Practice Management

In addition to his role as a dictator who started World War II and sent millions of people to their deaths in concentration camps, Adolf Hitler was a tax evader, according to a recent report.

The Internal Revenue Service has released tax tables to help taxpayers determine whether they would benefit from an optional new sales tax deduction.

GAO SAYS IRS IMPROVED PERFORMANCE IN '04, BUT BETTER DATA NEEDED ON SOME SERVICES: The Internal Revenue Service scored high marks for processing returns and issuing refunds smoothly during the 2004 filing season, but didn't fare as well on accuracy in answering tax questions, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

Just as the Internal Revenue Service was becoming increasingly more aggressive in its settlement offers in tax shelter cases, and obtained a few additional weapons for its arsenal in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, a series of defeats on the litigation front may force the agency to reevaluate some aspects of its strategy.

Improving taxpayer service, enhancing enforcement of the tax law, and modernizing the Internal Revenue Service through its people, processes and technology should be the tax administration's top priorities for 2005, according to the American Institute of CPAs.

Filomeno & Company PC, an eight-partner CPA firm based here, has expanded its financial planning practice with the merger of fee-only planning firm Thibodeau Financial Advisors LLC into its fold.

Just three days after Oracle and PeopleSoft signed a truce in their protracted shareholder war via a $10.3 billion merger agreement, security software provider Symantec Corp. agreed to pay $13.5 million to purchase data storage and recovery software concern Veritas Software Corp.

Tax reform under the second Bush administration will most likely take the form of piecemeal tax cuts, according to participants in a tax panel sponsored by the Council for Electronic Revenue Communication Advancement, a government-private industry trade association. President Bush has said that he would appoint a panel to recommend changes to the tax code that would make it simpler, fairer and less burdensome.

More than half of U.S. and European multinational companies will increase their compliance spending by an average of 23 percent over the next 12 to 24 months, according to a recent survey from Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.According to PwC's Management Barometer Survey, about 51 percent of those polled said that they would raise spending on compliance, while some 44 percent of senior executives revealed that their companies do not have a clear view of their total compliance spending.

As part of efforts to tighten ethical standards for tax professionals and curb abusive tax shelters, the Treasury has issued final regulations amending Treasury Circular 230, which governs the practice of attorneys, accountants and other tax professionals before the Internal Revenue Service.