Practice Management

While the tax law cannot exactly make lemonade out of the lemons produced by a bad economy, it can help many businesses prevent a bad situation from becoming worse. Several Tax Strategy columns back, we outlined some tax planning ideas for individuals in a troubled economy. This column takes up where that advice left off, suggesting several tax strategies that can help businesses better deal with an economic downturn.INTRODUCTION

Some 30 years ago, Peter Drucker proposed that the purpose of a business (or accounting firm) is to create clients. Today, it's more important to do more than just create clients: We need to create the right types of clients for our practices.To accomplish this, most firms will have to dramatically change their management systems and business model for running the firm.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Appeals has improved its handling of collection due process cases, but there are still instances where taxpayers were not provided with their right to a hearing, according to a new report.

Clark Schaefer Hackett has acquired the Clemans Group, a health care consulting firm, adding extra resources for advising hospitals, medical practices and dentist’s offices.

The Internal Revenue Service still has problems with protecting the privacy of taxpayers' personally identifiable information on the printed documents it mails, according to a new report.

The Internal Revenue Service said that Texas taxpayers harmed by Hurricane Ike qualify for tax relief and can postpone their tax-filing and payment deadlines until Jan. 5, 2009.

The Internal Revenue Service has released a list of industry-specific issues that its auditors may consider when examining a business's returns.

CCH and Thomson Reuters' RIA unit have calculated the inflation-adjusted amounts for tax brackets, standard deductions and exemptions for next tax season.

The marketing services division of the Second City comedy troupe has been enlisted by accounting firm network PKF to teach its members how to use humor to improve their marketing.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., plans to hire a forensic accountant to sort through his tax liabilities as he comes under increasing pressure to step down from his chairmanship of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.