Some Tax Professionals to Send Returns to Different IRS Centers Than Last Year: The Internal Revenue Service is urging tax professionals to be aware of changes that will affect where they send tax returns and payments for clients in 10 states starting in 2004. The changes are a result of redistributing the workload among the 10 IRS processing centers to provide better service.
Tax professionals whose clients are in the Metro New York area and Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Michigan, Montana, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming will be filing their returns with different IRS centers during the 2004 filing season.
Preparers with clients in Arizona and Washington will send returns with payments to different agency addresses as well, although other returns will continue to go to the IRS center in Fresno, Calif.
For taxpayers who file paper returns, the new center addresses will be provided on the envelopes in their tax packages. Taxpayers who e-file will not be affected by these changes.
Former Treasury Tax Advisor Joins D&T: Elizabeth Drigotas, an attorney-advisor in the Office of the Benefits Tax Counsel for the U.S. Treasury Department, has joined Big Four firm Deloitte & Touche as a principal in the Tax Practice Employee Benefits Group.
Drigotas, who will work with Deloitte’s Washington National Tax Group, will provide compensation and benefits services, including compensation and benefits issues in merger and acquisition transactions.
At the Treasury Department, she participated in a number of regulatory projects, including golden parachute and incentive stock-option regulations, as well as 401(k) and ESOP regulations.
ATX Unveils All-Inclusive Research Package: Caribou, Maine-based tax research provider ATX announced in early October that it’s now offering a bundle of its research tools in a package called Total Kleinrock Office, for $500.
The package includes individual, nonprofit tax research and analysis, payroll and a forms library. It will also include Federal TaxExpert, Kieinrock’s All States, ZillionForms, Employment TaxExpert, and handbooks addressing AMT, the Education Tax Incentives, nonprofits, personal deductions and the tax law changes of 2003.
Also included will be the Kleinrock Tax Guide, 41 CPE credit hours and a bi-weekly tax bulletin.
“We’re not only lowering our prices, we’re making the products better,” said ATX chief executive Glynn Willett. “TKO gives the user a valuable portfolio of research tools. If you purchased everything included in TKO separately, you’d be spending over $2,100.”
ATX is a division of United Communications Group, which also owns Kleinrock Publishing, producer of TaxExpert research and analysis software.
Economic Groups Warn Budget Deficit Could Hit $5 trillion: A coalition of bipartisan budget analysis groups warned that the 10-year federal deficit could exceed $5 trillion, and called on both Congress and President George W. Bush to “develop a realistic plan for putting the nation’s fiscal house in order.”
The study, conducted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Concord Coalition and the Committee for Economic Development, takes into consideration the cost of continuing alternative minimum tax relief, permanently extending President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and other domestic spending.
Two months ago, the Congressional Budget Office predicted the 10-year budget deficit would be $1.4 trillion.
The projections were released jointly by the Committee for Economic Development, an organization of business leaders and educators; the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan fiscal policy organization; and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a policy research organization that focuses on fiscal issues and issues affecting low- and moderate-income families.
