Tax Strategies

The Internal Revenue Service is seeking applications to fill seven vacancies on the Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee, a 14-member panel that provides a public forum for discussion of electronic tax administration issues in support of the goal of paperlessly filing tax and information returns.

The president and vice president saved a combined $110,182 in taxes last year under the income tax cuts passed by their administration, according to an analysis of the 2004 tax returns released by the White House.

Tax preparation and related fees from H&R Block Inc.'s U.S. retail operations increased 6.4 percent to $1.9 billion through March 31, 2005, the tax prep giant reported.

President Bush has signed into law H.R. 1134, exempting qualified disaster mitigation payments from tax.

Washington - The call for the nation's tax preparers to be more closely monitored for proficiency has been echoed by the National Taxpayer Advocate, as well as by a number of tax professional membership associations.

Apparently, there's a good reason the regular 1040 is referred to as the "long" form -- it takes the average taxpayer more than a full day to prepare the form with three common schedules, according to an annual study of tax complexity.

The Internal Revenue Service needs to remedy serious weaknesses over taxpayer and Bank Secrecy Act data that leave its systems vulnerable, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office.

Employees at the Greenwood, Ind., office of the Internal Revenue Service were more than a little surprised a few weeks ago when a disgruntled man pointed a gun at a revenue officer saying, "You can't do this. You can't take my money like this."No one was injured and the man was arrested, but it leads one to wonder about a system that brings out such a violent response from someone who clearly wasn't satisfied with his tax situation.

Washington - A ruling by the Tax Court has underscored the way the alternative minimum tax penalizes holders of incentive stock options when the stock loses value after the option is exercised.

With the April 15 tax filing deadline looming, the Internal Revenue Service says that e-filing, direct deposit and e-payment programs continue to move at record paces so far this year.