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

Post-season’s greetings

  • Liberty Tax: You were oh so popular a few short weeks ago. Before the cobwebs form on your stapler, remind clients of these reasons to visit you before next April 15th.
  • The Income Tax School: Ways to network and continue to drum up prospects long after Tax Day.
  • Taxing Subjects: You worked hard last season, you earned it – now plan to make the most of your vacation, especially internationally in the shadow of the strong dollar.
  • Backtaxeshelp: To err is human, to amend divine.
  • ClientWhys: Ways to free up time in your marketing, including automation, syncing e-mail, going mobile, and using VOIP and soft phone technology.

Service rendered

  • Roth & Co.: The nerve of some agencies. “You should thank me, peasant!” looks at the IRS finally agreeing to fork over $107,000 it glommed in a North Carolina “structuring” case. Seems the service seized a taxpayer’s bank account because he routinely made deposits under $10,000 “even though it never implied that the taxpayer was evading taxes or committing crimes.”
  • Tax Maven: Guest blogger attorney Logan Gremillion looks at the fight over captive insurance companies, recently added to the IRS Dirty Dozen list of abusive tax structures. Are such entities formed under IRC 831(b) truly risk-management structures?

Doing the time

  • Don’t Mess with Taxes: If there’s one job that seems more secure even than tax prep – an annual need of the public created by government mandate – it’s tax prep fraud. A reminder of the latest headline (see “multimillions”) case from Alabama (Accounting Today), plus the latest e-trends in theft of both money and info and who’s doing what about it.
  • Due Diligence: In this week’s roundup: “Ambulance Medicare Fraud Scheme Leads to Prison”; “PharMerica Whistleblower Suits Settles – $31.5 Million”; “Swiss Bank Vadian Latest to Cooperate with IRS”; “Hospitals Take Rap for EMS Medicare Fraud”; and “Texas Lawyer Suspended for EMS Medicare Fraud.”

Where’s the money?

  • Tax Vox: There’s always some joker in the breakdown lane – in this case, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Bill Shuster and Ways & Means Chair Paul Ryan, who need more time to “reach a bipartisan agreement” on financing the Highway Trust Fund. Also a look at a similar lawmaking bottleneck in Minnesota, and how Nebraska’s legislature overrode a veto of a gas tax increase.
  • Mauled Again: Socially conscious redistribution of our nation’s wealth according to hedge fund managers. Our two takeaway questions: “Where’s the money?” and “Are there no kindergartens?”
  • Tax Policy: In Nevada, Gov. Brian Sandoval’s proposed revised tax plan that combines elements from his earlier proposed restructuring of the state Business License Fee (SB 252) and alternative plans floated in the Assembly.

Advice corner

  • The Wandering Tax Pro: With a nod to fellow tax blogger Trish McIntire’s recent look (Our Taxing Times) at withholding wrinkles from multiple sources of income or when both partners in a couple work, Robert Flach looks at how to find and avoid this thorny problem when filing.
  • Burbank CPA Tax Musings: The plusses of automatic savings, via a recent article in Money.

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