Tax

A group of 45 millionaires has signed a letter to President Obama urging him to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for those earning over $1 million a year.

Warren Buffett said that wealthy people should be paying “a lot more” money in taxes, and that the Bush tax cuts should expire for “people at the high end.”

As 2010 winds to a close, tax and accounting information and software provider CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business, has released a short list of four tax-planning moves for companies to make the most of current federal tax laws.

The Internal Revenue Service failed to ensure that only eligible taxpayers received education credit tax relief that was only supposed to be available to taxpayers in Midwestern disaster areas, according to a new government report.

This month the Illinois CPA Society is launching a new program, "Generating Results from Your Generation Y Staff ," that is geared to help young accountants understand how to deliver a better return on investment for their firm through bridging the expectation gap and better communication between themselves and their senior partners - especially during busy season.

Continued growth in the do-it-yourself tax prep market, ongoing federal and state e-filing mandates and the Internal Revenue Service's discontinuation of a debt indicator to facilitate refund anticipation loans will affect both preparers and their software providers during next year's filing season.

Where the tax burden falls

The unfinished business awaiting Congress during the lame duck session this month includes the expiring 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the normal extender items, the estate tax, and, many tax professionals believe, a ban on tax strategy patents.

Here’s some good news for those who haven’t renewed their Preparer Tax Identification Number by the end of the year. The process to renew it will be the same beginning in January as it is now, and it takes only about 15 minutes to do online.

Nearly 99 million individuals filed their federal income tax returns electronically during 2010, a 3 percent increase in the IRS e-file rate, mainly due to taxpayers who prepared and filed their own taxes from their home computers.