Tax practice

As the battle continues in Washington over how to avert a default on the government’s debt obligations, the possibility of imminent tax increases seems to be fading.

President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, made the case for their rival approaches to controlling the nation’s spiraling budget deficit as the clock ticks down to the August 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling to avoid an unprecedented default on the national debt.

IMGCAP(1)]There is a fuzzy line between a worker who is properly classified as an employee and a worker who is properly classified as an independent contractor.

The Internal Revenue is granting relief to people who have been burdened with the old tax debts of their estranged spouses by eliminating the two-year limit on requests for innocent spouse relief.

Some taxpayers received multiple refunds for their First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit claims, while others changed the acquisition date of their homes on their amended returns to avoid having to repay the refunds they had improperly claimed, according to a new report.

A former special agent who worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Inspector General office has pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return that failed to list the $300,000 in cash he stole from his church’s collections while serving as a deacon.

The Internal Revenue Service paid fewer than 100 whistleblowers last year, about half the number it paid two years ago, even though it received more than twice the number of whistleblower cases.

The former head of Credit Suisse’s North America Offshore Banking unit has been charged along with three other officials with conspiring to help U.S. taxpayers hide their assets in secret accounts at the Swiss bank.

A tax preparer pleaded guilty in a New Jersey federal court to preparing false income tax returns after he was caught by an undercover IRS agent posing as a client.

Twenty-four percent of homeowners say they have challenged their property tax assessments at some point, according to a new survey.

The House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee plans to hold a hearing next Thursday on the Internal Revenue Service’s recent efforts to step up regulation of tax return preparers.

The IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate Service may be pursuing relatively minor issues instead of truly systemic problems, according to a new report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

The Internal Revenue Service is asking for feedback on its plans to update its rules for how its Office of Appeals should communicate with other parts of the IRS about taxpayer disputes without the taxpayers or their representatives in the room.

A federal appeals court has affirmed a Tax Court ruling in favor of a couple who had asked the Internal Revenue Service to sell their shares of stock to pay the money they owed for failing to report income from a check-cashing scheme.

Government entities that didn’t comply with the tax laws received different terms in the agreements they reached with the Internal Revenue Service to resolve their tax issues, according to a new report.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued letters denying tax-exempt status to three unidentified political groups that had applied for the exemption as Section 501(c)(4) groups.

The so-called “cut, cap and balance plan” legislation that passed the House would require the passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would mandate a two-thirds supermajority to approve any future tax increases.

A bipartisan group of senators that has been meeting on and off for months to hammer out a budget deficit reduction plan appears to have reunited and gained support on both sides of the aisle for a plan to reduce the budget deficit by $3.7 trillion over 10 years.

The Internal Revenue Service intends to stop authorizing the high-low per diem method for substantiating lodging, meal and incidental expenses that can be incurred when traveling away from home.

An estimated 32,552 taxpayers may have been harmed because the Internal revenue Service did not follow legal requirements to notify them and their representatives of their rights related to tax liens in a timely fashion, according to a new government report.