Completing tedious tasks; reconciliation package; second homes; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers.
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It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!
Don't Mess With Taxes : The 2026 Atlantic basin hurricane season has been relatively calm, but Mother Nature has taken her fury out elsewhere this year. When major disaster declarations are issued, the IRS follows by providing tax relief to affected filers. This blog provides the most recent extended tax deadlines for millions of U.S. taxpayers.Wolters Kluwer : Most firms don't need to be reminded that K-1 processing is difficult. They deal with the challenge every tax season. What has changed is the cost of manually managing K-1s. As complexity increases and staffing remains constrained, the effort required to process K-1s continues to grow, placing additional pressure on capacity, turnaround times and profitability.HBK : Under Act 21 of 2026, Pennsylvania changed how vendors determine whether Philadelphia's or Allegheny County's local sales tax applies. Historically, the local sales tax was based on the point of sale (vendor's location). With the recent change, the local sales tax is based on the destination of the taxable product or service.Tax Foundation : Country-by-country reporting, developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, requires large multinational groups to provide aggregate data on income, profits, taxes paid and economic activity by jurisdiction. This information is shared with tax authorities to help identify transfer pricing and base erosion and profit shifting risks. The OECD's reporting model was intentionally designed as a high-level risk assessment tool for tax authorities, not as a public measure of profit shifting or tax avoidance. This year, however, as a response to increased transparency requirements, the EU, Australia and the U.S. have introduced new transparency requirements.
Tax-prep giant
ITEP : Tax-prep giant H&R Block released several new financial statements last week, revealing that it paid no federal taxes on its U.S. income in 2025. While H&R Block did not explain how it pulled this off, it did make a public disclosure, required by the European Union, characterizing one-third of its global profits as earned in Ireland, a low-tax country where the company offers no tax services and has only 15 employees.CBIZ : Tax-exempt organizations may want to keep an eye on four House bills that recently moved out of the Ways and Means Committee. The proposals are still early in the legislative process, but together they point to areas where Congress is paying closer attention: fiscal sponsorships, foreign-source contributions, political activity and protections for religious organizations.MeyersBrothersKalicka : As of Aug. 11, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a final rule that permanently removes the requirement for U.S. companies and U.S. persons to report beneficial ownership information to FinCEN under the Corporate Transparency Act. The final rule makes permanent the exemptions established through FinCEN's March 2025 interim final rule, which significantly narrowed the CTA's reporting requirements. FinCEN also announced that it will delete previously submitted information from its BOI database for individuals it reasonably believes are U.S. persons.Boyum & Barenscheer : The IRS just released some good news for families considering funding a Trump account. In Revenue Procedure 2026-25, the IRS has provided a safe harbor that allows certain donors to avoid filing a federal gift tax return solely because they made contributions to a Trump account, as long as the safe harbor requirements are satisfied. The guidance is narrow, but it resolves a real problem.U of I Tax School Blog : With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress created Trump accounts as a new, tax-favored savings vehicle for children. For practitioners, the planning question is not whether Trump accounts replace 529 plans, but how the two vehicles fit different family goals.Sikich : Private equity firms have become increasingly sophisticated at finding hidden sources of value during acquisitions, yet one opportunity continues to be overlooked in many transactions: research and development tax incentives.
"Taylor Swift Tax"
TaxProf Blog : Rhode Island's new tax on second homes disproportionately targets non-residents and has no reasonable basis for its selective application, according to a new suit challenging the tax on federal and state constitutional grounds. Dubbed the "Taylor Swift Tax" after the state's famous part-time resident, the levy took effect on July 1, and collects an additional $5 charge on every $1,000 of value that a non-owner occupied home is assessed above $1 million. The state impermissibly designed the charge to target owners who can't vote in Rhode Island, according to the complaint brought by over 40 owners of property subject to the new tax.Forbes : There's been a surprising amount of talk in recent weeks about New York City's new pied-à-terre tax, given how many properties might actually be affected. New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced a revenue estimate of $500 million from 13,000 "second homes" valued at at least $5 million. However, according to the state's comptroller, revenue will likely be collected from a little over 11,200 properties.AICPA & CIMA : Artificial intelligence continues to be a game changer in the accounting and finance profession — especially for tax practitioners. From summarizing tax laws to conducting research, generating communications to writing workflow manuals, the use of AI to complete tedious tasks is leaving practitioners more time to focus on more client advisory duties.Current Federal : The enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 fundamentally reshaped the landscape of international corporate taxation, introducing the global intangible low-taxed income regime under Internal Revenue Code Section 951A and the foreign-derived intangible income deduction under Section 250. Designed to neutralize tax considerations when choosing whether to serve foreign markets through domestic operations or controlled foreign corporations, Section 250 originally allowed a domestic corporation a deduction equal to 37.5% of its foreign-derived deduction eligible income, reducing the effective corporate tax rate on qualifying income.Eide Bailly : The Senate, by a narrow, party-line margin, took the first steps towards passing legislation to prefund ICE and Customs and Border Protection for several years. Without any Democratic support, Republicans are using the reconciliation procedure for the legislation, allowing them to bypass any potential filibusters. As part of the process, the Senate also voted on several amendments, rejecting all of them. The resolution senators passed will only allow for $70 billion in new spending in certain areas, mostly related to border protection and immigration enforcement. This means that despite some hopes (or fears), the reconciliation package likely won't be a vehicle for new tax changes.
Plausible on paper
National Association of Tax Professionals : Every preparer knows the feeling: The client's story is plausible on paper, but something about it doesn't sit right. Maybe the numbers are too clean. Maybe the explanation changes slightly each time a follow-up question is asked. That instinct isn't a distraction from the job. It is the job.Taxjar : A recent Arizona Court of Appeals court decision offers a practical reminder: a fee listed separately at checkout may still be part of the taxable admission price. When customers buy tickets to events, they often see more than the face value. Facility fees, venue fees, service fees, delivery charges, parking fees and other types of fees can all appear at checkout.Sagenext : Your client has self-employment income, got hit with the AMT and received an advance premium tax credit that turned out to be too large. None of those additional taxes fit neatly on the face of Form 1040. That's exactly the problem Schedule 2 solves — and if you're not handling it precisely, you're either leaving money on the table or sending the client a bill they shouldn't owe. The IRS posted the 2025 Schedule 2 (Form 1040) revision on Jan. 2. The form carries the official title "Additional Taxes" and is required whenever a taxpayer owes taxes that cannot be entered directly on Form 1040, 1040-SR or 1040-NR. This blog advises how to work through it cleanly.The Tax Times : For as long as most of us have been practicing, the rule was simple and merciless: You have 90 days from the mailing date on your IRS Notice of Deficiency to file a petition with the U.S. Tax Court. Miss it by one day and the Tax Court would tell you it had no power to hear your case, no excuses, no exceptions, no matter how sympathetic your story. On Aug. 11, the Eighth Circuit in Maniktala v. Commissioner, told the IRS that is no longer the law, at least in its part of the country.Withum : For years, businesses and tax advisors have searched for a clear answer to a deceptively simple question: When is a limited partner truly a "limited partner" for self-employment tax purposes? Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit appeared to provide that answer, tying the analysis largely to a partner's legal status and liability protection. The result is a decision that may affect thousands of partners and could reshape future disputes involving self-employment tax.Yeo and Yeo : If your business sells products online, has employees working from home in other states or ships goods through a fulfillment network, you may already have obligations in jurisdictions where you've never opened an office or filed a return. Most business owners don't find out until someone comes looking. That's the problem this blog is designed to help you avoid.
