Tax

IMGCAP(1)]The current uncertain political, economic, and tax environment has led many people to postpone preparing or updating their estate plans.

CCH has enhanced its CorpSystem Sales Tax Office software by integrating it with an exemption certificate management system from Imaging Science and Services Inc.

Thomson Reuters released the latest Onesource Indirect Tax report on changes to state and local sales and use tax codes for the first quarter of 2011. According to the report, 83.3 percent of the changes are increases and new taxes and most are at the city and county level. They are likely a response to cut-backs in federal and state funding.

One of the added chores of preparing tax returns is dealing with clients who receive notices from the IRS. Typically, the IRS issues several million notices a year, commonly because information on a return doesn’t match information reported to the IRS on a Form 1099.

Less than half of affluent parents (49 percent) in a nationwide poll felt it was important to leave a financial inheritance to the next generation, according to the U.S. Trust Insights on Wealth and Worth Survey.

The Internal Revenue Service has been doing a better job of detecting and preventing fraudulent refunds this filing season, but programming bugs and inadequate controls are still allowing erroneous claims to get through for various tax credits.

Taxpayers set a record over the weekend, surpassing the 100 million mark for electronically filed tax returns so far this season.

The House passed the controversial budget plan introduced last week by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in a largely party-line vote on Friday.

The White House introduced the ability to generate a “federal taxpayer receipt” on its Web site Friday.

Tax filers who paid an accountant or CPA to prepare their returns registered a high level of satisfaction with their method of preparation, with 75 percent stating that they were “very satisfied” in working with the accountant or CPA, according to a new survey.