Tax practice

The Internal Revenue Service recently drafted Affordable Care Act regulations that offer some insight into what will be the associated monetary penalties for individuals who do not take up health care coverage.

While many taxpayers look forward to filing season as the time they can get “free money” in the form of their tax refund, those with more complex returns are focused as well on avoiding situations that might lead to an audit.

The Republican National Committee plans to hold a vote Friday on a resolution calling for the repeal of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

Employers remain in a holding pattern through 2014 regarding a provision of the Affordable Care Act that the Internal Revenue Service is not yet enforcing.

The IRS Return Preparer Office has updated total numbers of federal return preparers who hold PTINs.

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

A coalition of a half dozen business organizations, including the American Institute of CPAs, have banded together to express their opposition to a proposal from the Senate Finance Committee to require businesses to use the accrual method of accounting for tax purposes.

Refundo, a provider of low-cost tax-related bank products, has inked a deal with “socially responsible” San Francisco-based lender LendUp to couple short-term loans with Refundo's refund-processing platform for tax professionals.

The National Underwriter Co., a publisher of tax, insurance and financial planning information, has released the newest addition to its Tax Facts reference library, Tax Facts on Individuals & Small Business.

A former Internal Revenue Service employee has pleaded guilty to stealing identities from an IRS Service Center in Fresno, Calif., and using them to claim more than $1,745,000 in fraudulent tax refunds and obtain more than $175,000 in refunds from the IRS.

The Internal Revenue Service has released more documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Tax Analysts for training materials used in guidance for the IRS Exempt Organizations determinations office.

Thomson Reuters has released a retrospective report on the key tax developments of 2013, which included a major federal tax law as well as many significant new cases, regulations, rulings and revenue procedures. 

The Internal Revenue Service has released a set of proposed regulations to prevent abuses of the partnership basis adjustment rules, disallowing partnership loss transfers to avoid some of the abuses uncovered by the Enron scandal.

The Internal Revenue Service has decided to postpone a change it had planned for this year to limit the number of e-file signature authorization documents for filing Form 1041 estate and trust tax returns to a single 1041 return rather than multiple returns.

The plaintiffs who lost a recent lawsuit trying to prevent the federal government from providing tax credits to purchase health insurance on federal exchanges have filed for an expedited appeal in the case.

A federal appeals court has held that evidence seized during a premises search of a taxpayer's home by armed IRS agents, possibly in violation of statutory authority, was nevertheless admissible.

Even though tax season for individual tax returns has been delayed until January 31, the Internal Revenue Service and the Free File Alliance are opening up free electronic filing for taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of $58,000 or less.

American Citizens Abroad, a group representing U.S. expatriates, has submitted a tax proposal to the Senate Finance Committee recommending a number of international tax reforms, with the American Institute of CPAs also submitting its recommendations to the same committee on tax administration and simplification.

A federal court has ruled that U.S. banks must report to foreign governments on the holdings of nonresident alien account holders under the intergovernmental agreements that the Treasury Department has signed with other countries’ tax authorities in an effort to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

Payroll giant ADP is offering a new Protective Claims Service for employers to preserve their right to a refund of FICA taxes they remitted for certain types of severance pay, pending a final decision in a case that the Supreme Court heard this week.