Practice Management

A decade ago, few of us had heard of identity theft. Now, most of us know someone who has been a victim. And of course, a large portion of ID theft affects tax preparers and taxpayers directly, since tax refunds are a huge target of identity thieves.

With the April 15 tax day quickly approaching, a leading online tax preparer school is offering its own kind of relief in the form of student scholarships.

The Internal Revenue Service is providing guidance for 2014 that will allow taxpayers who are the victims of domestic violence to satisfy a joint filing requirement with a married-filing-separate return in order to obtain the Affordable Care Act's premium tax credit.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., and two other prominent Senate Democrats introduced legislation Wednesday to update the Tax Code to help workers and families keep more of what they earn, but also double the penalty on tax preparers who do not follow the Internal Revenue Service’s due diligence requirements for claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The Internal Revenue Service needs to do better at enabling its frontline employees to identify potentially dangerous tax practitioners, according to a new government report that found at least 84 taxpayer representatives who represented a threat to IRS employees and at least two instances of physical assault.

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

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of the Obama administration in a dispute over taxes on severance compensation, overturning a lower court decision that could have forced the IRS to refund more than $1 billion.

The Tax Court, adding and subtracting “badges” of fraud, has found a California business owner and his companies not liable for a 75 percent civil fraud penalty.

The Internal Revenue Service issued a notice Tuesday saying that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies should be treated as property for federal tax purposes and the general rules for property transactions should apply.

Three Caribbean-based men who helped Americans hide assets from U.S. tax authorities were charged in a sting operation with laundering what they were told was dirty money.