Tax

The deadline is coming up this week for lawmakers in Congress to submit their preferences for the “must have” tax breaks that need to be kept in the Tax Code under Senate Finance Committee leaders’ “blank slate” approach to tax reform.

Thomson Reuters has introduced Checkpoint Pocket Assistant, a mobile app that helps tax and accounting professionals perform tasks from an Apple iPhone.

Last month’s Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Windsor held section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional.

Thomson Reuters has integrated the upcoming back-to-school tax holidays into its ONESOURCE Indirect Tax Software.

A pair of lawmakers plan to introduce bipartisan legislation in the House that would provide permanent tax incentives to family farmers, ranchers and other land owners who choose not to develop their land and instead preserve their property for conservation.

Your client has a successful closely held business. Perhaps your client has already indicated that, at some indeterminate point in the future, the business will be sold. Even if your client has not given such an indication, you are well advised to at least broach the topic as a matter of long-term contingency planning.

The former manager of an H&R Block outlet has been sentenced to 12 months and one day in federal prison for using the identities of his former tax preparation clients to file false returns with the Internal Revenue Service seeking fraudulent income tax refunds.

Conservative economist Dr. Arthur Laffer has co-written a study that identified a positive economic impact in efforts to require online retailers to collect sales taxes from customers on Internet purchases.

The international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has produced an action plan at the request of the G20 finance ministers to address the problems of base erosion and profit shifting that are depleting corporate tax revenue as multinational companies transfer their profits to low-tax countries.

Captive insurance companies, once the exotic plaything of large corporations, are now open and advantageous to much smaller companies. But most accountants don’t know enough about captive insurance companies to advise their business clients on the advantages of starting their own, according to Brian McCormick and Jerry Messick of Elevate Captives LLC.