Tax

The Internal Revenue Service is planning to begin testing as early as next week a more secure version of the online “Get Transcript” app that was taken down last year when the IRS discovered it had been used by hackers to access hundreds of thousands of tax returns.

Although the initial flurry of publicity surrounding the leak of the Panama Papers has subsided somewhat, the release serves as a reminder that there’s a real problem for taxpayers still holding offshore accounts that they haven’t reported, according to Ivan Golden, an attorney at Schiff Hardin LLP.

Thomson Reuters has released a new version of its ONESOURCE Operational Transfer Pricing software that uses big data technology to automate, track and analyze the transfer pricing process.

The European Union, locked in a tax battle with the likes of Apple Inc. and McDonald’s Corp., laid down the law in its bid to rein in governments that woo multinationals with special fiscal deals allowing them to reduce their fiscal liability by booking profits abroad.

The Internal Revenue Service has released final regulations for disbursements from Roth individual retirement accounts, removing the allocation rule for disbursements from designated Roth accounts to multiple destinations.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, released a legislative discussion draft Wednesday to lay the groundwork for tax reform in the area of financial derivatives.

Highlights of some of our favorite tax-related blogs from the past week.

A man who claimed to have stolen former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s tax returns from PricewaterhouseCoopers and threatened to expose them has been convicted on extortion and fraud charges.

Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, introduced legislation to limit two tax strategies used by some foreign-controlled U.S. multinational corporations, known as “hopscotching” and “de-controlling.”

Timely and meaningful access to the Internal Revenue Service is what is most important to taxpayers and tax preparers, according to Troy K. Lewis, chair of the American Institute of CPAs’ Tax Executive Committee.