Tax

The 2007 tax filing season set a number of records at the Internal Revenue Service -- highlighted by the more than 76 million electronically filed individual tax returns and more than 140 million visits to the IRS Web site.

Rankings can be very subjective, but they are still captivating. Everyone has an opinion of what they think is the best movie or song. As a Baby Boomer, I remember for years listening to a local station’s Top 500 classic rock and roll rankings to see if “In the Still of The Night,” was still ranked No 1.

A federal court in Chicago has barred Neal and Royanne Reddy and their corporation, Royanne & Co. Inc., from preparing tax returns, the Justice Department announced.The court found that the Reddys, whose business offices are in Marseilles and Princeton, Ill., prepared more than 15,000 tax returns between 2002 and 2005.

Churches, charities and other tax-exempt organizations that paid the federal excise tax on long-distance or bundled telephone service qualify for this year’s one-time telephone excise tax refund, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

Like many of you who were once college freshman, I can vividly recall my first formalized session of “orientation,” those mandated get-togethers where a group of impressionable 17-and 18-year-olds receive a veritable laundry list from upperclassman and administrators of the do’s and don’ts in academe.

The Internal Revenue Service has identified a significant refund scheme involving hundreds of people living in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.According to the agency, many nonresidents and locals of the islands filed income tax returns requesting refund checks including the earned income tax credit. But CNMI residents are not required to file a return with the IRS and are not eligible to claim the credit.

The Government Accountability Office wants to see better descriptions and more cost and expected performance information on the Internal Revenue Service’s new initiatives in the agency’s future budget submissions.The IRS’s budget request for 2008 includes a spending increase of almost 5 percent, to $11.6 billion, and the GAO noted that the agency’s budget proposes shifting a greater proportion of spending to enforcement, continuing a trend.

Embarrassingly for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, one of the loudest proponents of reducing the tax gap, two mistakes he made in recent years on his own property taxes have recently come to light.A political ad sponsored by the Montana Republican State Central Committee has brought to light local property taxes in both Washington and Montana that tripped up Baucus, D-Mont.

The Treasury Department issued rules last week aimed at dismissing some of the uncertainties around Roth 401(k) plans.

Effective immediately, newly credentialed New Jersey CPAs will have to attend an orientation program within six months of qualifying as a CPA.Thanks to a bill signed last week by acting New Jersey Gov. Richard Codey, the state Board of Accountancy will now get to work determining what exactly that program curriculum will include. Ralph Albert Thomas, executive director of the New Jersey Society of CPAs, which supported the bill, told a local newspaper that at minimum, the program will contain a course on New Jersey law and ethics.