Tax

The complexity of the tax code, the widening tax gap and private debt collection sit atop National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson's list of the most serious problems facing taxpayers.The recently released report also cited the oversight of unenrolled return preparers, correspondence delays, concerns about the Office of Appeals, and lengthy processing times for injured spouse relief.

Companies don’t believe broad-based tax reform is coming anytime soon, though they do think that the change of control in Congress will have a significant impact on tax policy, according to a survey conducted by a Washington law firm.

Germany’s Deutsche Bank has reached a settlement -- reportedly in the tens of millions of dollars -- with hundreds of investors to whom it sold questionable legal tax shelters in the 1990s.

A provision in the president's budget proposals could shelter 529 college-savings plans from being counted in determining federal student financial aid.

Following up on threats concerning possible tax-preparer fraud and blatant abuse of the phone tax refund, the Internal Revenue Service announced it is taking additional steps to ensure preparers and taxpayers are making accurate requests for the one-time refund.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has taken National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson to task over her recent annual report to Congress.

President Bush’s 2008 budget has tabbed $11.4 billion for the Internal Revenue Service, a direct appropriation increase of 6.3 percent from the agency’s 2007 budget.

Everyone in Washington seems to be in agreement that there needs to be a better way of closing the tax gap, but like the other problems facing the Internal Revenue Service, there’s seems to be little Beltway consensus over how to meaningfully tackle the problem.It wasn’t lost on me that the same week that the IRS released its 2008 budget proposal --complete with a number of legislative proposals, a Congressman and the National Taxpayer Advocate continued to spar over the future of one of the agency’s newer attempts to combat the tax gap -- the outsourcing of simple collection cases to private companies as part of a pilot program.

As part of the White House’s proposed $2.9 trillion budget plan for the 2008 fiscal year, President Bush announced an effort aimed at significantly tightening the tax gap.

The Internal Revenue Service is being inundated with returns from taxpayers that don’t correctly claim the one-time telephone tax refund the federal government is issuing for the 2006 tax year.