Tax practice

Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation has released a report summarizing various provisions of the Tax Code and suggestions that were sent to House Ways and Means Committee working groups tasked with various aspects of tax reform.

The Internal Revenue Service has published 2010 statistics on foreign trusts indicating an an increasing interest in foreign investment by U.S. taxpayers, and the impact of changes made in 1996 to information reporting requirements.

A group of small business owners and individuals in six states have filed suit against the federal government over an IRS regulation imposed under the Affordable Care Act that the plaintiffs claim will require them to pay fines, cut back employee hours, or severely burden their businesses.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued final regulations requiring any person who has been assigned an Employer Identification Number to provide updated information to the IRS.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Oversight Board heard about the various problems encountered by tax practitioners and taxpayers, including the shortened tax season, identity theft and tax fraud.

The Internal Revenue Service has changed the inflation-adjusted annual limitation for health savings accounts for next year.

When Oklahoma energy billionaire George Kaiser opened the Northeast Gateway liquid natural gas terminal in 2008, the floating depot’s first delivery was shipped on the Excellence, a 909-foot supertanker that holds 138,000 cubic meters of LNG—enough gas to meet more than 4 percent of daily U.S. demand.

It’s become an annual rite of spring, at least for me—the release of Bloomberg BNA’s Survey of state tax departments. The survey, Bloomberg BNA’s 13th annual survey, asks questions aimed at clarifying each state’s position on the gray areas of corporate income and sales and use tax administration. Although nexus isn’t the only topic, it has been one of the main emphases of the survey.

The research and advocacy organization Global Financial Integrity is urging Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to allow the Senate to vote on agreements negotiated by the Treasury Department with Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hungary and other countries to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, in an effort to ferret out tax evaders.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon cruised to re-election. “The Waltons” premiered on CBS. And Sumner Redstone, who wasn’t yet a global media mogul, made a taxable gift to his children and failed to file a return.

You receive a call from a very excited client: your lawyer client settled a large case. Or your client won a large judgment. Or your client won the lottery. Now your client is about to receive a very large check: $1,000,000. $5,000,000. More? That’s the good news.

The rate at which the mortgage interest deduction is claimed and the average amount deducted varies widely across states and within states themselves, according to a new report.

While Congress continues to struggle this year to address such issues as how to deal with the federal deficit and the sequester, the House Ways and Means Committee has put forth a series of discussion drafts focused on fundamental tax reform.

Developments in tax from the previous month

The pros and cons of working with a tax franchise

A federal court in San Francisco has entered an order authorizing the Internal Revenue Service to serve a summons seeking information about U.S. taxpayers who may hold offshore accounts at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce FirstCaribbean International Bank, seeking records of FCIB’s U.S. correspondent account at Wells Fargo.

A former Internal Revenue Service agent and manager has pleaded guilty to criminal conflict of interest charges and been convicted after admitting to opening her own tax and accounting business, which earned her $70,000 on the side while working for the IRS.

The IRS has released Notice 2013-30, formalizing a three-month extension for filing and paying taxes for those affected by the Boston Marathon bombings.

A 79-year-old widow who pleaded guilty in the largest individual case since a U.S. crackdown on offshore tax evasion began received less than a minute of probation from a judge who scolded the prosecutors.

The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on tax reform and residential real estate, considering the effect of changing popular tax breaks like the mortgage interest deduction.