Tax

The House of Representatives has already passed three tax cuts and had the details of a fourth nearly pinned down, cutting taxes by $94.5 billion over the next five years.

The Internal Revenue Service issued proposed guidance on the disclosure or use of tax return information by tax return preparers.

Reports from inside the White House are that President Bush's administration may wait until 2007 to begin pushing a proposal to overhaul the tax code.

After checking with the state's attorney general, a Texas nepotism law will prevent the Kerr County tax assessor/collector, Paula Rector, from marrying one of the district's tax appraisers.

As most every tax practitioner in town makes their pitch on year-end tax planning to clients, research organization the Tax Foundation recently released a new report making an economic case against the federal deduction for charitable gifts.

Tax protestor Larken Rose of Hollywood, Pa., was sentenced to serve 15 months in prison for failing to file tax returns for the years 1998 to 2002, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service announced.

A new study from the Tax Foundation says that the federal tax deduction for charitable gifts is highly regressive and subsidizes many organizations that are questionably charitable.

The final report of the President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform attracted a heavy dose of criticism even before it was released, failing to satisfy the interest groups most concerned about tax reform.The panel offered two options. Plan A, the "Simplified Income Tax Plan," would create four tax brackets of 15, 25, 30 and 33 percent; replace the standard-deduction personal exemption and the child and earned income tax credits with family and work credits; reduce long-term capital gain rates; replace the mortgage interest deduction with a credit; end tax-free health insurance from employers; and eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes.

Electronic Data Systems Corp. will pay the U.K. government $122 million to settle a dispute over a faulty system the tech company supplied to administer tax credits.

Tax practice for CPAs is changing. Recent modifications to Circular 230, the U.S. Treasury Department regulations that govern practice before the Internal Revenue Service, have established several changes that leave CPAs with a new standard for the practice of taxation.The rationale for the revised regulations is part of an IRS effort to promote ethical tax practices and curb abusive tax avoidance programs promoted by some tax professionals. Some CPA and law firms were coming up with tax-motivated transactions for clients and then packaging those transactions to sell to other companies.