The Latest

A federal jury found an 87-year-old Florida man owes the U.S. government civil penalties amounting to 150 percent of the value of his Swiss bank account, the biggest such penalty by percentage on record, his lawyers said.

The Hong Kong government plans to meet Chinese officials to discuss concerns over a proposal to ban foreign accounting firms without a mainland partner from auditing Chinese companies planning to list overseas.

Employers owed the Internal Revenue Service approximately $14.1 billion in delinquent Social Security, Medicare and individual federal income taxes that they had withheld from employee paychecks as of June 30, 2012, and the Internal Revenue Service is being urged to do more to assess penalties against them.

John Belpedio has joined WTP Advisors to lead its national Fixed Asset practice and advise clients on issues surrounding Federal tax depreciation.

Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP has added Cohen Rutherford + Knight PC to its national health care practice, DHG Healthcare.

Highlights of some of our favorite tax-related blogs from the past week.

Public companies are confronting significant new compliance challenges from a combination of Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board inspections of their auditing firms, and COSO’s new internal control framework, according to a new survey.

Accounting firms are full of barriers to growth, many of which are invisible, and some of which may spring from the owners themselves, according to growth consultant Angie Grissom.

Payroll giant ADP has put together a new infographic comparing in-house versus outsourced services for handling payroll taxes.

The Association for Accounting Marketing has handed out 43 awards for marketing achievement to accounting firms and their marketing employees.