Tax practice

Taxpayers filed over 4.5 million returns with adjusted gross income of $200,000 or more for 2007, up from over 4 million returns in the prior year, according to newly released IRS statistics.

Supreme Court nominee wrote a brief on behalf of the IRS in a far-reaching tax case that could come before the Supreme Court.

A federal judge in Kansas City, Mo., has permanently barred Allen R. Davison from promoting a variety of tax fraud schemes, including some that used sham companies, sham chicken-flock contracts, and sham pension plans.

Ernst & Young has joined the U.S. State Department’s new E-Mentor Corps program to provide mentorship to entrepreneurs around the world.

The Internal Revenue Service has selected four new members of its Advisory Committee on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities for the term starting in 2010 and ending in 2012.

A long-awaited Senate energy and climate change bill is being introduced Wednesday by John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., with several tax provisions that would benefit nuclear power plants.

Thousands of nonprofit organizations could lose their tax-exempt status if they don’t file a Form 990 with the IRS by May 17.

The Internal Revenue Service does not always properly authenticate the identity of taxpayers calling its toll-free assistance lines before providing them with confidential tax account information, according to a new government report.

Tax accountants and others looking for clues on how the anti-tax Tea Party movement will affect this fall’s national elections received mixed signals from voters in a number of recent ballot initiatives.

The Hawaii legislature has overridden the veto of Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle and passed a strict mandatory peer review law for public accountants.

A group of seven accounting and business organizations are protesting a proposed amendment to the financial regulatory reform legislation from Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, that would legislate some accounting standards for financial reporting.

Although the overall effects of the Obama administration's health care reforms may not be known for years, they promise to significantly affect CPAs and their clients.

2010

The recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, relies heavily on new tax provisions in the Internal Revenue Code to implement many of the goals of health care reform. The effective dates for many of these tax provisions are delayed - some do not take effect until 2013, 2014 or even 2018.

SERVICE PROPOSES REGS ON PREPARER ID NUMBERS

The Internal Revenue Service has opened examinations of over 30 colleges and universities as part of an ongoing investigation into the business activities of tax-exempt academic institutions.

The majority of CFOs see state taxes increasing for their companies and believe that state and local tax compliance has become more demanding than federal tax compliance, according to a new survey by Grant Thornton.

Sales and use taxes are key issues for many states that have been hit with dwindling revenue due to the economic downturn. And there’s a case now on appeal in a New York court that is being closely watched by other states suffering a loss of tax revenue from Internet sales.

The American Institute of CPAs told Internal Revenue Service officials that it supports the IRS’s plan for mandatory preparer tax identification numbers and stricter ethics requirements, but it objects to the education and testing elements of the IRS’s tax preparer regulation proposals.

The Internal Revenue Service is accepting applications for new members of the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council, which provides a forum for IRS officials to discuss key areas of tax administration with a broad range of tax and other relevant professionals.