Tax practice

The Internal Revenue Service said Monday that its systems are operational for all remaining individual and business tax returns.

Ernst & Young LLP has agreed to pay $123 million to resolve a federal tax shelter investigation while admitting wrongful conduct by certain E&Y partners and employees.

President Obama said that he hoped to work with members of both parties in Congress to stop the damaging impact of the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts that officially began on Friday.

The Internal Revenue Service today announced that interest rates will stay the same for the quarter beginning Apr. 1, 2013.

The Internal Revenue Service has postponed until Oct. 15, 2013, the deadline to make an election to deduct losses for the preceding taxable year from Hurricane Sandy.

In the Internal Revenue Service's continuing efforts to close the tax gap by ferreting out overseas income of U.S. citizens and residents, the IRS recently rolled out further guidance on the requirements of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

Highlights from the world of tax in the previous month

A former IRS commissioner examines the prospects for change

The number one concern of leading business tax executives for the year ahead is that in light of the current political and fiscal environment, Congress will enact revenue offsets to fund other legislative initiatives rather than make the U.S. tax system more competitive.

The budget sequester in Washington, D.C., could prompt furloughs of up to a week for Internal Revenue Service employees starting this summer if Congress is unable to reach a deal to avert the automatic spending cuts that are scheduled to begin on Friday.

A New Jersey tax preparer has pleaded guilty to willfully preparing false tax returns for his clients to secure larger tax refunds.

The Internal Revenue Service’s risk assessment process does not provide a reliable assessment of the risk of the improper payments in the IRS’s revenue funds, according to a new report.

The Internal Revenue Service said Thursday it was expanding its Voluntary Classification Settlement Program to enable more businesses to reclassify their workers as employees, as opposed to independent contractors, for future tax periods, offering them relief from their past payroll tax obligations.

The Senate has confirmed Jacob Lew as the next Secretary of the Treasury, succeeding Timothy Geithner.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to allow more of the remaining tax forms that have not been available for electronic filing yet this tax season to go through during the first week of March.

The Justice Department has won a tax shelter case involving Dow Chemical, in which the company was accused of creating approximately $1 billion in phony tax deductions in a scheme designed by Goldman Sachs and lawyers at King & Spalding.

The IRS has released Revenue Procedure 2013-21, which provides the depreciation deduction limitations for owners of passenger automobiles.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, one of the Treasury Department’s lead agencies in the battle against money laundering and other crimes, has issued an advisory to financial institutions warning them to beware of tax refund fraud and identity theft, and to report such activity by filing Suspicious Activity Reports.

Private equity fund managers are beginning to be concerned that they may lose their tax break on carried interest as lawmakers in Washington again debate tax reform.

Less than two months ago Washington escaped from the doomsday scenario of the looming “fiscal cliff.” Now it faces the threat of the less colorfully named “sequester” or “sequestration,” depending on who’s talking about it, but somehow the dire warnings of impending disaster are beginning to sound unconvincing.