The Internal Revenue Service announced the beginning of an outreach campaign to the entertainment industry regarding the taxability of gift bags and promotional items. The effort follows an agreement the tax agency and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The U.S. Tax Court denied a petition from a West Virginian welder to deduct the cost of the Rocky Wolverine boots, as well as other clothes and gloves, which he said he purchased specifically for his work during the 2002 tax year.

A court has said that two documents prepared by KPMG, analyzing the tax consequences of transactions by restaurant company Yum! Brands Inc., are protected from a summons issued by the Internal Revenue Service.

According to a new budget survey, while growing revenues should allow U.S. states to increase their 2006 revenue surpluses by nearly 25 percent, to about $57 billion, that figure will shrink in the upcoming fiscal year -- which began for most states on July 1. The conference said that by year's end, the aggregate surplus would be reduced by nearly 30 percent, shrinking to about $40 billion -- much of that drop due to the uncertainty of tax collections.

Depending on what report you read, and how the statistics get manipulated, the Internal Revenue Service gets a grade somewhere between tremendous and embarrassing for its work auditing the returns of wealthy taxpayers.

The "Pension Protection Act of 2006" (H.R. 4) means a whole lot of work for accounting firms. First of all, it is a massive piece of legislation that goes way beyond pension reform, so firms will first be analyzing what it says. The various publishers are helping with summaries of the numerous provisions, providing detailed analysis, and identifying tax-planning strategies that the new law will generate.

Since its 2001 announcement that it would target tax fraud schemes and tax prep hucksters, the Justice Department has won more than 200 court-ordered injunctions.