Tax research

Less than six months after announcing a plan to revamp its test for enrolled agents, the Internal Revenue Service said that the new version of the examination is ready. The first testing window opens today and runs through Dec. 1. The IRS contracted Thomson Prometric to redesign the test and stressed that experts within the Enrolled Agent community had played a role in shaping the new content that is included in the special enrollment examination. The exam has been reformatted from four sections, to three sections, in order to more accurately reflect the current state of taxpayer representation. Each of the three new sections -- individuals, businesses and representation, practice and procedures -- will contain about 100 questions. There are currently about 40,000 active enrolled agents, many of whom are attorneys and CPAs, and represent taxpayers in both examinations and collection matters. Other changes include that:

This week, the Tax Technical Corrections Act of 2006 was introduced in both houses of Congress. The legislation will essentially serve to cross the T’s and dot the I’s to several pieces of already-enacted legislation, clarifying definitions and refining certain timelines. Ways & Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., sponsored the bill in the House, while Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Max Baucus, D-Mont., did the same in the Senate. Among others, the bill would make changes to:

BNA Daily Tax Report recently reported that a California Franchise Tax Board employee disclosed confidential information about the Board’s audits of over 200 corporations. What was most interesting was the method of disclosure. It seems the employee accidentally e-mailed the information to a distribution list of members of the news media, including two BNA reporters. According to BNA, the e-mail identified a number of corporate taxpayers under audit for tax years 2003 and earlier. The names of the corporations, their identification numbers, and the auditor assigned to each case were identified. Notes indicated that several are being audited for possible participation in abusive tax shelters. An FTB spokeswoman told BNA that the employee intended to send the message to himself, but accidentally sent the message to a distribution list that included members of the news media who cover tax issues. This gaffe illustrates that hacking isn’t the only danger to be worried about in this technology age. A simple oversight when selecting a recipient of the e-mail can instantaneously broadcast confidential information to the outside world. There are many possibilities for e-mail causing problems that simply didn’t exist in the strictly paper world. For example, at my company years ago, an individual wrote a blistering e-mail intended to tell his boss that he deserved a substantial raise, detailing all he had done, criticizing the company, and listing his current salary and salary demands. By mistake, he inadvertently sent out the e-mail to an address that included all the employees in the company whose last name began with A through M. There are other more common instances, such as when you get an e-mail and compose a critical follow-up of the e-mail that you want to send to a fellow employee and you end up mistakenly sending the follow-up to the original sender of the e-mail because you hit “Reply” by mistake, rather than “Forward.” Technology is wonderful, but it is important to understand that it also means a need for an increased awareness, and that added safeguards must be put in place. It is scary that what in the paper age was difficult to do now can be done by a simple inadvertent touch of a keyboard. P.S.: Please let me know if you have special e-mail safeguards in place at your firm.

The Internal Revenue Service has launched its much-anticipated Income Verification Express Service or IVES, a program offering immediate electronic delivery of client tax and income information to financial lenders such as mortgage companies.

Just one week after the Treasury Department released a report on its strategy for closing the $300 billion tax gap, the ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee labeled the plan “incomplete” and not credible.Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he would continue to hold up the nomination of Eric Solomon as the assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy.

Several more 2007 Toyota models have been certified by the Internal Revenue Service to qualify for the hybrid tax credit enacted by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Tax software publisher CCH continued making an aggressive push into the small practitioner market, announcing its second major acquisition in as many months.The Wolters Kluwer business, which produces the ProSystem fx Office line of accounting and business software products, signaled its determination to take on the marketplace leader, Intuit Inc.'s QuickBooks, by striking a pact to purchase TaxWise Corp.

Although the program has been characterized by the Internal Revenue Service itself as potentially rampant with opportunities for scamming, and has attracted growing opposition, the agency nonetheless has moved forward with its plan to hire private debt collectors to track down delinquent taxpayers.The first phase, rolled out in September, enlisted a trio of private collection agencies to receive personal information about taxpayers with outstanding liabilities, including name and Social Security number of taxpayer (and spouse, if a joint tax liability), address, amount of tax debt and the year or years to which the debt applies.

Tax advisors are likely to hear from potential clients seeking advice on how to "re-enter" our tax reporting system.The reasons for failing to file tax returns vary with the client: the stress of a divorce or bankruptcy, ignorance of U.S. tax laws, or willful negligence. Similarly, the strategies for handling these cases should vary, considering the potential criminal, as well as civil, ramifications of a client's failure to file timely returns.

The Taxpayer Advocacy Panel has sent the Internal Revenue Service recommendations for easing taxpayer burdens in five areas.In a 12-page report dated Aug. 18, the panel made the following suggestions:

To divine the true meaning of a gap, I usually need to go beyond calculating the difference between my gross pay and net pay on the 15th and 30th of each month.That my friends, is Webster’s unabridged definition of a gap.

The share of income taxes paid by the top half of taxpayers reached its highest level in decades according to a report from the Joint Economic Committee.

The threat by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., to hold back the appointment of Eric Solomon as assistant secretary for tax policy at the Department of the Treasury is misplaced, according to observers.Baucus, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said that he would place a hold on President George W. Bush's nominee for the Treasury's top tax position unless the department details how it will close the tax gap.

