Practice Management

Back in 1925, a taxpayer won the first case in the Board of Tax Appeals involving the deduction for horse-breeding activity expenses. Deducting expenses related to the “sport of kings” was so attractive that the estate of Cornelius Vanderbilt tried, and lost, two years later. In the intervening 88 years, about 200 taxpayers have litigated the issue, most with unattractive results. The IRS and the courts have essentially told taxpayers to “stop horsing around.”

The Senate narrowly passed a budget for the first time in four years on a mostly party line vote, calling for $975 billion in additional tax revenue over the next 10 years along with state sales tax collections on online sales.

Bowing to pressure from Congress and media outlets, the Internal Revenue Service has released a pair of campy parody videos of Star Trek and Gilligan’s Island, while admitting that the $60,000 spent to produce the videos could have been better spent.

The House Ways and Means Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee held a hearing this week to discuss possible tax reforms on financial products such as derivatives.

Large companies frequently cannot achieve their cost reduction targets because they keep focusing on the same business areas every year even if they don’t deliver the savings they once did, according to a new report from Deloitte.

The two leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and ranking Republican member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have begun developing proposals for reforming the U.S. Tax Code, including giving the Internal Revenue Service the clear statutory authority to regulate tax preparers in case the IRS loses its appeal of a recent court case invalidating its Registered Tax Return Preparer regime.

As U.S. lawmakers drafted a bill extending wind-energy tax credits in August, they revised a key clause that opens the door for a much bigger boost to the industry than just the one-year addition that was eventually passed.

The United States is now facing two deficits—a government budget deficit and a balance of trade deficit. These two deficits, together, will ultimately put the future of the United States in peril unless the government and its citizens take strong action.

House Republicans have passed the budget plan introduced by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., for fiscal year 2014, which shrinks the number of tax brackets to two brackets of 10 and 25 percent.

Microsoft Dynamics Master VAR Tribridge took the opportunity during the Convergence 2013 user and partner event to announce the addition of two new affiliates to its network, CBR Technology and MIC Business Solutions.