Finance

Enhanced pre-refund compliance checks would enable the Internal Revenue Service to help confirm taxpayers' identity, quickly and efficiently correct some errors with virtual certainty, and identify and audit some returns before refunds are issued, according to a new government report that fueled a debate in Congress over refundable tax credits.

The Internal Revenue Service found over 245,000 identity theft incidents last year, according to a new government report that assessed the IRS’s efforts to stem the growing problem, as victims testified before the Senate.

The American Institute of CPAs held its annual ritual this week of visiting lawmakers’ offices on Capitol Hill to press the case for tax simplification, a ban on tax patent strategies, changes in tax-filing due dates, and other legislative priorities.

The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing Tuesday on how other countries have used tax reform to help their companies compete globally.

stimulus, government contractors, back taxes, gao, grassley, carl levin, congress

The American Institute of CPAs kicked off its 2011 Spring Meeting of Council on Sunday with a discussion of the Institute’s legislative priorities.

A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators from Florida, Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Marco Rubio, have introduced a bill that would simplify the tax-filing requirements of senior citizens.

The American Institute of CPAs plans to support a new tax simplification bill introduced earlier this month by a pair of congressmen that would make it easier to satisfy the tax-reporting requirements of workers who are employed in multiple jurisdictions.

Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has written to White House officials questioning why big banks are benefiting from a Small Business Lending Fund that was supposed to be used to help finance small businesses.

The Financial Accounting Foundation said Wednesday that, as part of its oversight of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, it has commissioned an independent academic study of the purposes of financial accounting and reporting of state and local governments.

A group of six Republican senators has written to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman asking about the agency’s recent move to impose gift taxes on donors to tax-exempt political advocacy organizations.

Senate Democrats failed to muster enough votes to advance a bill that would have eliminated tax credits for the five largest oil and gas companies.

The Internal Revenue Service has begun sending letters to political donors asking why they didn’t report their 2008 donations on their gift tax forms.

Not all of the state legislation drawing attention from accountants this year involves taxes (see States Enact Flurry of Tax Changes). Indeed, some of the most closely watched bills hit even closer to home for the profession.

Accountants across the nation barely had time to recover from the 2011 tax season before being buried under a blizzard of new tax law changes approved by dozens of state legislatures from Harrisburg to Honolulu.

The United States reached its statutory debt limit of $14.3 trillion on Monday and the Treasury Department took steps to create additional headroom to avoid a government default.

Several years before the birth of the Tea Party movement, I caught one of the local town workers stuffing my mailbox full of anti-income tax materials that included scores of inaccurate legal references and precedents where the courts agreed with a plaintiff who refused to pay taxes.

The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on the current structure of international tax rules and how they might be hampering American employers in global markets.

A long list of organizations representing small and closely held businesses sent a letter to the leaders of the tax-writing committees in Congress urging them to include them in any upcoming tax reform legislation.

While Congress tackles long-term tax reform, it continues to consider and enact piecemeal legislation aimed at specific areas. As a result, there are several bills afloat that, if enacted, would impact the ability of business to do business.