A sampling of tax returns filed by fishermen in 2004 revealed that thousands of workers had overpaid an average of $530, after failing to take advantage of the averaging provision in calculating their income tax liability. According to the report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, more than 4,600 taxpayers -- about 90 percent of the fishermen who could have benefited from the averaging provision -- didn't take advantage of the provision included the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. TIGTA said that the overpaid taxes for the individual returns filed during the 2004 tax year totaled more than $2.4 million; and a startling 90 percent of the fishermen’s returns were prepared by paid tax preparers. The 2004 law allows fishermen to elect to compute their tax liabilities by averaging all, or a portion, of their taxable fishing income from the prior three years. The measure was designed to help fishermen recover from low-income years by keeping more of their income in successful years and offsetting potentially high tax burdens in isolated years. At the time of its enactment, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the provision could save fishermen up to $61 million in taxes over the next decade -- between $3 million and $10 million annually. During a prior audit, TIGTA noted that less than one half of taxpayers who could benefit from a similar provision for farmers, had actually taken advantage of the measure. The inspector general recommended to a variety of federal offices that a better and broader effort be made to educate both fishermen and tax preparers about the averaging provision. The full report is available at www.treas.gov/tigta/auditreports/2006reports/200630158fr.pdf.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued details on the process for military reservists called to active duty to receive payments from individual retirement accounts, 401(k) plans and 403(b) tax-sheltered annuities, without penalities.

Two months after a senator said he would hold up Treasury appointments until the department provided a comprehensive plan to close the tax gap, the Treasury Department has issued a report titled, “A Comprehensive Strategy for Reducing the Tax Gap.”

An economic think tank in Canada has ranked 81 developed and developing countries according to their tax treatment of business investment. “The 2006 Tax Competitiveness Report,” from the C.D. Howe Institute, pays special attention to how Canada’s tax system ranks against the international competition when judged on general corporate income tax and effective tax rates on capital for the 2006 fiscal year. The report ranks Canada’s effective tax rate on capital as sixth-highest among industrialized countries -- following China, Brazil, Germany, Russia and the United States. The top five rates for developing countries were found in the Republic of Congo, Argentina, Chad, Pakistan and Iran. Prepared by Jack Mintz, a professor of business economics at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, the study notes that while Canada’s federal and provincial governments have made progress in reducing marginal income tax rates in recent years, the pace of tax reform has been slow compared to some other developed countries, such as Australia, Finland, Ireland and the Netherlands. Mintz also makes the point that Canada’s productivity growth, as well as its income growth, has been slow. And in the years to come, he suggests that achieving better growth may pose stiff challenges, as the population ages. Specifically, the report recommends the Canadian government consider a number of tax reforms aimed at promoting growth, such as:

More than 12,500 of the nation’s largest corporations electronically filed their 2005 corporate tax returns, according to the Internal Revenue Service. Large corporate taxpayers, defined as having $50 million or more in assets and filing at least 250 returns, were required to e-file for the first time beginning with their 2005 tax returns. Sept. 15, 2006 was the extended deadline for filing those returns. In total, more than half a million corporate tax returns were filed electronically, most on a voluntarily basis across a wide array of industries. Based on feedback from external groups, the IRS designed corporate e-file to be flexible enough to accommodate the various needs of large business filers, such as allowing transition rules during the first year. In a statement, the IRS noted that many business taxpayers used commercial software to prepare their returns, with about 400 taxpayers transmitting the return themselves. The agency hopes that electronic filing will allow the IRS to shave many months off of the audit process while allowing examiners to develop analytical tools to better select areas of audit inquiry. The electronic filing requirements will be expanded to include 2006 tax year returns of corporations with $10 million or more in total assets that file 250 or more returns a year. E-file has been available to corporations since 2004.

A church in California has refused to comply with an Internal Revenue Service request to turn over all the documents and e-mails it created during the 2004 election year containing references to political candidates. Last week, the 26-member vestry of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena voted unanimously to challenge the IRS on the matter in court. The refusal to cooperate forces the IRS to either drop the case, or to ask the Justice Department to take the church to court. The agency could also revoke the church’s tax exemption. The church is one of dozens of tax-exempt groups under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service for possible violations of laws against political activities. The church said it regarded an IRS investigation of an antiwar sermon delivered by the church’s former rector on the Sunday before the 2004 election as an attack on freedom of speech and religion. The agency has not said what part of the sermon the reverend delivered may have violated the law. In the sermon, the former rector, imagined Jesus chiding President Bush and Democratic opponent Senator John Kerry on topics including the war in Iraq, nuclear weapons, poverty and the increasing income gap. In July, the IRS warned 15,000 tax-exempt groups across the nation to stay neutral on political matters. IRS officials said then that investigations into charges of improper campaigning would be carried out under a new enforcement program, the Political Activity Compliance Initiative. Under it, the IRS will no longer wait for an annual tax return to be filed or for the tax year to end before investigating allegations of improper campaigning.

The Internal Revenue Service has released the summer 2006 issue of the Statistics of Income Bulletin, taking a closer look at corporations claiming the possessions tax credit and the use of estate tax provisions. The bulletin includes in-depth looks at: