News, practice tips, and industry updates for CPAs, enrolled agents, attorneys, and everyone else working in tax professionally.
On January 18, 2013, a federal court stopped IRS “dead in its tracks” from enforcing its new regulatory scheme for registered tax-return preparers. In response, the IRS filed a motion to stay the injunction – that’s a lawyerly way of saying that the IRS asked the court not to enforce the injunction and to allow…
Tax season officially got started yesterday as the Internal Revenue Service began accepting most taxpayer returns. Opening day for the IRS had been delayed by more than a week, following a last-minute tax deal meted out by Congress in early January. That wouldn’t be the only challenge for the agency this month: just days before…
Tax season starts on January 30! To get things started, I asked tax professionals around the country to give me their top tax tips. Here’s some of what they had to say: If you refinanced in 2012, be sure to write off any prior refi costs that you have been writing off over a number…
It all started with a ping. Just before noon, I got an interesting tweet. A flurry of tweets, Facebook messages, and emails followed. It was, in the grand scheme of my day, kind of a big deal. I had been following the IRS’ plans to regulate preparers more or less since then Commissioner Doug Shulman…
In light of the decision in Loving et al v Commissioner where the court ruled that the Internal Revenue Service did not have the authority to regulate tax preparers, the IRS has issued the following statement: As of Friday, Jan. 18, 2013, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia has enjoined the…
Two things happened on Sunday. One, I sat down for an interview with Dan Alban, the lead attorney in Loving et al v. Commissioner (downloads as a pdf). And two, I had friends over to the new house for a chat. You might think the two are completely unrelated. But you’d be wrong. You see,…
It turns out that the IRS can’t do everything it wants after all. Last year, three independent tax preparers, Sabina Loving of Chicago, Illinois, John Gambino of Hoboken, N.J., and Elmer Kilian of Eagle, Wisconsin, took on the IRS, accusing it among other things, of lacking the authority to license tax preparers. The lawsuit was…
Yesterday was a pretty busy day in the media. There was a lot of thought and commentary about the election and what it meant for the country. You might not have noticed, then, that the 47th Commissioner of the IRS was saying his goodbyes before the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) in Washington,…
Here’s the thing about taxes: every bit of our current tax policy offers some insight into our collective approach to social behavior. Specifically, a lot of tax focuses on what we value – and why. It’s why I find tax policy so fascinating and why the tax geeks among us continue to hone in on…
Apparently there are differences of opinions as to what, exactly, “too big to fail” means. When the now-defunct Park Avenue Bank went south, the FDIC issued a press release that seemed to indicate that this was just another case of a failed bank. In fact, if you read the FDIC Failed Bank Information Sheet, it…