Practice and client management

Two Swiss banks agreed to pay combined penalties of about $8.3 million to avoid prosecution under a U.S. program that requires Swiss firms to say how they helped American clients avoid taxes.

A federal appeals court upheld a sentence that didn’t include prison time for H. Ty Warner, the billionaire creator of Beanie Babies plush toys, who evaded $5.6 million in taxes after hiding money in a Swiss bank account.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

Our weekly roundup of tax-related investment strategies and news your clients may be thinking about.

The middle of summer is not the time of year that most of us want to think about taxes. However, the IRS’s tangible property repair regulations that were released this year require some reflection.

More than 80 percent of large corporations have been offered incentives by a state or local economic official for a new development or corporate relocation, according to a new study by Bloomberg BNA.

Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to make the Tax Code gender neutral in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last month extending same-sex marriages to every state.

Highlights of some of our favorite tax-related blogs from the past week.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department plan to amend the required minimum distribution regulations under Section 401(a)(9) of the tax code to address the use of lump sum payments to replace annuity payments being paid by a qualified defined benefit pension plan.

The IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate Service has developed several online tools to help taxpayers and employers estimate their tax credits and payments related to the Affordable Care Act.

Wealthy people have lots of ways to avoid the estate tax. But a federal judge says one family got a little too creative in dodging its tax bill.

A tax strategy once used by the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies is attracting a new level of scrutiny from the IRS.

A scammer who organized a scheme in which taxpayers were threatened with calls purporting to come from the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI demanding payment has been sentenced to 14 years in prison.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Whistleblower Office received more claims last fiscal year than in any prior year as the program has begun paying out larger awards to tipsters with information on tax evaders.

The Senate Finance Committee released a series of reports Wednesday from five bipartisan tax working groups working on various aspects of tax reform.

Step aside, Doctors Without Borders. A new class of professionals is ignoring national frontiers to come to the aid of economically struggling nations.

A group of lawmakers has introduced legislation to roll back guidance from the Treasury Department that prohibits employers from using stand-alone health reimbursement arrangements to reimburse employees for health care-related expenses.

A Bulgarian hacker has admitted to participating in a $6 million fraudulent tax return scheme in which he used tax-filing information stolen from at least four major CPA firms in the U.S.

The New Jersey Tax Court denied Morristown Medical Center a property tax exemption because it did not operate like a non-profit.

Arkansas taxpayers who were victims of severe storms, tornadoes, straight-line winds and flooding that began two months ago may qualify for tax relief from the IRS.