Roger Russell

A permanent exclusion for qualified SMB stock means big change

Tax pros shares the different ways they relax after April 18 — and how many of them get right back to work

The state tax arena is filled with variation, complexity, confusion and ambiguity, which has major implications for U.S. corporations, according to findings from Bloomberg BNA’s 2016 Survey of State Tax Departments, conducted for the 16th consecutive year.

Last week the Tax Court, in a case of first impression, ruled that payments made by a decedent through a trust to pay premiums on life insurance policies obtained to fund buy-sell agreements should not be regarded as loans still owed to her estate.

The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed Nevada’s exercise of jurisdiction over the California Franchise Tax Board, but limited the damages that could be awarded to the amount which Nevada law would permit in a similar suit against its own agencies.

The American Institute of CPAs is pushing for legislation that would make it easier for employees who work across state lines to do their taxes.

Nik Lamas-Richie started a gossip blog on a website in 2007, originally posting gossip about “the cool kids in Scottsdale who thought they were celebrities.”

Among the issues that are keeping tax executives up at night are anti-inversion rules that don’t address the root cause: an anti-competitive U.S. tax system.

Accounting firms come across noncompete agreements in several different contexts: in the valuation of a company when purchased by a client, in divorce litigation and as part of the employment agreement in the accounting firm itself.

Closing out a season marked by less drama, and the usual hurdles

Managing your position in the middle of warring spouses

While it has been around in a variety of forms since 1993, the exclusion for Qualified Small Business Stock Gains under section 1202 of the Tax Code didn’t really come into its own as a tax benefit until the exclusion rate increased to 100 percent in 2010.

Most taxpayers have at least a vague understanding of the principle that gifts do not constitute taxable income, while payments for services are taxable. Unfortunately for exotic dancer and professional adult entertainer Veronica Fairchild, there is no middle ground which would allow her to include in income some of the money she received from a client as payment for her services, while she characterized the bulk of what she received as gifts.

Democratic Presidential hopeful and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has urged the Treasury to block Pfizer’s planned corporate inversion.

Although a recent ABC News/Washington Post Poll found just 6 percent of voters who lean Republican and 4 percent of those who lean Democrat rank taxes as the most important issue impacting their vote, one in five public company tax directors feel differently.

With a 400 percent surge in reported phone and email phishing and malware schemes this tax season, the American Institute of CPAs is working with Congress, the Internal Revenue Service and its members to combat tax-related identity theft and tax return fraud.

The Tax Court agreed with the Internal Revenue Service in disallowing an attorney’s attempt to write off her family’s travel costs as an expense for some books she wrote.

Scope creep—the enlargement of the job the CPA was hired for—can have both positive and negative implications for an accounting practice.

Despite government disapproval, corporate inversions still have fans

With cases of identity theft and tax fraud increasing almost exponentially, tax preparers should educate their clients about the dangers they face in having their information compromised, according to executives at several credit monitoring and identity protection services.