Tax strategies

The rules have been on the books for roughly half a century, but it's only recently that those who work at the Internal Revenue Service are considering the degree to which they may be ignored or abused.The rules in question are those that define the behavior that is appropriate for organizations organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, including churches, hospitals, universities and other not-for-profit entities. Tax-exempt organizations that must adhere to the 501(c)(3) rules are explicitly prohibited from engaging in any form of political intervention, either directly or indirectly.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People announced that it is taking measures to challenge the Internal Revenue Service's examination of the association's tax-exempt status.

Congress has begun to focus in on reforms for the nation's health care tax policy - a move that could impact hundreds of billions of dollars a year in cherished tax breaks for individuals and employers.That worm can spilled open on Capitol Hill as the Senate Finance Committee launched hearings into the single largest tax expenditure in the tax code - the $200 billion a year in income and payroll tax incentives paid to encourage employers to offer health insurance coverage to their workers.

An electrical fire in the basement of the Internal Revenue Service's Washington headquarters led to an evacuation and shutdown of the building yesterday.

The projection of the composite application--an application that incorporates data from a variety of sources such as a financial software--looked very appealing.

A congressional panel has scrapped President Bush's proposed budget cuts for hospitals and other Medicare providers, but preserved the president's plan to slash spending levels.

Public companies and their auditors will have some added leeway to ensure compliance with still unfinalized Public Company Accounting Oversight Board rules restricting the kinds of tax services auditors can provide.

For the 2005 fiscal year, just 30 out of the country's more than 180,000 millionaires received a face-to-face audit from the Internal Revenue Service, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

For the past couple of weeks, I've kept running across blog entries referencing a cool graphical representation of how the federal government allocates tax dollars. I finally decided to check out the chart, which has been years in the making.

On-demand sales tax calculation services provider Avalara has launched AvaRates Now -- a free, map-enhanced tool that provides accurate rates for any North American location in real-time.

Businesses paid $497 billion in state and local taxes for the 2005 fiscal year, about 44 percent of the total taxes collected by all state and local governments, according to the annual study prepared by the Quantitative Economics and Statistics practice of Ernst & Young in conjunction with the Council On State Taxation.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, J. Russell George, said bad data is to blame for the Internal Revenue Services' never-realized plan to close 68 Taxpayer Assistance Centers across the country.

The Internal Revenue Service is inviting individuals to help improve the nation's tax agency by applying to be members of the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel. The panel provides a forum for citizens from each state to make suggestions regarding IRS decision-making.

A complaint has been lodged with the Government Accountability Office that could again stall the Internal Revenue Service's plan to subcontract cases to private debt collection firms.

Roy Martin Jr. is president and chief executive of Thomson Tax & Accounting, a subsidiary of The Thomson Corp. and a provider of information and workflow solutions to accounting, tax and corporate finance professionals.

The Internal Revenue Service is considering a proposal to loosen the privacy standards of federal income tax returns. The change could allow accountants and other tax return preparers to sell information from individual returns to marketers and data brokers, according to published reports.

Congress has begun to focus in on reforms for the nation's health care tax policy -- a move that could impact hundreds of billions of dollars a year in cherished tax breaks for individuals and employers.

The Internal Revenue Service's 2005 IRS Data Book is now available at the agency's Web site.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued guidance describing 26 frivolous arguments that taxpayers should avoid when filing their returns.

California's attorney general has filed a lawsuit against H&R Block in an attempt to halt the tax prep giant's loan program, which allows the company to take a percentage of clients' tax refunds in exchange for an advance.Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court, noting that more than 1.5 million Californians have received tax refund loans through Block since 2001. A number of other suits have been filed around the country against Block, saying that the loan practice is unfair, especially because many low-income filers accept the offer.