Congress has begun to focus in on reforms for the nation's health care tax policy -- a move that could impact hundreds of billions of dollars a year in cherished tax breaks for individuals and employers.

The Internal Revenue Service's 2005 IRS Data Book is now available at the agency's Web site.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued guidance describing 26 frivolous arguments that taxpayers should avoid when filing their returns.

California's attorney general has filed a lawsuit against H&R Block in an attempt to halt the tax prep giant's loan program, which allows the company to take a percentage of clients' tax refunds in exchange for an advance.Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court, noting that more than 1.5 million Californians have received tax refund loans through Block since 2001. A number of other suits have been filed around the country against Block, saying that the loan practice is unfair, especially because many low-income filers accept the offer.

IRS REQUESTS $10.6B BUDGET FOR 2007: The Internal Revenue Service requested a budget of $10.6 billion for the 2007 fiscal year, an increase of 1.4 percent from the current year's budget. Nearly $10.6 billion would come from direct appropriations through the Treasury Department. An additional $135 million would come from the IRS's new user fee revenue, for a total operating level of $10.7 billion.Among the IRS operations receiving more funding would be enforcement activities and taxpayer services. Enforcement has proposed funding at nearly $7 billion, a 2 percent increase from the 2006 enacted levels; taxpayer services has proposed funding at more than $3.5 billion, a 1.4 percent increase from 2006.

There's a new area of controversy at the Internal Revenue Service, and it surrounds the recently released 2005 annual report from the Taxpayer Advocate Service -the independent organization within the IRS designated as the liaison between the IRS and taxpayers with problems.While the Taxpayer Advocate is required to identify at least 20 serious problems in her annual report, particular attention has been given to one topic in this year's report: the IRS's Criminal Investigation Questionable Refund Program.

While the Roth 401(k) plan option was enacted back in 2001 and has been available since January 1 of this year, advice over whether to jump on the Roth 401(k) bandwagon remains hard to give.Detailed rules on contributions, operations and distributions for Roth 401(k) plans have been slow in coming. Proposed reliance regulations on contributions weren't released until this past December; reliance regs on distributions weren't out until January.