Tax Strategies

Crocodile Dundee actor Paul Hogan has told Australian tax authorities to “come and get me” after being told in California that the Australian Taxation Office is asking the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to help round up nine years’ worth of records from three U.S. banks.

Accounting Today is issuing a call for nominations for its annual Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting list.

Looking for strong leads to grow your financial planning practice? Try scouring your tax clients.It may seem obvious, but internal marketing within your tax base is the best way to beef up your wealth management clientele, and is often a welcome service offering that can lead to referrals.

Since most observers consider the tax prep market to be in a maturing mode, it’s important for software makers to offer their products for tryouts, early renewals and promotional pricing during the season when their customers have the time to experiment.And that time, of course, is now.

So far, 2008 has not been a year for major tax legislation.Nor, being an election year, are the remaining six months likely to offer major legislation. Two bills that did make it through Congress prior to Memorial Day included tax provisions focused on farmers and alternative energy and on military personnel and veterans. The farm legislation required the override of a presidential veto and included a procedural snafu where one of the non-tax titles of the legislation was not forwarded to President Bush along with the rest of the legislation. Barring any litigation over that issue, the enactment date of the legislation is May 22, 2008.

A judge has granted permission for actor Wesley Snipes to travel to London and Bangkok so he can work on two upcoming films.

The state of e-services today can be compared to where e-filing was about five years ago.“If you look back five years, what we were saying about e-filing would sound a lot like what we’re saying about e-services today,” said Roger Harris, president of Padgett Business Services and former chair of the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council. “As practitioners and the IRS worked together, a lot of problems were solved. And today e-filing is the normal way of doing business. It will be the same with e-services.”

The Internal Revenue Service plans to hold a conference call on July 8 with the six largest audit firms to convince them to do more to help track the use of secret foreign bank accounts for tax evasion.

The Internal Revenue Service has moved the extended due date for partnership, estate and trust tax returns from Oct. 15 to Sept. 15 to avoid overlapping with the extended deadline for individual taxes.

H&R Block reported that its fiscal 2008 revenues rose 10 percent to $4.4 billion, thanks to growth in its tax services business and the sale of its troubled Option One mortgage unit.