Tax practice

A provision in the president's budget proposals could shelter 529 college-savings plans from being counted in determining federal student financial aid.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has taken National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson to task over her recent annual report to Congress.

President Bush’s 2008 budget has tabbed $11.4 billion for the Internal Revenue Service, a direct appropriation increase of 6.3 percent from the agency’s 2007 budget.

Everyone in Washington seems to be in agreement that there needs to be a better way of closing the tax gap, but like the other problems facing the Internal Revenue Service, there’s seems to be little Beltway consensus over how to meaningfully tackle the problem.It wasn’t lost on me that the same week that the IRS released its 2008 budget proposal --complete with a number of legislative proposals, a Congressman and the National Taxpayer Advocate continued to spar over the future of one of the agency’s newer attempts to combat the tax gap -- the outsourcing of simple collection cases to private companies as part of a pilot program.

As part of the White House’s proposed $2.9 trillion budget plan for the 2008 fiscal year, President Bush announced an effort aimed at significantly tightening the tax gap.

Besides rising pay for directors, a recent study found that the proportion of S&P 500 companies with classified boards dropped by 8 percent last year, leading to the majority of those companies holding annual elections for all of their directors.

With all the talk about curbing exorbitant executive compensation packages and increased disclosure, I was reminded of an incident nearly 25 years ago, when I was accidentally sent a paycheck intended for Lenny, my supervisor.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Whistleblower Office opened for business this month. The congressionally mandated program is designed to receive information that helps uncover tax cheating and provide appropriate rewards to whistleblowers.

It might not have generated quite the media hoopla of say, Groundhog Day, but yesterday marked the launch of the Earned Income Tax Credit Awareness Day.

In an effort to explain by example, or at least by handpicked scenario, the Treasury Department has released more details outlining the possible application of President Bush’s plan for a standard health insurance deduction.

The odds are looking better for Senate approval of legislation to increase the minimum wage. But reconciling that bill with a House version -- containing no tax breaks for businesses -- figures to take some negotiating.Senate debate on the bill ended Tuesday with an 87-10 vote, and final Senate passage of the bill is expected this week.

Fannie Mae’s chief executive received a compensation bump of about 25 percent in 2006 -- including salary, stock and bonuses.

The Internal Revenue Service has updated both its Form 940, “Employer's Annual Federal Unemployment Tax Return,” as well as online tools to help taxpayers determine whether they should deduct their state and local general sales taxes, or whether they might owe the alternative minimum tax.The IRS has redesigned Form 940 to be more user-friendly for the more than 1 million payroll professionals and business owners who file the form.

A new Web site from Link2Gov allows taxpayers to make federal balance-due tax payments via debit card, paying a fixed convenience fee of $2.95.

Successful filing of electronic tax returns, as well as meeting the accounting requirements of FIN 48, are the biggest challenges facing corporate tax professionals in 2007, according to an informal survey by Thomson Tax & Accounting.

IRS TO START CHARGING FOR INDIVIDUAL TAX STATSWASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service announced that it will now sell individual income tax return statistics by Zip code - charging $25 per state, or $500 for the entire nation.

The Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board said that the agency still has a ways to go before fully reaching the vision outlined in the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998.

As someone who’s held a driver license since Richard Nixon was in the White House, it’s hard for me to drum up any sympathy for the big oil companies.

Victims of the alternative minimum tax quirk that taxes nonexistent income of incentive stock options when the stock loses value received a welcome holiday gift from Congress.As one of its final actions before adjournment, the 109th Congress passed the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, one of the provisions of which includes a scaled-down version of legislation originally sponsored by Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, to fix the problem at the intersection of the AMT and stock options. The new law provides relief to many victims by accelerating the refund of stranded ISO overpayment credits that, under previous law, would not be returned within the taxpayer's lifetime.

The Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 passed Congress on Dec. 9, 2006, and was signed by President Bush on December 20. Most of the provisions are good news for taxpayers - extending popular tax breaks, many of which had expired at the end of 2005.Still, the timing could have been better.