel.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has been confirmed as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, succeeding Max Baucus, D-Mont., who was confirmed last week as Ambassador to China.