In the Blogs: Basket Cases

Highlights of some of our favorite tax-related blogs from the past week.

Basket cases

  • Don’t Mess With Taxes: Don’t let candidate rhetoric mislead you this seemingly endless campaign season: “Most U.S. workers hand over more in payroll taxes than income taxes.”
  • Tax Vox: Clinton, Trump, House Republicans: Seems everybody and his or her candidate has an opinion right now on how to change the tax system. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the Penn Wharton Budget Model analyze how proposed changes might affect the economy and federal tax revenues.
  • Mauled Again: How one Ohio State chemistry professor “decided that the best way to assign grades to the semester’s first quiz was to use a skill unrelated to the course material.” The skill? Wait for it. Shooting paper balls into trash cans. And you thought all those tax season goofs weren’t teaching you anything.

Over there

  • IRS Tax Trouble: When are payments to foreign governments creditable in the eyes of the FTC? Look at Vento v. Commissioner for one recent answer.
  • The Tax Times: The New World to the rescue of the Old: How a U.S. Senate investigation actually ignited the European Commission’s probe into Apple.

Kindness of strangers

  • Procedurally Taxing: A recent research paper’s look at the EITC, compliance and criticism of the IRS in relying on sanctions like the Section 32(k) ban.
  • Roth & Co.: How the IRS endorses – with sparse details – waivers of the $100-per-day penalty that applies to health reimbursement arrangements that are not properly integrated with an Obamacare-compliant group health insurance plan. “But when the penalty for an act as seemingly innocent as reimbursing an employee for health insurance is so catastrophic, you shouldn’t have to rely on the kindness of the IRS.”
  • Due Diligence: In this week’s collection: “Counterfeit Parts and Whistleblower Awards”; AstraZeneca to Pay $5M+ to Settle Foreign Bribery Charges”; and “Out Your Boss, Get Paid $200K.”
  • Tax Girl: The feds are raking in record-setting tax receipts, and the tallying isn’t even over yet.

Fear

  • Dinesen Tax Times: At what point should your small-business clients consider Quickbooks?
  • H&R Block: A new series on advising Millennials about money kicks off with this ageless question: “Do you fear the IRS?”
  • John R. Dundon II EA: A look at the immediately effective changes to the ITIN acceptance agent program.

Hit the breaks

  • Turbotax blog: Everybody Into the Carpool Dept.: In the Big Apple, Uber riders can now use pre-tax dollars to pay for public transportation.
  • A Taxing Matter: One senator’s continuing effort to get Congress “to focus retirement tax breaks more appropriately,” most lately with “The Retirement Improvements and Savings Act of 2016” that would cap the total value of a Roth IRA or individual retirement account at $5 million and require distributions of any amounts in excess of that ceiling.
  • BNA blogs: Do tax triggers really eliminate some of the uncertainty surrounding changes to the Tax Code? How like matters concerning tax regulation and uncertainty, probably not.
  • Taxable Talk: Time to remind them that a filing extension is certainly not for forever.
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