Tax practice

The Internal Revenue Service said Monday it is extending the time period for commenting on guidance it has issued pertaining to the application of the general welfare exclusion to Indian tribal government programs.

A former Internal Revenue Service employee has been sentenced to 105 months in prison and ordered to pay $30,649 in restitution after pleading guilty to identity theft and theft of government property.

The Internal Revenue Service has redesigned its educational Web site for tax-exempt organizations, with a new look and improved navigation.

The Internal Revenue Service offered advice to taxpayers and preparers about a new form they will need to use to report most capital gains and losses from transactions relating to investment property.

The Internal Revenue Service has informed a small business advocacy group that it will not require businesses to reconcile their gross receipts with the merchant card transactions reported on the new 1099-K information reporting form.

Swiss bank UBS sought to distance itself from a U.S. investigation of rival Swiss private banks on Thursday, saying that it did not hand over data on rival banks directly to U.S. officials when it settled a U.S. crackdown on taxpayers holding secret offshore accounts two years ago.

The Internal Revenue Service is reminding tax preparers that they need to complete 15 hours of continuing education, starting this year, under new requirements, and has posted a list of approved providers.

The IRS effort to combat identity theft couldn’t have come at a better time. With the IRS closing in on its goal of 80 percent e-filed returns (aided in part by the e-filing mandates on return preparers), the last thing it needs is a decline in confidence in the system. Yet that’s just what has happened, according to a survey commissioned by tax software developer Taxsoftware.com.

The Internal Revenue Service has released guidance and forms that can be used to claim a recently expanded tax credit for employers who hire veterans, with newly streamlined certification requirements.

The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on the interaction of tax and financial accounting rules on tax reform.

Intuit has made several updates to its Tax Research and Tax Import for Lacerte and ProSeries products, in response to a recent survey of accounting professionals.

A pair of Democratic senators who chair influential committees have introduced legislation aimed at closing a variety of tax loopholes to reduce the budget deficit.

The Internal Revenue Service has released an expanded version of its smartphone application, IRS2Go, with a new YouTube video feature and additional tax help for taxpayers.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department have released an eagerly anticipated set of proposed regulations for implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

The tax refund delays this tax season could be tied not only to new identity theft detection filters, but also to overly tight business rules written into the IRS’s Electronic Fraud Detection System.

An investor in a foreign currency trading fund has been sentenced to five years in prison for evading more than $150,000 in taxes.

A pair of Republican members of Congress have introduced a bill to prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from implementing a new tax-reporting requirement for small businesses to reconcile their 1099-K reports from outside providers such as credit card companies with their own internal records.

Clarifying Form 1099-R would help the Internal Revenue Service identify more taxpayers who are underreporting their retirement income, according to a new report.

The Internal Revenue Service has released procedures for issuing determination letters and rulings on the tax-exempt status of nonprofit health insurance providers that want to participate in the CO-OP program included in the health care reform law.

A new app for Apple’s iPhone relies on data from eBay to estimate the fair market value of goods donated to charity for charitable deductions.