Practice and client management

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve are each pushing to gain regulatory authority over investment banks. At a hearing on Capitol Hill, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox and New York Federal Reserve President Timothy F. Geithner each outlined plans for the monitoring of commercial and investment banks. Both laid blame for the "patchwork" of regulatory agencies in lieu of one overseer for much of the current roiling of the financial markets. Cox urged lawmakers to give his agency responsibility over investment banks pointing out that the commission currently has authority over the markets in which they operate. Earlier this year, the Treasury Department proposed merging the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission into a single entity while expanding the oversight capacity of the Federal Reserve.

The House passed a bill aimed at shoring up the mortgage industry and preventing foreclosures after the president dropped his veto threat.

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on the use of offshore corporate tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, on the heels of hearings elsewhere in the Senate on individual tax havens in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The tab for the proposed bailout of mortgage securities concerns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could run as high as $25 billion, according to an estimate released by the Congressional Budget Office.

A Senate subcommittee plans to release another blockbuster report on the use of foreign tax havens after the first reports caused repercussions both here and abroad.

The Internal Revenue Service said it plans to send a second set of information packages to an estimated 5.2 million retirees and disabled veterans who have not yet filed their tax returns in order to give them their economic stimulus payments.

The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has reportedly sent letters to 182,000 individual taxpayers asking them to justify the tax refunds they have requested.

Consideration of any tax reform for small business must take into account the difficulties small-business owners face when deciding how to structure their business and comply with the Tax Code’s complex requirements, said Dewey Martin, a Hampden, Maine-based CPA.Martin, who testified at the recent hearings before the Senate Finance Committee on business entities and small-business tax reform, is a small-business owner himself, as well as an advisor to 200-plus small-business owners and chair of the Accounting Department at Husson College in Bangor, Maine.

GAO SAYS IRS NEEDS TO IMPROVE INTERNAL CONTROLS

The event may be have been billed as The Forum for Women in Accounting, but the issues and topics discussed at the three-day confab here were decidedly not just for one gender.That was the overriding sentiment during the course of the conference, and one that resonated with the majority of the 250 attendees, which even included a handful of men.

The Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division increased its enforcement activities last fiscal year after they fell behind in fiscal 2006, according to a new report.

Swiss investment bank UBS plans to stop offering offshore banking to U.S. residents after the bank was questioned about its clients' tax avoidance practices at a Senate hearing.

Back-to-school shopping will be tax-free for a few days next month in 13 states and the District of Columbia, according to a report by CCH.

The proposed regulations on preparer penalties, released on June 17, are the latest iteration of rules that tax practitioners should consider carefully when recommending and executing tax strategies. Not heeding them can result in stiff penalties or, worse, the loss of the right to continue to practice tax law and serious damage to a firm’s reputation in the client community.The simple reality is that those responsible for recommending prospective tax strategies are almost always drawn back into the matter by the signing return preparer once the transaction is completed. They are asked about tax benefit matters what was intended and whether things turn out as expected. That after-the-fact advice is enough to subject the practitioner to the label “return preparer” for purposes of the preparer penalties.

The Texas Society of CPAs has elected a new chairman, Steven R. Goodman, along with a new board and officers.

VSP Vision Care has hired former U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr to represent the eye care insurance provider in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on its tax-exempt status.

The Internal Revenue Service's process for collecting unpaid taxes is overly complicated and delayed, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.

Florida accounting firms Cross, Fernandez & Riley and Beckert, Price & Rowse plan to merge August 1, allowing CFR to expand operations in a populous part of the state.

Two Southern California accounting firms have joined forces, with Newport Beach-based Squar, Milner, Peterson, Miranda & Williamson merging with Los Angeles-based Thomashow, Brown & Paialii.

John K. Harris founded JK Harris & Co. in 1997 and it quickly grew into one of the country's largest tax representation firms, helping people who are in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service.