Tax Strategies

As the Internal Revenue Service kicked off its 2005 tax filing season this week, it announced that it expects that its e-file program will hit a milestone.

The Internal Revenue Service has expanded a program aimed at enabling some business taxpayers to resolve certain tax issues before they file their returns.

Tax and accounting software maker ATX has decided to hire a sales force to serve customers who are buying what it says is an increasingly complex product line.

The Internal Revenue Service is allowing limited exceptions from coverage of the new deferred compensation rules for certain stock appreciation rights, or SARs, that "do not present potential for abuse or intentional circumvention of the purposes" of Section 409A.

In addition to his role as a dictator who started World War II and sent millions of people to their deaths in concentration camps, Adolf Hitler was a tax evader, according to a recent report.

H&R Block Financial Advisors, the investment arm of the tax prep giant, agreed to pay a $500,000 fine and to return $325,000 in clients' mutual fund trading profits to settle charges brought against it by the National Association of Securities Dealers related to the market-timing of mutual fund shares by two of its former financial advisors.

The Internal Revenue Service has released tax tables to help taxpayers determine whether they would benefit from an optional new sales tax deduction.

RIA has added several new features, including enhancements to its financial reporting and management content, and expanded search capabilities in Tax Alerts, to the latest edition of its popular Checkpoint product.

Just as the Internal Revenue Service was becoming increasingly more aggressive in its settlement offers in tax shelter cases, and obtained a few additional weapons for its arsenal in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, a series of defeats on the litigation front may force the agency to reevaluate some aspects of its strategy.

A taxpayer generally may exclude up to $250,000 ($500,000 for certain married couples filing joint returns) of gain realized on the sale or exchange of a principal residence. To be eligible for the exclusion, the taxpayer must have owned the residence and used it as a principal residence for at least two years during the five-year period ending on the date of the sale or exchange.