Practice Management

The Center for Audit Quality and the Council of Institutional Investors are protesting two proposed amendments to the financial regulatory reform bill that would exempt smaller public companies from compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404(b) audits of their internal controls.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich., have introduced legislation that would extend unemployment insurance and the 65 percent COBRA health insurance subsidy for the unemployed through the end of the year, as well as many expiring tax breaks.

Weaknesses in the Internal Revenue Service’s employment tax compliance program could cost the U.S. Treasury $131 million in Social Security and Medicare taxes over the next five years, according to a new report.

The Internal Revenue Service has mostly overcome past problems in following legal and internal guidelines when conducting seizures of taxpayers’ property, but it failed to comply with the legal requirements in at least some instances, according to a new report.

Sally Louise Crystal, the owner of a Costa Mesa, Calif., business called Sal the 1040 Gal, was arrested Tuesday on charges of preparing false tax returns.

H&R Block has closed about 400 of its “under-performing” tax offices out of its network of 11,000 retail tax locations, and eliminated approximately 400 positions throughout the organization.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has filed a cloture motion on the financial regulatory reform bill as he pushes for the debate to end this week, but with hundreds of amendments still waiting to be decided, he may not get his wish.

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman indicated that small charities that missed the May 17 filing deadline for filing their Form 990 may still be able to keep their tax-exempt status.

The Internal Revenue Service has posted a form on its Web site that employers can use to claim a payroll tax exemption for hiring new employees under the recently passed HIRE Act.

State tax revenues fell 8.9 percent nationwide from fiscal year 2008 to 2009, with 45 states seeing a decline in state-level tax collections, according to a Tax Foundation analysis of new U.S. Census data.