Tax practice

The average tax refund in 2014 was $2,696, up 1.5 percent from the average refund of $2,656 in 2013, according to a new report on how well the Internal Revenue Service operated last tax season.

The number of companies lobbying the U.S. government on tax inversions more than doubled in the quarter ending Sept. 30, as they sought to prevent Congress and the Obama administration from imposing new restrictions.

A bipartisan group of 15 senators has written to the Internal Revenue Service urging the agency to do a better job of preventing tax refund fraud using stolen identities.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Safeguards is not doing enough to protect the federal tax information that it is required to disclose to other government agencies, according to a new report.

A majority of board members at public companies want Congress to pass broad-based tax reform legislation to address corporate tax inversions, according to a new survey.

The Internal Revenue Service will not meet the Treasury Department’s 2015 goal for full compliance with a directive requiring federal agencies to issue identification cards that allow workers to gain access to federally controlled facilities and information systems, according to a new government report that found IRS officials citing the lack of enough funding and staff as the main obstacles.

The Internal Revenue Service did not always issue a notice of its intent to issue a levy on taxpayer assets, according to a new report.

The federal government brought in $3.02 trillion in tax and other revenues in fiscal 2014 – its highest take ever.

The Internal Revenue Service needs to do more to prevent improper claims for refunds of excess Social Security tax withholding, according to a recent government report.

Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

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

Tax preparers charge an average of $142 for a preparing a 1040 and up to an average of $566 for an 1120, according to a new survey from the NATP.

The IRS announced that professional tax preparers can now register for or renew their PTINs on IRS.gov.

A former UBS AG executive gave a primer on the workings of Swiss bank secrecy to a Florida jury hearing the tax-conspiracy trial of Raoul Weil, who once ran the bank’s global wealth-management business.

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

The Internal Revenue Service paid approximately $33 million for paper tax records storage services in fiscal year 2013, and as of March 2014, and the agency had 5.42 million cubic feet of paper tax records stored at various Federal Records Centers across the country, according to a new report.

The Internal Revenue Service did not always follow its own internal procedures for undelivered tax lien notices, according to a new government report.

Raoul Weil, once the head of UBS AG’s global wealth-management business, didn’t know that “rogue” underlings were helping Americans evade taxes, his lawyer told jurors at the start of a trial in Florida.

AbbVie Inc. may scrap or renegotiate its planned 32.4-billion-pound ($51.5 billion) deal for Dublin-based drugmaker Shire Plc, in what would be the biggest casualty of the U.S. crackdown on so-called tax inversions.

Ireland’s government will phase out a tax shelter used by U.S. companies from Google Inc. to LinkedIn Corp., amid mounting pressure from international authorities.