Practice Management

The Internal Revenue Service intends to auction the Web site and domain name of DoctorTalk.com, an e-commerce site the IRS seized that provides vitamin products for sale.

DHL Express and Procter & Gamble have both filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service in recent weeks demanding the agency return money they claim is owed to them.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke faced mounting criticism on Capitol Hill as they tried to explain their newly hatched bailout plan to a skeptical Senate Banking Committee.

Testifying before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs about the financial industry bailout package, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke defended fair value accounting, but recommended that banks should be able to sell their assets at the "hold-to-maturity" value to the federal government.

The Rehmann Group plans to merge with MSW Group to create Michigan's second largest wealth management and consulting firm.

The Treasury Department has expanded its financial bailout program to $700 billion in an effort to relieve banks and other financial institutions of their troubled mortgage assets.

In the world of executive compensation, Internal Revenue Code Section 162(m) limits the deduction that a publicly held corporation can claim in any tax year for compensation paid a top executive to $1 million, with several exceptions. Two recent Internal Revenue Service rulings explored these exceptions.In Rev. Rul. 2008-13, the IRS reversed its position regarding the availability of the performance-based exception from the million-dollar cap if payment may be made in the event of involuntary termination, even if the performance standards discussed below are met. Rev. Rul. 2008-32 deals with whether a director can be an outside director for Sec. 162(m) purposes after briefly serving as an interim chief executive.

IRS WARNS ON DONOR-ADVISED FUNDSWashington, D.C. - The Internal Revenue Service has issued a guide sheet for organizations that maintain donor-advised funds to help safeguard against abuses. The guide sheet includes a series of questions to establish whether an organization qualifies as a sponsoring organization.

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.