Tax

Think you've come up with a perfect tax strategy for your high-end clients? Before you go ahead with it, you might want to check if it's been patented. You're liable to be sued for patent infringement if someone else thought of it first.It all started in 1998, when a federal appeals court ruled that business methods could be patented. Since then, more than 60 tax-strategy patents have been granted, and 86 more are pending. And the first infringement suit has been filed over the SOGRAT patent.

One way to judge which are the most significant provisions in the Small Business and Work Opportunity Tax Act of 2007 - signed by President Bush on May 25, 2007, as part of a larger bill focused on war funding - is to look at which provisions are projected to cost the most or to raise the most revenue.The tax breaks included in this legislation are fully paid for with revenue increases. The main premise behind the legislation is that small business should receive some tax breaks to help offset the cost of being required to pay workers more due to the minimum wage increase. It would be a rare small business that finds that the cost of increasing the minimum wage for its workers is fully offset by the tax breaks included in the legislation.

Option One Mortgage, the beleaguered subprime lending unit of tax-prep giant H&R Block, has mired its parent company deeper into financial malaise, losing a $1 billion warehouse credit line from Lehman Bros. Holdings. In a federal filing, Lehman indicated that it did not renew the credit line after it expired late last month. The mortgage unit was one of the primary drivers behind the company posting a year-end loss of $434 million. Block has agreed to sell the arm to private equity concern Cerberus Capital Management, a deal that is supposed to close October 31. Cerberus stipulated that the division needs $8 billion of borrowing capacity in order for the sale to proceed. Block said that despite the non-renewal from Lehman, the company had the requisite borrowing capacity.

A Greenville, S.C. federal judge has permanently barred Robert Barnwell Clarkson and his "Patriot Network" from promoting tax fraud schemes, the Justice Department announced. The court found that Clarkson falsely instructed Patriot Network members that they need not file federal income tax returns, and helped members obstruct Internal Revenue Service efforts to collect taxes. In seeking the permanent injunction, the Justice Department submitted Clarkson's Untaxing Packet, which he sold for $300. The packet contained form letters that he falsely claimed would exempt purchases from federal tax laws. Papers filed in the case showed that Clarkson boasted that he "untaxed" more than 8,000 people over 30 years. The court detailed Clarkson's efforts at interfering with tax collection, including his instruction to transfer property to nominees and to sue IRS agents who attempt to collect taxes. Clarkson, a disbarred attorney from Anderson, S.C., has twice been convicted of federal tax-related crimes. The court ordered Clarkson to give copies of the injunction to people who bought his products and to post the injunction on the Patriot Network Web site.

The Internal Revenue Service has redesigned Form 8857, Request for Innocent Spouse Relief, to help reduce follow up questions and taxpayer burden. The form will ask more questions initially, but collecting critical information early in the process will allow faster processing of the request. The IRS says that the new design will eliminate an estimated 30,000 follow-up letters annually, resulting in a reduced burden and quicker answer for taxpayers and less cost for the government. When a taxpayer files a joint return, both spouses are jointly and individually responsible for the tax. If one taxpayer believes that only his or her spouse or former spouse should be responsible for the tax, the taxpayer can request innocent spouse relief. The redesigned form will be easier to understand and to complete and will help educate taxpayers about the process. Previously, the questionnaire was separate from the form.

-- James A. Smith, managing director at the CPA firm of Smith, Jackson, Boyer and Bovard, was named chairman of the 27,000-member Texas Society of CPAs. Smith will serve a one-year term. Joining Smith as TSCPA officers are Steven R. Goodman, chairman-elect, Houston; Barbara Bass, secretary, Tyler; Jeff Gregg, treasurer-elect, Seymour; and Rance G. Sweeten, treasurer, McAllen. In addition the following will serve on the TSCPA executive board: Rick Baumeister, Fort Worth; John Broaddus, El Paso; Penny Dear, Austin; Dora J. Dyson, Gatesville; Janet B. Johnson, Houston; B. Jean Lein, Austin; Edward L. Lette, Austin; Jerry L. Love, Abilene; Tracy B. Stewart, College Station; and Fred Timmons, San Antonio.

Fewer taxpayers took advantage of the Internal Revenue Service's free electronic tax-filing service in 2007 than in previous years, according to a new audit report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. In 2005, a record 5.12 million taxpayers used the Free File Program. That number fell to 3.9 million in 2006, in large part due to a new requirement that limited eligibility for the program to taxpayers with an adjusted gross income of about $50,000 a year or less. In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee's Oversight Subcommittee last year, Inspector General J. Russell George expressed concern about the eligibility limitations, which he said, could contribute to a significant slowing of the growth in electronic filing. Although no further adjustments were made to the program in 2007, as of April 14, auditors found that only 3.3 million taxpayers filed returns using the free service -- a decline of 4.7 percent below the same period last year. "It is imperative that the IRS carefully examine the reasons this free service is not being used by more taxpayers," George said. "The IRS must review its marketing strategy to better target taxpayers who file paper returns even though they are eligible for this program. Equally important, the IRS must ensure that the software it promotes on its Web site provides taxpayers with accurately calculated tax returns," he said. The decline in the Free File Program comes at a time when the IRS is under pressure to increase the number of taxpayers who file electronically. In 1998, Congress established a goal for the IRS to have 80 percent of all federal tax and information returns filed electronically by the end of 2007. The Free File Program was one of several initiatives designed to help meet that goal, which is unlikely to be fulfilled this year.

The IRS has publicized a new draft version of Form 1118, "Foreign Tax Credit - Corporations," used by U.S. corporations to compute the foreign tax credit for taxes paid or accrued to foreign countries or U.S. possessions. "They adjusted the form to accommodate changes made by the 2004 American Jobs Creation Act," said Selva Ozelli, a New York-based CPA and international tax attorney. Under the act, the number of separate foreign income categories has been reduced from eight to two, and U.S. source income is re-characterized as foreign source income in cases where a taxpayer's foreign tax credit limitation has been reduced in an earlier year due to an overall domestic loss. "The most important change is that they've added a column to help taxpayers determine U.S. income that could be recharacterized due to recapture of overall domestic losses," said Ozelli. "This column will also help them in tracking their balances of overall domestic losses," she said.

Former Securities and Exchange Chairman Richard Breeden, whose hedge fund holds roughly 2 percent of the shares of H&R Block, is seeking a seat on the board of the tax-prep giant. Breeden, who now heads Breeden Capital Management LLC, will be on the company's proxy ballot along with two others during a September election. Block has an 11-member board. In the wake of posting a year-end loss of $434 million, investor pressure has mounted to force management to sell the company.

Internal Revenue Service chief counsel Donald L. Korb has named Stephen Kesselman to become deputy chief counsel, operations, succeeding IRS veteran Donald T. Rocen. Kesselman is currently serving as counsel in the IRS' Small Business/Self-Employed Division. Rocen, who has held a number of posts in the Office of the Chief Counsel for 15 years, will leave the service July 27 for the Washington law firm of Miller & Chevalier. Lon B. Smith, associate chief counsel of financial products and institutions, will now become national counsel to the chief counsel for special projects. He has served in the Office of Chief Counsel for 30 years.