Tax planning

President Bush has named two former senators to lead a new nine-member bipartisan panel charged with arriving at options to reform the tax code.

H&R Block Inc. announced that Brian L. Nygaard, president and chief executive officer of H&R Block Financial Advisors Inc., has decided to leave the company.

In a move triggered by lawmaker's concerns over the marketing of abusive tax shelters by some accounting firms, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has proposed new rules restricting the ability of accountants to provide tax services to their audit clients.

With the tax law becoming increasingly complex, it is no surprise that there often can be several well-intentioned interpretations of a particular provision. Also no surprise is the expectation of many clients that a fee for planning advice should almost always result in an exponential decrease in overall tax liability.

In a display of bipartisan cooperation, the Senate and the House on Thursday unanimously approved legislation allowing extra time for 2004 deductions for tsunami relief donations, just two days after it was proposed by Senate Finance Committee chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Taxpayers who misreported their income to snare unjustified Earned Income Tax Credits are draining $2 billion a year from the U.S. Treasury, auditors at the Government Accountability Office told Congress.

After 14 months of negotiations, law firm Jenkens & Gilchrist PC, based here, has agreed to pay $81.55 million in a class-action settlement to put claims related to its tax shelter work behind it.

Senate Finance Committee chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Max Baucus, D-Mont., announced a plan Tuesday to extend the period of time in which Americans can claim tax deductions for charitable donations to assist victims of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Southeast Asia on Dec. 26.

As the Internal Revenue Service kicked off its 2005 tax filing season this week, it announced that it expects that its e-file program will hit a milestone.

The Internal Revenue Service has expanded a program aimed at enabling some business taxpayers to resolve certain tax issues before they file their returns.

Tax and accounting software maker ATX has decided to hire a sales force to serve customers who are buying what it says is an increasingly complex product line.

The Internal Revenue Service is allowing limited exceptions from coverage of the new deferred compensation rules for certain stock appreciation rights, or SARs, that "do not present potential for abuse or intentional circumvention of the purposes" of Section 409A.

In addition to his role as a dictator who started World War II and sent millions of people to their deaths in concentration camps, Adolf Hitler was a tax evader, according to a recent report.

H&R Block Financial Advisors, the investment arm of the tax prep giant, agreed to pay a $500,000 fine and to return $325,000 in clients' mutual fund trading profits to settle charges brought against it by the National Association of Securities Dealers related to the market-timing of mutual fund shares by two of its former financial advisors.

The Internal Revenue Service has released tax tables to help taxpayers determine whether they would benefit from an optional new sales tax deduction.

RIA has added several new features, including enhancements to its financial reporting and management content, and expanded search capabilities in Tax Alerts, to the latest edition of its popular Checkpoint product.

Just as the Internal Revenue Service was becoming increasingly more aggressive in its settlement offers in tax shelter cases, and obtained a few additional weapons for its arsenal in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, a series of defeats on the litigation front may force the agency to reevaluate some aspects of its strategy.

A taxpayer generally may exclude up to $250,000 ($500,000 for certain married couples filing joint returns) of gain realized on the sale or exchange of a principal residence. To be eligible for the exclusion, the taxpayer must have owned the residence and used it as a principal residence for at least two years during the five-year period ending on the date of the sale or exchange.

A group of former Intuit employees have launched TaxNet.com, which provides Internet-based filing of income taxes, along with electronic filing.

There may be no phrase in the English language more satisfying to say or hear than, "Problem solved!"For accounting and information technology professionals, it embodies a special meaning, in that someone, or something, has enabled their business to sidestep a potential hurdle and continue their strategy of providing client services to reach the ultimate goal of any business - profitability.