Tax practice

Watchdog groups Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center have called on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether Crossroads GPS, a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization reportedly founded by former George W. Bush advisors Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, is operating in violation of its tax status.

With the IRS hearings scheduled for today on the proposed Circular 230 regulations on education and testing of tax return preparers, it’s becoming somewhat confusing to remember just where we are in the process of registering preparers.

Patrice Tierney, the wife of Rep. John F. Tierney, D-Mass., has pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns in connection with an offshore Internet gambling scheme.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, criticized the U.S. Small Business Administration after it missed a deadline to send comments to the Treasury Department and the IRS about a controversial new 1099 reporting requirement for businesses.

At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge has halted the business operations of American Tax Relief, a company that heavily advertised its ability to help taxpayers who were in trouble with the IRS and allegedly bilked consumers out of more than $60 million by falsely claiming it could reduce their tax debts.

The Internal Revenue Service is preparing for the potential transition of U.S. publicly held companies to International Financial Reporting Standards and the impact IFRS will have on tax administration, according to a new government report.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has agreed to the request from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, and six other committee members to conduct an investigation of whether Obama Administration officials illegally accessed and disclosed confidential taxpayer information involving a particular taxpayer.

The IRS plans to take a closer look at businesses that don't file their tax returns, and identify more of them.

The Internal Revenue Service is getting the word out to employers about a provision in the recently passed Small Business Jobs Act that allows them to amend their 401(k) or 403(b) plans to allow participants to transfer an eligible rollover distribution into a Roth 401(k) or 403(b) account.

The dog days of summer are ending and the 2010 tax season isn’t far behind.

In almost every narcotics-related crime the underlying motivation is money, because money is the key to furthering the illegal drug trade, whether domestic or foreign.

The lame duck session slated to begin in mid-November leaves Congress a massive amount of unfinished business.

The Internal Revenue Service could collect more taxes from forgiven mortgage debt by expanding its information reporting and revising some of its forms, according to a new study from the General Accountability Office.

The Internal Revenue Service responded to only 339 out of 350,000 calls made to a special phone line it has set up for hearing- and speech-impaired taxpayers, according to a new government report.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued guidance to provide relief to taxpayers who have suffered property losses due to the corrosive effects of imported drywall installed in their homes between 2001 and 2009.

The Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters has released new Competency Model software for its Checkpoint Learning system that provides self-assessment tools to measure proficiency in the subjects studied by users, along with roadmaps for career development.

Two New York City tax preparers are facing prison time and the payment of substantial sums of money in a pair of recent cases.

The American Institute of CPAs and 18 other groups have written a letter to congressional leaders encouraging them to ban tax strategy patents before adjourning.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman requesting him to investigate the use of tax-exempt groups for political advocacy.

The Internal Revenue Service has released guidance on the expanded adoption credit that is available for tax year 2010 as a result of the Affordable Care Act, along with a draft version of the form that taxpayers will use to claim it.