Practice Management

The Senate Finance Committee pushed hard for answers from a tax policy nominee on when the Treasury Department will supply recommendations on an overhaul of the tax system, and how best to meaningfully improve the nation's tax compliance.

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson has delivered a report to Congress outlining the priority issues her office will tackle in the coming fiscal year.

The 40-year-old firm of Paul E. Daoust & Co. PC CPAs, based in Charlton, Mass., announced that it has acquired the Sturbridge, Mass.-based practice of CPA John M. Larson.

Prosecutors are looking into Deutsche Bank's role in providing a lesser-known questionably tax shelter sold through a Silicon Valley firm, according to published reports.

Three weeks into the clean-up effort following the massive flooding at its Washington headquarters, the Internal Revenue Service said that the office -- which houses some 2,700 workers -- won't reopen until early 2007.

During his administration's mid-year congressional review, President Bush said that high tax revenues were responsible for helping the government reduce the budget deficit faster than originally anticipated.

SAP AG has acquired Praxis Software Solutions and will integrate the company's Web-based CRM and e-commerce capabilities into SAP Business One, which targets small and midsized companies.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced two initiatives aimed at simplifying the way small businesses, individual taxpayers and tax preparers file and pay their federal taxes. The initiatives include:* Enhanced batch provider software for tax pros: New software will allow preparers to make large numbers of payments on behalf of clients with a single mouse-click by using the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System. Improvements include electronic registration and enrollment, real-time payment and enrollment data, real-time file transmission and replication, and enhanced report generation. The software can be downloaded at www.eftps.gov, under "What's New."

The founder of Colorado-based Octane International Ltd., whose primary business was raising money for the development of an alternative fuel additive called "vapor phase combustion," is facing indictment by a federal grand jury. William Orr, 54, of Parker, Colo., was charged with 10 counts of mail fraud, four counts of wire fraud, and two counts of making false statements. He also faces five counts of tax evasion and six counts of failure to file tax returns.Orr allegedly made a variety of untested claims regarding the additive, receiving nearly $560,000 from 43 investors between 1998 and 2004. He also successfully lobbied members of Congress and other employees of the federal government, obtaining a $3.6 million earmark to be used for further testing of the additive - $2 million of which was dispersed.

While practitioners are still scrambling to make sense out of the recent tax reconciliation legislation, significant changes in tax legislation are already in effect for 2006 - changes that may have a huge impact on the tax pro's 2007 tax filing season. And since it's an election year, tax pros will have to keep a close watch on any additional legislation that makes it into law impacting 2007 filings.How the practitioner community prepares for those changes now will make a big difference in the success of that filing season, which is really just a few months away.