Practice Management

Got a question for the Internal Revenue Service that needs answering? Why not ask your local stakeholder liaison? Who’s that? They are IRS employees who are attempting to establish a relationship with those representing small business and self-employed taxpayers. The liaisons provide very specific information about the policies, practices, and procedures followed by the IRS.Take for example the Issue Management Resolution System (IMRS), a stakeholder liaison initiative intended to capture, develop, resolve, and respond to significant national and local stakeholder issues. Under the program, practititioners’ notify IRS of concerns about IRS policies, practices, and procedures, and IRS researches the issues to bring about resolution.

The Washington headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service reopened to the agency’s employees last week, following some $25 million in repairs made necessary after massive June flooding.

In a letter released last week, the Internal Revenue Service said that a publicly-traded acquiring corporation can deduct amounts it paid to settle a class action securities litigation lawsuit against the target entity that was triggered by misstatements in the entity’s reported earnings.The ruling is directed only to the taxpayer requesting it and may not be used or cited as precedent.

Protiviti Inc., a provider of technology risk consulting and internal audit services, announced that it has consolidated its public sector operations and that the new, wholly owned subsidiary had already made its first acquisition.

Leaders are always searching for ways to increase accountability to get the results they need. My advice is to start by defining your role when it comes to delivering results.Simply put, the leader's job is to ensure every member of the team wins, and winning is defined as meeting the organization's top objectives. I only wish someone would have explained this to me earlier in my career. The reason this is so powerful is due in part to the inherent quid pro quo. Throughout my career, one of the best ways I've found to help people win is to establish an accountability-based culture focused on producing results, not activities.

GAO GIVES GOOD MARKS TO IRS APPEALS OFFICE: The Government Accountability Office offered some recommendations aimed at upping efficiency, but said that the Internal Revenue Service Office of Appeals has been doing a good job handling its process for collection due process appeals.Under the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, taxpayers facing liens or levies can request a collection due process appeal hearing with the IRS office. By 2005, those cases represented about a quarter of the office's workload.

As evidence of the recent merger mania within the tax prep arena, customers from five different vendors were represented at last month's CCH and Creative Solutions user conferences, which were held in Boca Raton and Orlando, Fla., respectively.Both CCH and CSI have made recent purchases of other vendors - Creative Solutions merging Dunphy Systems into its user base, and CCH purchasing ATX Kleinrock and TaxWise as continuing entities.

The Tax Policy Center has released a series of data tables taking a look at the effect of the major tax changes enacted since 2001.For each table, the center compares the amount of tax owed under current law with the amount that would have been paid if the law had stayed the same as it was in 2000. Estimates are computed both for dollar-income classes (for example, $40,000 to $50,000) and for percentiles of income distribution (for example, middle quintile, which includes households in the middle 20 percent of the income distribution).

In a long-awaited move, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has proposed new accounting for mergers and acquisitions by not-for-profit organizations.Reflecting a proposed standard on for-profit business combinations, Not-for-Profit Organizations: Mergers and Acquisitions proposes the elimination of the pooling-of-interests method, the measurement of assets and liabilities at fair value, and the recognition of goodwill upon initial recognition of another entity, be it for-profit or not-for-profit.

Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Max Baucus, D-Mont., struck an agreement with House lawmakers on bipartisan, bicameral legislation to extend expired and expiring tax, health, trade, and other provisions.