Tax practice

The Senate Finance Committee wrapped up its grueling work on the health care reform bill late Thursday evening after turning back a tax-related amendment.

The IRS’s paid informant program yielded 476 tips last fiscal year about 1,246 tax evaders after Congress substantially revamped the program in 2006.

The Internal Revenue Service is spending millions in interest on tax refunds that have been improperly frozen, according to a new report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which noted that the IRS's computer system automatically places a freeze on taxpayer refunds greater than $10 million to prevent it from automatically issuing a refund or offsetting another tax liability. The freeze is intended to alert IRS employees that a large-dollar refund, if appropriate, must be issued manually. Frozen refunds that are not manually processed in a timely manner are considered to be "improperly frozen."

The basic structure of taxing estates has not changed since 2001. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 put into the law the gradual increase in exemption amounts and decrease in marginal rates that we are still working with today. It also put in place the elimination of the estate tax in 2010 and its return in pre-2001 form in 2011 that has made estate planning during this decade so difficult.

Taxpayers will reap little benefit next year from the indexing of many features of the Tax Code, according to CCH, which released estimated income ranges for each 2010 tax bracket.

IRS EASES ON MODIFYING COMMERCIAL MORTGAGE LOANS

New standard ends FIN 48 deferral for private companies

LINDA STIFF RETIRES FROM IRS

IMGCAP(1)]Today, more than three years since it was issued, FIN48 remains the bane of many tax departments’ existence.

The time is nigh, saith the IRS, for millions of taxpayers who have filed for extensions to send in their 2008 returns by Oct. 15.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued new rules for travel, lodging, meals and other expenses, including an optional method for computing the deductible costs.

The House Committee on Small Business held a hearing on how some expiring tax incentives, such as the research and development credit and clean energy incentives, would affect small businesses.

The Internal Revenue Service has provided guidance for retirement plan administrators, plan participants and retirees on some recent changes from legislation affecting required minimum distributions.

The Justice Department has asked a federal court in Lincoln, Neb., to bar Donald Ondrak, a Lexington, Neb., CPA, from preparing tax returns.

An outside audit has revealed that the Securities and Exchange Commission's record-keeping system of contracts with outside vendors is riddled with "significant risk areas" within the regulator's acquisitions office.

The Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency - thefederal watchdog responsible for providing critical accounting and auditingoversight of military contractors - is riddled with audit quality problems thatinclude inadequate audit planning and supervision, as well as serious breachesof auditor independence, congressional investigators charged.

A New Jersey man has pleaded guilty to failing to report $6.1 million that he had hidden in secret Swiss bank accounts.

The Internal Revenue Service has agreed to extend until the end of the year a grace period for collecting penalties from small businesses accused of engaging in certain types of tax shelters.

Among the revenue proposals detailed in the administration’s fiscal 2010 budget are some provisions that might negatively affect small businesses and tax preparers. The American Institute of CPAs has weighed in on a number of these, including the codification of the economic substance doctrine, information reporting on payments to corporations, increasing the level of the information penalties, and expanding the requirement for electronic filing by return preparers.

The Internal Revenue Service has severed ties with ACORN, the controversial community-organizing group that was recently the subject of a series of hidden camera videos.