Tax practice

The Internal Revenue Service has signed a tax-processing contract with a company that has admitted to having information on 1.5 million payment card holders and 1.1 million Social Security numbers stolen by computer hackers.

The Senate Finance Committee heard from a panel of experts about the pros and cons of skewing energy tax benefits toward one technology, such as wind power, at the expense of another.

The Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters has started TaxWatch University, a tax staff-training program that combines the company’s AuditWatch University multi-level curriculum design with the in-depth taxation knowledge of the experts in the company’s PPC division.

David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer of mortgage finance concern Freddie Mac, was found dead at his home of an apparent suicide.

A Utah attorney who hasn’t filed a tax return since the 1980s was fined $250,000 and sentenced to three years in prison for impeding the Internal Revenue Service.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., praised President Obama’s picks for chief counsel of the Internal Revenue Service and assistant secretary for financial stability.

More than half of the business professionals polled during a recent Deloitte webcast said the level of transparency the Obama administration promises to attach to bailout spending is not possible.

Bernard Madoff’s accountant, David Friehling, is facing an extra month of uncertainty over his legal status after prosecutors filed a continuance with the court.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., along with the five New York City District Attorneys, has unveiled The Fighting Real Estate Fraud Act of 2009, a measure to help fight mortgage fraud scams across the country.

Former CPA Dan Wise has been arrested and charged with operating a $67 million fraud.

The Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration is urging the IRS to ensure better compliance by tax-exempt organizations that don’t file their tax returns.

IRS REFORMS CONTRACTING

The Bernard Madoff situation is just the most notorious of dozens of Ponzi schemes that have surfaced since the current recession made it more difficult for the operators of those schemes to keep covering payouts and redemptions with money from new investors.

Washington, D.C.-In the wake of several high-profile Ponzi schemes - most notably, the $65 billion fraud perpetrated by the now-jailed Bernard Madoff - the Internal Revenue Service has issued new guidance for victims of these types of schemes and their tax preparers.

The Justice Department has filed a “John Doe” summons with a federal court seeking the credit card records of U.S. merchants hiding money in offshore bank accounts.

President Barack Obama made a bid to promote his administration’s tax policies the day taxes were due to be filed.

Billions of dollars in tax credits are being provided toIndividual Taxpayer Identification Number filers without adequate verificationof eligibility, according to the Treasury Inspector General for TaxAdministration.

The Singing CPA, Steven Zelin, a singer-songwriter and practicing CPA, said he intends to perform for the fifth straight year outside New York City’s main post office after 10 pm on April 15 to entertain procrastinating taxpayers.

Internal Revenue Service agents busted a tax prep office less than two days before the filing deadline.

The head of a yachting company became the second UBSclient in the U.S. to plead guilty to tax fraud charges in the midst of aninvestigation into the Swiss bank's tax shelters.