If you felt like your wallet was a few dollars lighter this year, you’re likely right. New tax changes which went into effect for the tax year 2013 finally hit taxpayers in 2014: to date, receipts as reported by the Treasury are up for every single month as compared to 2013. So far, the government…
Taxpayer asks: Any site that you can provide related to the statute of limitations of unpaid individual income taxes? The tax periods in question are from 1982 – 1987. Taxgirl says: This is actually a tricky question because so many things need to be taken into account. Here are some general principles: Under IRC section…
We have a winner! See comments! Our next tax trivia question is: The IRS announced this month that they would no longer be using the private collections companies authorized during the Bush administration. The Bush administration was not the first to have tried using private companies for collection. Which former President also authorized private companies…
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Doug Shulman has announced that the IRS will not renew its contracts with two private debt collection agencies. Those contracts expire this year. You may recall that I was not a fan of turning over collections matters to private companies. Like many other tax professionals, I had concerns about the…
Taxpayer asks: Kelly, I hope you can help with this one… I have been contacted by the IRS that I didn’t file one year and the another year I didn’t file at all. They have sent me copies of my income and other information; the problem is that I don’t have any of my own…
It’s kind of appropriate that the crisis management post that I had planned was to hit today. You see, I’m a little backed up on my things to do because, well, I had a crisis, of sorts. Following up on weeks (and weeks!) of my children contracting every bug/virus/infection known to man, I got slammed…
The House has approved legislation that would end the extremely unpopular program that allows private collection agencies to collect tax debts for the IRS. The IRS had previously argued that the policy was not financially viable. Of the $32 million brought in since the collection bill went into effect, the IRS collected $7 million on…
What? You think that’s crazy talk? You would if you have been following the debacle that is allowing private debt collectors to pursue the collection of taxes even though it is more expensive and is expected to collect fewer tax dollars. Government at its finest, no? Concerns about privatizing tax collections have included privacy issues,…
Voting and paying taxes are still hand in hand. The IRS has admitted that it has collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states while vowing that it has never used the information. This, of course, begs the question “why do it?” The states for which political party affiliation data were…
Word on the Street (Wall Street, that is) is that one of the items on the Dems’ new agenda will be to reverse the prior decision to outsource IRS Collections activities to private collection agencies. Democratic leaders have been among the most vociferous opponents to the change, which was to take effect in September 2006.