Coverage of the IRS, Treasury, and other federal agencies — policy shifts, leadership changes, and how they affect taxpayers.
The IRS has announced that they are seeking applicants for the Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities (ACT). The ACT is an organized public forum for discussion of issues between officials of the IRS and representatives of exempt organizations and related communities. Individuals, organizations, and groups affiliated with employee plans, exempt organizations, tax…
If you feel like you understand the IRS a little more this week, it’s not your imagination. Last week, President Obama signed H.R. 946 into law, which has been called the “Plain Writing Act of 2010”. It has as its purpose, “To enhance citizen access to Government information and services by establishing that Government documents…
In a flush economy, it’s easier to look the other way when things aren’t going well. In a tight economy, however, we’re much more aware of where our dollars are going – especially our tax dollars. This year, more than ever, organizations that receive government funds are under increasing pressure to provide information about not…
If a member of Congress was ever qualified to speak up about the space program, I’d say Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) would fit the bill. In 1986, Nelson became the second sitting member of Congress to travel into space (Sen. Jake Garn (R-UT) was the first). Now, in an effort to boost interest in commercial…
My daughter asked me the other day why the birds couldn’t breathe. It took me awhile to figure out that she was talking about what’s going on in the Gulf. We’re going on day 46 of the BP spill. So far, BP has tried robots, drilling a relief well, a contaminant dome, “Top Hat”, “Top…
You hear those little whoops and cheers in the background? Those are me, ecstatic that the Supreme Court appears to be on a tax tear. Next on the agenda is Levin, Tax Commissioner of Ohio v. Commerce Energy, Inc., which was argued back in March and decided on yesterday. Levin is mostly a procedural case….
Typically, there are not a lot of tax cases that make news at the Supreme Court level. But this season feels like it’s an exception with a whopping two – yes, two – tax-related cases slated for review. Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement. The first case was actually more procedural in nature but…
Despite weather conditions that have kept federal employees home for a fourth straight day in Washington, DC, the IRS claims that the blizzard won’t slow them down this tax season. TaxProf blog points out that many returns are actually processed outside of DC in such garden spots as Fresno and Kansas City. And despite the…
An effort is underway to bring tax legislative research into the 21st century. The Joint Tax Committee, a non-partisan research arm of the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee, is working on a project to digitize tax legislative documents creating a searchable digital archive. This would include not only JCT publications –…
Shortly after I posted this piece about IRS cutting ties with ACORN, I received an email asking me, among other things, if I thought this was a good thing and if we should “get rid” of the VITA program altogether because of the potential for giving bad advice. I didn’t immediately respond to the email…