Practice Management

The Internal Revenue Service has posted an updated Foreign Financial Institution Agreement on its Web site for implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA.

The American Institute of CPAs has sent a letter expressing strong concern with the Internal Revenue Service’s proposed voluntary certification program for tax return preparers, saying it “would cause significant legal problems that may ultimately frustrate the IRS’s goals, confuse the public, and lead to litigation.”

The IRS Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee presented its 2014 Annual Report to Congress during a public meeting Tuesday, with recommendations including the creation of an online IRS account for individual and business taxpayers and tax professionals.

U.S. lawmakers argued late into the night over a computer hard drive that crashed in 2011, taking the controversy surrounding the Internal Revenue Service to a new level of acrimony.

A central character in the 14-month dispute in Congress over the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of Tea Party groups is a computer hard drive.

To everyone but tax attorneys, the disclaimers referring to “Circular 230” that appear in the legends of most law firm e-mails are inscrutable as well as ubiquitous. The Internal Revenue Service has now changed its rules so that those disclaimers can be deleted permanently.

BKR International hosted a panel of some of the best accounting marketers in the country in conjunction with the Association for Accounting Marketing Annual Summit in Austin, Texas. Putting their smart brains together, they agreed on 10 best practices for building the reputation and visibility of accounting firms in a high technology, but still high touch industry.

Bloomberg BNA has released FATCA — Information Reporting and Withholding Under Chapter 4, a new report portfolio in which international tax practitioners from PricewaterhouseCoopers analyze the reporting and withholding requirements imposed by the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act on both financial and non-financial institutions.

Citrin Cooperman has added partners and staff of MGI Repetti. The combination is scheduled to close on July 1.

KPMG LLP has acquired the business and technology consulting firm, Zanett Commercial Solutions. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.