Practice Management

How many times have you heard someone say, “Mind your own business?” For accountants, especially in these economic times, that just may be sage advice.

Grant Thornton has released a set of tax season tips for both individuals and businesses.

About 52 percent of Americans intend to spend their annual tax refund on necessary expenses such as loans, credit cards and other household expenses, while another 30 percent plan to put the money into savings and only 8 percent plan to invest the tax refund money, according to a new survey.

Taxpayer satisfaction with personal interactions with the Internal Revenue Service remained high despite high-profile controversies in the past year, but there has been some decline in public support for IRS funding, according to an annual survey of taxpayer attitudes.

The American Institute of CPAs has sent a letter outlining a set of legislative proposals to the leaders of Congress’s two main tax committees, the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, recommending ways to simplify the tax laws and make them fairer.

The Internal Revenue Service has significantly increased its enforcement actions against tax criminals and its rate of convicting them, according to a new report from the IRS’s Criminal Investigation unit.

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., sent a letter Monday to the Internal Revenue Service’s new commissioner, John Koskinen, demanding he turn over documents related to last year’s scandal involving IRS scrutiny of tax-exempt applications or else he would be forced to “compel them.”

Number 10: The lunchroom is finally filled with extra snacks.

Group-of-20 nations agreed to implement a global standard for automatically exchanging information between tax authorities by the end of 2015, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.

Sikich, Top 40 accounting, advisory, investment banking, technology and managed services firm, announced Monday its merger with 403 Labs, a Brookfield, Wis.-based information security consultancy.