Tax practice

The House Financial Services Committee has approved legislation aimed at preventing the failure of large financial institutions from turning into a systemwide crisis.

Businesses will have to act soon on a bevy of tax breaks before they expire at the end of the year.

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The Internal Revenue Service has extended for another two years the Attributed Tip Income Program, which makes it easier for workers in the food and beverage industry to report the money they earn from tips.

A federal judge in San Francisco has signed a permanent injunction order barring the developer of a complex tax scheme involving numerous entities located around the globe and sales of over $1.25 billion in securities from promoting the scheme.

The tax subcommittee of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board has decided to postpone its report outlining tax reform plans for the White House after being inundated with suggestions.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to conduct a three-year research study on employment tax compliance starting in February.

A federal judge has allowed a class-action lawsuit to proceed over the IRS’s handling of an $8 billion refund program for the now-defunct telephone excise tax.

The Internal Revenue Service has found that the number of partnership returns increased 5 percent between tax years 2006 and 2007, from more than 2.9 million to over 3 million.

A group of Democratic lawmakers has introduced a bill that would impose a temporary war surtax beginning in 2011 to pay for the war in Afghanistan.

The Internal Revenue Service said it is temporarily closing its determination letter program for adopters of pre-approved defined-benefit plans.

A recent ruling by the Tax Court could be highly favorable for taxpayers looking to claim the Research and Development Tax Credit.

The First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit helped spur a 10.1 percent jump in sales of existing homes in October.

IMGCAP(1)]Corporate clients will likely be approaching their next audit with extra care. The reason: A recent federal appeals court decision has made it clear that information previously viewed as private under the "work-product doctrine" may no longer be protected. That means companies will now think twice before providing such information to their auditors.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to test a pilot program that would permit filers of information returns to truncate an individual payee’s nine-digit identifying number on paper payee statements for calendar years 2009 and 2010 to protect against identity theft.

The Internal Revenue Service said that interest rates would remain the same for the calendar quarter beginning Jan. 1, 2010, as they were in the prior quarter.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a set of proposed regulations for reporting on credit and debit card transactions starting in 2011.

CCH Small Firm Services has begun shipping its ATX and TaxWise lines of software for tax year 2009, with links to tax research from CCH.

Large and midsized companies can now take advantage of expanded net operating loss carryback rules to use the losses they incurred during the economic downturn to reduce their income from prior tax years.

Most states tax their middle- and low-income families far more heavily than the wealthy, according to a new study by the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy.