Tax

Undercover investigators from the Treasury Department posing as taxpayers who needed customer service from the Internal Revenue Service were kept waiting for up to four hours in IRS offices and in some cases told to come back another day.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis has released a paper that considers changing the way to identify small businesses and their owners, along with their tax characteristics.

Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the credit rating for U.S. debt could put new pressure on the members of the so-called “super committee” in Congress to agree on tax reforms.

States are coping with revenue shortfalls by getting rid of sales tax holidays and ratcheting up their audits of corporate sales and use taxes, according to new research.

Multinational companies needed to deal with 270 tax changes in the U.S. and globally in the second quarter of this year, according to a new report.

The Internal Revenue Service warned U.S. taxpayers Monday that if they are hiding income in undisclosed offshore accounts, time is running out for them to take advantage of its second Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative, which will expire on Aug. 31, 2011.

CCH has expanded its Expert Treatise Library with a new title that deals with the federal taxation of partnerships.

President Obama proposed a new tax credit for businesses that hire unemployed veterans.

The average fee for preparing an itemized federal and state individual tax return was $233 during the 2011 tax season, only a 1.7 percent increase over 2009.

After the passage of a New York State law allowing same-sex couples to marry, a New York City wealth management firm has named a new CPA partner to provide same-sex couples with financial planning advice.