Finance

The American Institute of CPAs has asked Congress to restrict the issuance of patents for tax strategies.

The Internal Revenue Service announced that its revised taxpayer application for an offer in compromise, Form 656, is now available.

The Internal Revenue Service completed a round of staff cuts in recent weeks, letting go nearly 100 employees from the division that oversees gift- and estate-tax returns, according to published reports.

In a return to the office’s roots, the Securities and Exchange Commission has named a director for its Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service has appointed a new head of its Office of Professional Responsibility, which was created in the wake of the Enron implosion.

In a unanimous vote, 412-0, the House said that it will require a trio of accounting regulators to provide regular updates on the work being done to reduce the complexity of financial reporting and develop principles-based accounting standards.Through 2012, either the chairmen or other designees from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and the Financial Accounting Standards Board will now provide annual testimony to the House Financial Services Committee.

A Congressman wants the Treasury and the Federal Trade Commission to explore shutting down a trio of Web sites that taxpayers could easily mistake for the Internal Revenue Service’s official site.Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, sent a recent letter to the agency heads, as well as IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, arguing that the disclaimers at the bottom of the sites explaining that that they are not affiliated with the government, does not do enough to provide protection to consumers.

A flurry of e-mails and letters arrived just under the deadline for the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s 70-day comment period regarding proposed changes to the audit standard on internal controls over financial reporting.

The Internal Revenue Service said that it will renew contracts with two out of the three private agencies it signed to participate in a pilot program outsourcing debt collection. Conspicuously absent from that announcement was the fate of that third agency.The IRS said yesterday that it would extend the contracts of Waterloo, Iowa-based CBE Group Inc. and Arcade, N.Y.-based Pioneer Credit Recovery Inc., a unit of SLM Corp. The new contract will run through March 8, 2008.

The Internal Revenue Service announced the selection of 16 new members for its advisory council. The appointees will join 11 returning members who are in the last year of a three-year term.The council members are scheduled to meet in Washington, D.C. several times in 2007, with a public report to be provided during a meeting open to the public on Nov. 15.

A review of the Internal Revenue Service’s response to the flooding of its national headquarters in the summer of 2007 has found that the displacement of the office’s 2,200 employees had no measurable impact on taxpayers and tax administration.The report, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, attributed that result to the nature of the work performed at the site, as well as the contingency plans the IRS had in place -- but did note ways to cut down on more than $4 million of salary costs associated with the natural disaster.

The House Ways & Means Committee will begin marking up a small business tax package today, according to committee chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

The complexity of the tax code, the widening tax gap and private debt collection sit atop National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson's list of the most serious problems facing taxpayers.The recently released report also cited the oversight of unenrolled return preparers, correspondence delays, concerns about the Office of Appeals, and lengthy processing times for injured spouse relief.

Resurgent House Democrats are on a collision course with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the need for restrictions on corporate executive compensation - an issue Republican lawmakers managed to keep bottled up despite repeated reports of corporate pay abuses during the last Congress.Leading the charge for reform is corporate America's worst congressional nightmare: Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, who has long championed legislation to force the SEC to take a stronger stance against excessive compensation for boardroom big shots.

Companies don’t believe broad-based tax reform is coming anytime soon, though they do think that the change of control in Congress will have a significant impact on tax policy, according to a survey conducted by a Washington law firm.

A provision in the president's budget proposals could shelter 529 college-savings plans from being counted in determining federal student financial aid.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has taken National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson to task over her recent annual report to Congress.

President Bush’s 2008 budget has tabbed $11.4 billion for the Internal Revenue Service, a direct appropriation increase of 6.3 percent from the agency’s 2007 budget.

Everyone in Washington seems to be in agreement that there needs to be a better way of closing the tax gap, but like the other problems facing the Internal Revenue Service, there’s seems to be little Beltway consensus over how to meaningfully tackle the problem.It wasn’t lost on me that the same week that the IRS released its 2008 budget proposal --complete with a number of legislative proposals, a Congressman and the National Taxpayer Advocate continued to spar over the future of one of the agency’s newer attempts to combat the tax gap -- the outsourcing of simple collection cases to private companies as part of a pilot program.

As part of the White House’s proposed $2.9 trillion budget plan for the 2008 fiscal year, President Bush announced an effort aimed at significantly tightening the tax gap.

Besides rising pay for directors, a recent study found that the proportion of S&P 500 companies with classified boards dropped by 8 percent last year, leading to the majority of those companies holding annual elections for all of their directors.