Tax strategies

The Internal Revenue Service does not have enough data to identify who claims a tax expenditure and how much they claim, for nearly half the dollar value of all tax expenditures, or $492 billion out of $1 trillion, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.

A new report from the Congressional Budget Office found that the top 10 tax expenditures are distributed unevenly across the income scale, with much of the benefit going to the top-earning 1 percent of the population.

Switzerland proposed a bill that it says will provide the legal basis for the country’s banks, including Credit Suisse Group AG and Julius Baer Group Ltd., to resolve a tax-evasion dispute with the U.S.

Privately held retailers are operating with relatively thin profit margins nearly four years after the end of the recession, and some analysts say costs could go up and pinch margins even more if Congress approves the latest effort to get more retailers to collect taxes on their online sales.

The European Council of Ministers has agreed to take steps to combat the use of corporate tax strategies that shift profits to low-tax countries to avoid paying taxes.

What do the Senate hearings on offshore profit shifting and a Supreme Court case decided on May 20, 2013 have in common? They both are generated by our system of taxing U.S. companies on their worldwide income, and they both are the result of the companies meeting their obligations to their shareholders, which is to legally minimize the amount of taxes they pay.

A pair of lawmakers have introduced legislation to end a tax break that favors foreign-controlled insurers over U.S. insurers.

Understanding the detailed requirements of the health care reform law, and the potential penalties of noncompliance presents, challenges to accountants who are trying to advise their business clients about the Affordable Care Act.

A group of CPAs headed to Capitol Hill yesterday in what has become an annual ritual as they pressed lawmakers to deal with the many issues that accountants and their clients are forced to wrestle with on a daily basis, including taxes and regulations.

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook will face off against U.S. senators leveling accusations the iPhone maker has created a web of offshore entities to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Large Business & International division and its Wage and Investment division have teamed up to create a discovery tool for taxpayers with international filing requirements.

New River Innovation has enhanced its Beyond415 WorkCenter and Beyond415 Guidance products, including a simplified user interface, interactive file system, automatically saved documents, and guidance on the core phases of tax practice and procedure work.

The Marketplace Fairness Act, which the Senate passed last week, would require e-commerce vendors to collect sales taxes not only on physical items, but also on digital goods such as ebooks and music downloads.

The American Institute of CPAs has sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service asking the IRS to re-evaluate some of its proposals for a safe harbor method for the home office deduction, even though the AICPA acknowledged that the method would be simpler for taxpayers to use.

On the heels of continuing revelations about the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny in evaluating applications for tax-exempt status, the Government Accountability Office has released a new report finding that the IRS needs to improve its internal controls.

A coalition of charitable organizations is calling on Congress to protect the charitable deduction as leaders of Congress’s tax-writing committees step up their efforts to forge comprehensive tax reform.

IMGCAP(1)]The U.S. government is expected to publish final tangible property regulations later this year.

The Internal Revenue Service said Friday that it will be making changes to the filing requirements for corporate and partnership taxpayers with assets of between $10 million and $50 million.

The fate of the Defense of Marriage Act, also referred to as DOMA, currently sits in the hands of the Supreme Court. In 2011, the Obama administration deemed parts of the Act unconstitutional because it doesn’t acknowledge same-sex marriages. The Supreme Court is expected to announce its ruling by the end of June. Marcum LLP’s LGBT Practice leaders, Nanette Lee Miller and Janis Cowhey McDonagh, sat down with Accounting Today to discuss what would happen if DOMA is struck down and what would happen with tax preparation for same-sex couples if it isn’t.

The leaders of Congress’s two main tax committee teamed up Thursday to launch a new Web site and Twitter feed, with the goal of getting input from the American public on tax reform.