Archive for Tax News
President Obama’s Budget and Offers In Compromise (OIC)
President Barak Obama’s recently released budget proposal includes a provision to eliminate the 20% filing fee to file an Offer In Compromise (OIC). We will have to wait to see if this provision becomes part of the final budget. For more information or for assistance with other criminal tax concerns, contact Horowitz & Weinstein. Disclaimer.
2012 IRS Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program Begins
The IRS has announced the 2012 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program for Foreign Accounts, Foreign Bank Accounts and FBAR filings. The 2012 follows the pattern set by the 2009 IRS Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program and the 2011 Foreign Bank Account Voluntary Disclosure Programs. The voluntary disclosure programs include reduction of penalties related to foreign accounts and [...]
Obama’s Jobs Bill
Last week President Obama presented The American Jobs Act to a joint session of Congress. The Act includes a number of measures, all billed at helping the still reeling economy and in particular the job market. In addition to allocating money to schools, for projects to improve infrastructure and modifications to unemployment insurance, the Act [...]
Reportable Transactions
The IRS has recently clarified the rules regarding failure to report reportable transactions and clarified the penalties for failing to do so. There had previously been some uncertainty around the issue, specifically how provisions in the Small Business Jobs Acts of 2010 had affected the regulations and the penalties. The IRS has since clarified the situation. [...]
2011 OVDI Deadline Extended
Because of Hurricane Irene, the IRS has decided to extend the application deadline for the 2011 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative to September 9th. The deadline had previously been August 31. This extension also applies to Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) forms. The OVDI is a tax amnesty initiative by which taxpayers with [...]
The Affiliate Tax, Then and Now
In 1992 the Supreme Court ruled in a case about mail order that a state could not charge sales tax on an out-of-state company unless that state had sufficient nexus within that state. The gold standard since then has been a brick and mortar presence. Companies with physical stores in a state charge sales tax [...]
Before the debt ceiling we were talking about sales tax
With the debt ceiling raised and the beginnings of a compromise on dealing with the long term US debt laid down–and thus far, these plans do not include any of the rumored tax changes such as the elimination of the AMT fix–the world of tax has turned its focus back to the issue on online [...]
Foreign Gifts and Foreign Trusts
For quite a few taxpayers, filing their yearly tax returns doesn’t go much beyond the trusty old Form 1040. There are of course many other forms for reporting to the IRS and one that is especially worth noting is Form 3520, a return for reporting transactions with foreign trusts and the receipt of foreign gifts. [...]
New Rules in the Works for Taxation of Non Residents
A new bill, HR 1864: the Mobile Workforce State Income Tax Simplification Act of 2011, has been introduced into the House of Representatives. An identical copy to a bill introduced in 2009 that never came up for vote, HR 1864 would create uniform rules for handling state income tax of non-resident workers, replacing the current [...]
Sales Tax Update
It wasn’t all that long ago when income tax was the main topic of conversation in the world of tax. Especially in Illinois, once the national debate over the Bush tax cuts ended, we got the new debate about Illinois raising its income taxes. But now, sales tax is definitely the main issue, specifically the [...]