Tax planning

Like most politicians, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney released the details of their federal income tax returns late last week.

With the slightly later Tax Day now past, the Internal Revenue Service is still accepting extension requests, for a six-month reprieve, through E-file.

The Senate Finance Committee didn't like what it found in investigating ancillary offers often made as part of using the Internal Revenue Service's Free File online tax return preparation services.

A Michigan husband and wife, who've been involved in previous tax protests, could soon face a court order preventing them from promoting what the government says is the No. 1 tax scheme in the country.

The National Taxpayer Advocate, Nina E. Olson, announced that the Internal Revenue Service has awarded $8 million in matching grants to Low Income Taxpayer Clinics.

For filers anticipating this year's tax refund, it naturally comes as a welcome e-mail: "We have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of [X] dollars. To access the form for your tax refund, please click here."Who wouldn't like to get a tax refund? And an e-mail message sporting the official Internal Revenue Service logo is hard to ignore.

Tax prep giant H&R Block Inc. announced that its first-quarter tax preparation and related fees rose 3.7 percent from a year earlier, to a total of $1.98 billion.

A court order will allow the Internal Revenue Service to ask PayPal, a money transfer service owned by eBay Inc., to turn over information on customers who might be evading taxes.

Tax Freedom Day will fall on April 26 this year, according to the Tax Foundation's annual calculation using the latest government data on income and taxes.

A husband and wife have filed a case against Ernst & Young, blaming the firm for the loss of $40 million in a tax shelter deemed abusive by the Internal Revenue Service, according to a published report.

Taxware, a provider of transaction tax calculation and compliance solutions, has released its annual list of the "Top 10 Most Unusual U.S. Sales Tax Laws for 2006."

Tax research and software provider RIA has upgraded its proprietary Checkpoint service to include expansion of user access to BNA content, international standards and titles from sibling Thomson company PPC.

The just-released Winter 2005-2006 issue of the Statistics of Income Bulletin discloses that adjusted gross income rose in 2004 for the second year in a row, increasing by 8.9 percent to $6.8 trillion. The largest component of AGI, salaries and wages, increased 6.0 percent to $4,977.9 billion, while net capital gains rose 53.2 percent to $442.1 billion. Taxable income increased 10.6 percent to $4.6 trillion.

H.R. 5114, the Tax Return Choice Act of 2006, was introduced in the House and referred to the Ways and Means Committee.

The Internal Revenue Service is looking to fill six vacancies on its Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee beginning in September.

A federal judge upheld a 1976 ruling and ordered the Internal Revenue Service to release detailed statistics on how the agency enforces the nation's tax laws to Susan Long, a Syracuse University professor and co-director of the non profit research group, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

An analysis of the Internal Revenue Service's 2003 figures show that President Bush's tax cuts on investment income have had a major effect on citizens in the upper tax brackets.

Although the Internal Revenue Service is cajoling taxpayers to file their returns electronically -- in a move designed to save the Treasury billions of dollars -- at least one top IRS official copped to submitting her return on paper.

In a limited study, the Government Accountability Office said that paid tax-return preparers at 19 chain operations returned less-than-stellar service.

Intuit Inc. has sued H&R Block Inc. for copyright infringement, alleging that Block's television spots echo Intuit's promotions for its market-leading TurboTax software.