Tax planning

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on the use of offshore corporate tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, on the heels of hearings elsewhere in the Senate on individual tax havens in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The New York State Society of CPAs submitted comments to the Securities and Exchange Commission on the proposed requirement for filing financial statements in Extensible Business Reporting Language, saying it makes sense for the 500 largest companies to file in XBRL by the end of the year, but that smaller companies should not be held to any deadline just yet.

The American Institute of CPAs has named two recipients of its Outstanding CPA in Government Award and said it has leased more than half its office space in New Jersey.

John Gimigliano, former senior tax counsel of the House Ways and Means Committee and staff director of the Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures, has joined KPMG.

Executive CPA leaders from 81 of the top 100 accounting firms in the U.S. visited Capitol Hill to discuss some of the key legislative issues confronting the accounting profession.

H&R Block has named a new president and CEO, Russ Smyth, the former president of McDonald's Europe.

Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network have settled tax charges with federal prosecutors and agreed to pay between $2 million and $9 million to the Internal Revenue Service.

Joe Francis, founder of the Girls Gone Wild video series, pleaded not guilty to two counts of federal tax evasion, saying he was being victimized by the Internal Revenue Service's whistleblower program.

Eight state CPA associations have signed deals with LeapFile, a company that provides secure file transfers, to offer some of its services to their members for free.

A Senate subcommittee plans to release another blockbuster report on the use of foreign tax havens after the first reports caused repercussions both here and abroad.

The Internal Revenue Service said it plans to send a second set of information packages to an estimated 5.2 million retirees and disabled veterans who have not yet filed their tax returns in order to give them their economic stimulus payments.

The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has reportedly sent letters to 182,000 individual taxpayers asking them to justify the tax refunds they have requested.

More than 28 percent of large public companies are not fully meeting disclosure requirements for tax reserve estimates, according to a new report.

Consideration of any tax reform for small business must take into account the difficulties small-business owners face when deciding how to structure their business and comply with the Tax Code’s complex requirements, said Dewey Martin, a Hampden, Maine-based CPA.Martin, who testified at the recent hearings before the Senate Finance Committee on business entities and small-business tax reform, is a small-business owner himself, as well as an advisor to 200-plus small-business owners and chair of the Accounting Department at Husson College in Bangor, Maine.

The Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division increased its enforcement activities last fiscal year after they fell behind in fiscal 2006, according to a new report.

Swiss investment bank UBS plans to stop offering offshore banking to U.S. residents after the bank was questioned about its clients' tax avoidance practices at a Senate hearing.

Back-to-school shopping will be tax-free for a few days next month in 13 states and the District of Columbia, according to a report by CCH.

The California Society of CPAs has elected Gregory M. Burke as the 2008-2009 chair.

The Indiana CPA Society has named Mark R. Lanning as its new chairman, and selected a board for the 2008-2009 operating year.

The proposed regulations on preparer penalties, released on June 17, are the latest iteration of rules that tax practitioners should consider carefully when recommending and executing tax strategies. Not heeding them can result in stiff penalties or, worse, the loss of the right to continue to practice tax law and serious damage to a firm’s reputation in the client community.The simple reality is that those responsible for recommending prospective tax strategies are almost always drawn back into the matter by the signing return preparer once the transaction is completed. They are asked about tax benefit matters what was intended and whether things turn out as expected. That after-the-fact advice is enough to subject the practitioner to the label “return preparer” for purposes of the preparer penalties.