Tax practice

The continuing inability of Congress to agree on what to do with the expiring Bush tax cuts has real consequences, as small businesses remain stymied in their planning for the future.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has begun an investigation of the tax status of earnings by Prudential Financial on survivor death benefit accounts for life insurance policies it sold to members of the armed services.

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman said Friday that the IRS has been listening to complaints about its plans to require companies to disclose their uncertain tax positions and is relaxing some of the original proposals while phasing in the schedule over five years.

Playoff PAC, a group that opposes the college football Bowl Championship Series, has filed a 27-page legal complaint with the Internal Revenue Service against bowl organizations affiliated with the BCS.

Senate Democrats have decided to wait until after the mid-term election in November to hold a vote on legislation to extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which are due to expire at the end of this year.

The Senate Finance Committee held hearings Thursday on tax reform and the lessons learned from the Tax Reform Act of 1986 in the wake of a recently published report from a presidentially appointed panel.

The House passed a bill that will provide $12 billion in tax breaks and a $30 billion lending fund to small businesses by a party-line vote of 237-187.

Congressional Republicans introduced their “Pledge to America” during an event at a lumber store in Sterling, Va., with a document laying out promises to cut taxes and hold down government spending.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Modernized e-File system is facing “significant challenges” processing individual tax returns, according to a new government report.

The Senate Finance Committee held hearings Wednesday on the effects of tax and fiscal policy on the military and veterans and how those could be alleviated through the Tax Code.

The Internal Revenue Service’s collections staff did not always take the right actions before giving up on collecting some types of unpaid employment taxes, according to a new government report that encourages the IRS to do more follow-up.

BNA has introduced an online tax research library with information on the latest state sales and use tax information.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained an emergency asset freeze in a California courtroom against a company that raised $3.2 million from investors to fund TV and film post-production work by using the name of a well-known post-production company.

A Queens tax preparer has been sentenced to three to six years in prison after he sent threatening letters to a prosecutor who was investigating him for stealing from his clients.

A federal court in Pensacola, Fla., has sentenced three of nine promoters of a fraudulent tax-and-debt-elimination scheme to prison terms for their roles in tax fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.

The Internal Revenue Service disagreed with the recommendations of a new government report that it freeze more taxpayer refunds to give it time to validate them using information supplied by third parties.

Financial Executives International has written to congressional leaders criticizing President Obama’s proposal to close foreign tax credit loopholes in exchange for making the research & development tax credit permanent.

The Internal Revenue Service is trying to decide whether it should make so-called “soft notices” a permanent part of its automated program for encouraging more voluntary compliance by taxpayers.

House Republican whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., said in an editorial Monday that his party will resist any income tax increases in Congress, as the expiration of the Bush tax cuts looms at the end of the year.

Taxpayers stuck in the current economic downturn will get at least some relief in 2011 thanks to the mandatory upward inflation-adjustments called for under the Tax Code, according to CCH