Tax practice

Small businesses need to deal with several changes in W-2 and 1099 forms and reporting requirements this year as the IRS looks to close the tax gap.

House Republicans, rejecting President Barack Obama’s demand for higher tax rates, countered with a $2.2 trillion deficit-cutting plan that would trim Medicare and Social Security and cap tax deductions for top earners.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she would try to use a procedure known as a discharge petition to bring a Senate-passed bill for extending the middle-class tax cuts to the floor of the House.

Large whistleblower awards have been making headlines lately. News of a record $108 million award paid out by the Internal Revenue Service in September, followed by media coverage of $38 million and $2 million awards only weeks later, seem almost more akin to reports on lottery jackpots than informant compensation.

Many tax practitioners focus on improving their efficiency during tax season, but there are plenty of things they can do in advance to ensure success from January to April, according to 2020 Group chairman and CEO Chris Frederiksen.

The Internal Revenue Service has released its annual update identifying the circumstances under which the disclosure on a taxpayer's income tax return with respect to an item or a position is adequate for the purposes of reducing the understatement of income tax and avoiding the tax return preparer penalty.

With the alternative minimum tax still unpatched for this year and estimated to spread to an additional 28 million households next tax season unless Congress acts to avert the fiscal cliff, newly released statistics from the Internal Revenue Service reveal that even the patched AMT hit millions more households in 2010 than in 2009.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department have released their 2012-2013 priority guidance plan outlining 317 projects that they plan to prioritize from July 2012 to June 2013 in providing guidance and regulations to tax practitioners.

The National Society of Accountants has called on the IRS to immediately revise the Circular 230 provision that states that tax preparers may not give tax advice that is not directly related to prepared tax returns.

Congressional Republicans dug in to fight President Barack Obama’s plan to skirt the fiscal cliff, rejecting his tax-and-spending proposal as the president heads out today to sell it to the American public.

What to do when your clients receive one of the IRS’s four new business income under-reporting letters

The IRS has updated procedures to strengthen the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number program requirements.

The Income Tax School has launched a Web site of more than 70 tax courses and products, plus many free resources for tax professionals. ITS said the move was in response to the new IRS regulations for tax preparers and the corresponding growing demand for tax education.

Two lucky winners in Arizona and Missouri will be able to claim the record-shattering $580 million Powerball jackpot after Wednesday night’s drawing, but they will also face taxes and need financial advice.

Last week I moderated an Accounting Today Web Seminar on Tax Office Workflow.

President Barack Obama urged middle-class families who are in danger of seeing their taxes go up next year to begin using Twitter and other forms of communication to urge lawmakers to extend tax cuts for the middle class.

The U.S. Treasury Department and Mexico’s Ministry of Finance have struck a bilateral agreement to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act requiring financial institutions to report the holdings of U.S. and Mexican taxpayers to each other’s tax authorities.

A recent federal appeals court decision has same-sex couples taking note. In Windsor v United States, the court allowed an estate tax marital deduction to the surviving spouse of a same-sex couple, striking down the Defense of Marriage Act definition of marriage as unconstitutional.

Tax Preparer Solutions, a provider of online income tax filing solutions, has launched two software products: Preparer Direct and the TPS White Label Platform, both designed to let distribution partners to provide consumer tax preparation and filing services to customers.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has revived his calls for increased taxes on the wealthy in the op-ed pages of The New York Times.