Tax practice

The Internal Revenue Service improved most of its filing season services during 2007, but there are still opportunities for better performance this coming season, according to a new report.

IRS is driven in its desire to close the tax gap and views tax practitioners as being an obstacle in the middle, according to Charles Rettig with the law firm of Hochman, Salkin, Toscher & Perez, P.C.,in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Environmental whistleblower Marrita Murphy has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her civil rights tax appeal after another appeals court reversed its own original ruling.

A computer program the Internal Revenue Service has been developing to expedite tax-exempt status requests is behind schedule, over budget and not performing all that well either, according to a report from the Treasury Department's in-house watchdog.

The Internal Revenue Service has appointed Tim Hubbs, president and CEO of Drake Software, as the chairman of its Electronic Tax Advisory Committee.

Notice 2008-1 provides rules under which a 2 percent shareholder/employee in an S corporation is entitled to the deduction under Section 162(l) for accident and health insurance premiums paid or reimbursed by the S corporation and included in a shareholder or employee's gross income.

IRS EXTENDS DEFERRED-COMP DEADLINEAfter repeated pleas from tax practitioners, lawyers and others, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service announced that they would extend the final deadline for compliance with new rules on nonqualified deferred-compensation plans for a year, until Dec. 31, 2008.

The current wrangling over the alternative minimum tax is a symptom of the larger problems with having a Tax Code built on patchwork over nearly a century, to the point that it resembles a Rube Goldberg contraption, according to David A. Lifson, president of the New York State Society of CPAs and a co-managing partner at New York-based Hays & Co. LLP.Lifson, who recently testified before the Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee on the AMT, also chaired the NYSSCPA Committee on Tax Reform that issued a comprehensive proposal to revise the current tax system.

One week after Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., introduced his massive, dream tax reform proposal, and after acknowledging that that proposal had no chance of passage this year, Chairman Rangel introduced a more modest stop-gap proposal, H.R. 3996, including primarily one-year fixes for expiring provisions and some proposals to address the mortgage crisis.Most commentators seem to feel that this legislation has a fairly good chance of passing this year in something close to its present form.

The Internal Revenue Service said that the amounts paid for certain diagnostic procedures and devices, such as an annual physical examination, a full-body electronic scan and a pregnancy test kit, qualify as deductible medical care expenses if they are not otherwise compensated.

For tax year 2007, the Internal Revenue Service has implemented a new policy that assumes an e-mail substitute form submission has been approved if the IRS does not otherwise notify the taxpayer who submits it within 20 business days.

The U.S. Senate has passed a version of the energy bill after removing a controversial tax increase on major oil and gas producers from the version approved by the House.

The House passed a new version of its patch for the alternative minimum tax that eliminates a controversial provision to raise taxes on the carried interest earnings of managers of private equity firms and hedge funds.

The Internal Revenue Service said that payments under the Department of Veterans Affairs' Compensated Work Therapy (CWT) program are no longer taxable and disabled veterans who paid tax on these benefits in the past three years can now claim refunds.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department are evaluating the single-rate business tax recently adopted by Mexico to determine whether it can be credited under the terms of a treaty aimed at avoiding double taxation.

Accountants already face plenty of compliance requirements when it comes to issues like accounting and auditing standards, the Tax Code and Sarbanes-Oxley, so the last thing they need to worry about is being connected to money laundering and terrorist financing investigations, but those problems are exactly what the government is urging them to keep in mind.

The Senate and House have passed a bill that will provide tax relief to the victims of the Virginia Tech University shootings and their families.

As increasing client demand for tax services often exceeds a firm's manpower and resources, many firms are turning to outsourcing services and solutions to save time and expenses while increasing profitability. Listen to how one firm did it during an online session on Tax Prep Outsourcing.

The Senate passed a bill that would keep the alternative minimum tax from spreading to 23 million taxpayers, but without including any of the offsetting revenue-generating provisions included in a version of the bill passed last month by the House.

Defying a veto threat from the White House, the House passed legislation that would encourage the use of renewable energy, raise automobile fuel efficiency standards and increase taxes on major oil and gas companies, but the measure promptly stalled when it reached the Senate.