Tax
Tax News & IRS Insights for Accounting Professionals
Accounting Today delivers news and analysis for accounting and tax professionals on federal and state tax developments, IRS guidance,information reporting, and operational implications for practices and clients. Our coverage focuses on legislative and procedural shifts that tax practitioners must monitor in planning, compliance, and advisory contexts.
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Online tax preparation services are using the Internal Revenue Service's Free File program to promote "get rich quick" schemes and overpriced refund anticipation loans to low-income taxpayers, some lawmakers have charged.In a sharply worded letter to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, Senate Finance Committee chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, placed much of the blame for these practices on the IRS officials who negotiated a new contract with 20 online tax prep companies to provide taxpayers with free electronic tax preparation and filing services during this tax season.
May 14 -
Almost nine full years have passed since the $250,000/$500,000 exclusion of gain on the sale of a principal residence first became available. Little did many of us imagine how much would change in nine years.While the basic sale-of-a-principal-residence provision has remained the same, except for some minor congressional tinkering, the world in which it lives has not. The real estate "boom," capital gains rate reduction, subsequent rulings and other developments have all played a part in making this a particularly dynamic area of tax planning. A review of recent trends and developments over the past year is especially illuminating.
May 14 -
Both houses of Congress reached final agreement on a $70 billion package of tax cuts that will be spread over the next five years.
May 10 -
The U.S. Treasury Department announced that President Bush has nominated Treasury official Eric Solomon to be the department's assistant secretary for tax policy, filling a post that has been vacant since February 2004.
May 9 -
New York's Attorney General accused higher-ups at H&R Block of being aware that the tax prep giant's Express IRA accounts would be money losers for many of the same clients the chain was targeting to buy the retirement plans.
May 9 -
Creative Solutions, a unit of Thomson Tax & Accounting, has acquired the assets of Dunphy Systems, a Columbus, Ohio-based publisher and marketer of tax software.
May 8 -
National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson announced that the 2007 Low Income Taxpayer Clinic grant application process is now open. The grant program is in its eighth year and continues to expand.
May 8