Tax research

Ford Motor Co. is suing the Internal Revenue Service, claiming the agency owes the automaker $445.3 million in interest on tax overpayments.

The Internal Revenue Service issued an alert about a new wave of e-mail scams that use the IRS name to commit identity theft.

The Internal Revenue Service has begun issuing summonses as it investigates Colorado's program for conservation easement tax credits.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, provided an update this week on his correspondence with several media-based ministries about issues related to their tax-exempt status, indicating that some ministries have not been answering his questions.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued an opinion in a tax dispute that found the U.S. Tax Court is not a court as defined by law.

A jury returned guilty verdicts against Joseph H. Smith, the former treasurer, CFO and legal secretary of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, on charges of conspiracy and filing false tax returns.

CCH began offering Global Daily Tax News on its CCH Tax Research Network, providing country-specific national and local tax and business news coverage to help users remain in compliance and support their tax planning.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on proposed tax treaties and protocols with Canada, Iceland and Bulgaria.

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson has released a report outlining her office’s priorities over the coming fiscal year, including improving Internal Revenue Service procedures to protect victims of tax-related identity theft and helping people who have lost their homes to foreclosure.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a new revenue procedure that aims to clear up some of the murkiness surrounding subprime loans and the tax treatment of securitized versions of those loans, though the murkiness is likely to remain for the majority of those loans anyway.

Crocodile Dundee actor Paul Hogan has told Australian tax authorities to “come and get me” after being told in California that the Australian Taxation Office is asking the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to help round up nine years’ worth of records from three U.S. banks.

Accounting Today is issuing a call for nominations for its annual Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting list.

Looking for strong leads to grow your financial planning practice? Try scouring your tax clients.It may seem obvious, but internal marketing within your tax base is the best way to beef up your wealth management clientele, and is often a welcome service offering that can lead to referrals.

Since most observers consider the tax prep market to be in a maturing mode, it’s important for software makers to offer their products for tryouts, early renewals and promotional pricing during the season when their customers have the time to experiment.And that time, of course, is now.

So far, 2008 has not been a year for major tax legislation.Nor, being an election year, are the remaining six months likely to offer major legislation. Two bills that did make it through Congress prior to Memorial Day included tax provisions focused on farmers and alternative energy and on military personnel and veterans. The farm legislation required the override of a presidential veto and included a procedural snafu where one of the non-tax titles of the legislation was not forwarded to President Bush along with the rest of the legislation. Barring any litigation over that issue, the enactment date of the legislation is May 22, 2008.

A judge has granted permission for actor Wesley Snipes to travel to London and Bangkok so he can work on two upcoming films.

The state of e-services today can be compared to where e-filing was about five years ago.“If you look back five years, what we were saying about e-filing would sound a lot like what we’re saying about e-services today,” said Roger Harris, president of Padgett Business Services and former chair of the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council. “As practitioners and the IRS worked together, a lot of problems were solved. And today e-filing is the normal way of doing business. It will be the same with e-services.”

The Internal Revenue Service plans to hold a conference call on July 8 with the six largest audit firms to convince them to do more to help track the use of secret foreign bank accounts for tax evasion.

The Internal Revenue Service has moved the extended due date for partnership, estate and trust tax returns from Oct. 15 to Sept. 15 to avoid overlapping with the extended deadline for individual taxes.

H&R Block reported that its fiscal 2008 revenues rose 10 percent to $4.4 billion, thanks to growth in its tax services business and the sale of its troubled Option One mortgage unit.