In the Blogs: Nervous About the Service

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

Skin in the game

  • Mauled Again: Turns out there’s a new tax specialty brewing: porn. A look at a report that, “The Alabama House Ways and Means Committee, trying to deal with a budget shortfall, has approved legislation imposing a 40% excise tax on, well, it depends on whose explanation is accepted. Some are calling it a tax on porn.” Is nothing sacred?
  • BNA blogs: Can Excel still keep up with “a dizzying array of tax cuts, credits and other incentives” states use to lure businesses?
  • Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders: Improve your firm? Improve yourself.
  • Taxes at About.com: Uber alles: Advising clients in this age of shared economy and independent contractors.
  • Taxjar: FAQ on FBA, from the Facebook group “Sales Tax for eCommerce Sellers.”

Ruling parties

  • Procedurally Taxing: Guest blogger Marilyn Ames writes about a recent Ninth Circuit opinion reversing and remanding a Tax Court decision regarding the proper standard to apply in transferee liability cases.
  • Rubin on Tax: To Have and To Hold Onto Dept.: How the Florida Supreme Court recently gave “expansive protection” to soon-to-be-ex hubby’s separate property under a prenup.
  • Tax Policy: How Yahoo’s proposed spinoff of Alibaba and the IRS refusal to rule on the matter point “to several fundamental problems with the U.S. corporate income tax and its enforcement.”

Nervous about the Service

  • Tax Analysts: Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush may want to take a monkey wrench to the tax law – but what about giving a twist to the IRS as well? “The IRS isn’t respected [partially] because Republicans have been demonizing it for years. Some GOP complaints are opportunistic and self-serving, designed to curry favor with the voters, while others are more legitimate. And a few … manage to be both.”
  • Roth & Co.: “Fighting ID theft by regulating preparers is like fighting pickpockets by regulating laundromats.” Let’s explore what’s going on here.
  • The Tax Times: Build it and they might not come: “IRS Eliminates Appeals Arbitration Program Due to Lack of Demand.”
  • John R. Dundon II EA blog: How to request competent authority assistance under U.S. tax treaties – “not necessarily contingent upon whether you sign an agreement with the IRS Examination function, contrary to the assertions of some IRS agents.”

Wrongdoings

  • IRS Problem Solver Blog: Tax fraud in the military.
  • Taxable Talk: No, not that Randolph Scott. How a Pennsylvania estate and probate attorney skipped filing a return for an estate valued at more than $6 million and swiped more than third of that.
  • TaxProf: How serious is the DOJ about going after top corporate execs?

Before you know it

  • Don’t Mess with Taxes: Congress has a lot to do before we say good-bye to this year’s lawmaking. The four big dates coming up.
  • H&R Block blog: Just how bad is the sitch for your client if they still haven’t yet filed a 2014 return?
  • TurboTax blog: A look ahead at year-end tax planning. Break out the eggnog.
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