Practice and client management

Sometime in the 1990s, a group of marketing types must have gotten together to come up with the next big trend for businesses to use.

After years of being halted by accountants with their arms outstretched and hands spread wide (Stop!) when I approached them about their marketing plans, I finally realized what makes them so unwilling to market themselves: They are uncomfortable.

IRS PRIVATE LETTER RULINGS SHOULD GO OUT FASTER

It’s been five years since Connie Mack, as chair of President Bush’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, said that it would “take a fresh look at the existing Tax Code and will formulate options for making the tax system simple, fair and productive.

Vice President Joe Biden indicated that the White House could be ready to make a deal with Republicans on expanding the level of income that would qualify for the Bush tax cuts extension.

Tax forms and other government documents will now be subject to a kind of literacy test, under a new government law that so far has not attracted a whole lot of attention.

Lambda Legal has published a short guide aimed at tax professionals and California’s registered domestic partners explaining the consequences of a significant shift in federal tax policy as they file their tax returns for 2010.

While we await the lame duck Congress to find out if and how much our taxes will rise next year, it might be well to remember that government — and the programs it loves to fund — will only keep growing until it runs out of funding. Hardly any government will willingly reduce programs, cut funding, or otherwise act within reasonable limits.

Mark Ernst, the former chairman and CEO of H&R Block who went on to become deputy commissioner for operations support at the Internal Revenue Service, will be leaving the IRS later this year, according to an announcement Thursday by IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman.

Tax preparer Kertena Seabrook has been sentenced to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay $171,152 in restitution after she was convicted on 20 counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns.

Accounting firm Citrin Cooperman has changed its logo and other branding for the first time in 30 years.

A senior executive of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone who is also a tax preparer has pleaded guilty to submitting false and fraudulent tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service and cashing approximately $250,000 in fraudulently obtained tax refund checks.

States and localities continued to raise their sales tax rates last quarter in order to generate more revenue to close their budget deficits, according to a new report.

With only weeks to go before next month’s game-changing midterm Congressional elections, the accounting profession is in position to make record-breaking contributions to the campaigns of key House and Senate candidates.

An Internal Revenue Service advisory committee has issued a report calling for a number of changes in the IRS’s information reporting rules, including the controversial provision in the health care reform bill that mandates expanded 1099 information reporting for businesses.

The tax debt relief industry is searching for loopholes in a Federal Trade Commission rule that could eliminate its main source of revenue.

A pair of U.S. senators has written to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman and the heads of a dozen other federal agencies asking why they have erected roadblocks to investigative efforts of their agencies’ watchdogs, their inspectors general.

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores has sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service asking it to delay rules implementing provisions in the health care reform bill that would prohibit the use of debit cards, such as those used in flexible spending accounts and health reimbursement accounts, to buy over-the-counter prescribed medications.

Legendary economist Milton Friedman once joked that you could take any three letters from the alphabet, scramble them in any order you want, and you'll end up with an acronym for a federal agency we could do without.

AccountantsWorld president Dr. Chandra Bhansali describes how the current client accounting model doesn't work to accountants' advantage, and what needs to change about it.