Tax practice

Bowing to pressure from Congress and media outlets, the Internal Revenue Service has released a pair of campy parody videos of Star Trek and Gilligan’s Island, while admitting that the $60,000 spent to produce the videos could have been better spent.

The House Ways and Means Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee held a hearing this week to discuss possible tax reforms on financial products such as derivatives.

The two leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and ranking Republican member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have begun developing proposals for reforming the U.S. Tax Code, including giving the Internal Revenue Service the clear statutory authority to regulate tax preparers in case the IRS loses its appeal of a recent court case invalidating its Registered Tax Return Preparer regime.

As U.S. lawmakers drafted a bill extending wind-energy tax credits in August, they revised a key clause that opens the door for a much bigger boost to the industry than just the one-year addition that was eventually passed.

The United States is now facing two deficits—a government budget deficit and a balance of trade deficit. These two deficits, together, will ultimately put the future of the United States in peril unless the government and its citizens take strong action.

House Republicans have passed the budget plan introduced by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., for fiscal year 2014, which shrinks the number of tax brackets to two brackets of 10 and 25 percent.

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee is calling on the Internal Revenue Service to provide a detailed accounting of how much taxpayer money will be used to implement the health care reform law and many IRS employees will be needed to work on it.

CCH has improved its CCH Tax News Highlights App for iPhone, iPad and Android mobile devices with social media sharing features, a new interface and access to more content.

An influential lawmaker on Congress’s tax writing committee is calling on the Internal Revenue Service to release a copy of video parodies it shot of Star Trek and Gilligan’s Island.

In the world of trust and estate administration, where tax planning typically involves special attention to federal tax law compliance, it’s easy to lose focus on state income taxation issues. And while some states do not tax income related to trusts, states that do tax trust income have a variety of rules and criteria for which trusts are subject to tax.

The Internal Revenue Service is giving relief from late-payment tax penalties to individuals and businesses that request a tax-filing extension because they are attaching to their returns any of the forms that couldn’t be filed until after January.

The U.S. economy will be between 1.5 and 2.6 percent smaller over the long-term because other nations’ corporate tax rates are considerably more competitive, according to a new study by Ernst & Young and the RATE Coalition, a group lobbying for lower corporate tax rates.

The Tax Court recently settled the valuation issues of an estate that held 64 works of art.

Headquartered in a former Rothschild chateau in an affluent Parisian neighborhood, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is best known for earnest conferences on economic and social policy.

The Minnesota Department of Revenue has reinstated Intuit’s consumer and professional tax products to its approved vendor list.

As the April 15 tax filing date draws closer, millions of taxpayers still find themselves somewhere between putting the final touches on their tax return and just starting the process.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued advice Tuesday to taxpayers on hiring tax preparers, saying it is needed to avoid “deceptive and fraudulent practices this tax season.”

Former IRS Commissioner Mark Everson takes a look at current state of the service -- and it's future

Europe’s drive to rescue Cyprus risks undermining a region-wide deposit guarantee plan, a key tenet in the battle to contain the debt crisis, and casts doubt on the ability of the weakest lenders to retain deposits.

The effectiveness of a team set up by the Internal Revenue Service to combat tax fraud and abuse in the Indian tribal sector cannot be determined because no specific performance objectives and measures have ever been developed, according to a new government report.