By Usman Mohammad The CPA Journal February 2020 Edition Foreign asset reporting—including the reporting of foreign retirement plans—is a high priority for the IRS, which in 2019 listed the “failure to report offshore funds” as one of its “Dirty Dozen Tax Scams,” and has done so for several years running. Individuals
By Megan L. Brackney Procedurally Taxing January 8, 2020 The Gifts That Keep on Giving Two young people moved to the U.S. as students. They met in graduate school and married. After graduation, they were offered jobs and were sponsored by their employers so that they could stay in the U.S.
By Megan L. Brackney Procedurally Taxing January 7, 2020 Reasonable Cause For all of the foreign information return penalties, reasonable cause is a defense. See I.R.C. §§ 6038, 6038A(d)(3), 6038D(g), 6039F(c)(2), 6677(d); Treas. Reg. § 1.6038-2(k)(3)(ii). The IRS applies the same standards for reasonable cause for failure to file income tax returns under I.R.C. § 6651 to failure to file foreign
By Megan L. Brackney Procedurally Taxing January 6, 2020 The IRS has been assessing more and more foreign information return penalties on taxpayers. It is difficult to find statistics on this point, as the IRS’s reports on tax penalties lump all “nonreturn” penalties into one category, which includes failure to file Forms
By Caroline Rule The CPA Journal November 2019 Edition Under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 7216 and its concomitant regulations, a tax preparer must obtain the consent of a taxpayer before disclosing or using the taxpayer’s tax return information when that consent is required. Section 7216 makes it a crime for
By Bryan C. Skarlatos and Stephen A. Josey Journal of Tax Practice and Procedure October – November 2019 Edition Tax law is famously complex – a constantly shifting maze of statutes, regulations, IRS publications, and case law. As such, the process of filing tax returns can be an arduous task for the hundreds
By Megan L. Brackney Journal of Passthrough Entities September – October 2019 Edition As Treasury and the IRS implement the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) of 2017, it is a good time to consider when taxpayers can rely on informal IRS guidance, such as publications, forms, instructions, and frequently asked
By Caroline Rule The CPA Journal October 2019 Edition Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 7216 and its lengthy regulations govern when a tax return preparer may disclose or use a taxpayer’s tax return information without first obtaining the taxpayer’s consent. Because it is a federal crime to violate section 7216 and
By Kevin M. Flynn The CPA Journal September 2019 Edition The itemized deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 164 had long provided relief to taxpayers residing in high income and property tax states such as New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. It assured these
By Caroline Rule The Journal of the Section of Litigation Vol. 45 No. 4 Summer 2019 Marriage is perplexing, and the marital privileges even more so. Contradictory views determine when they apply and what they protect. In many states, statutes, rather than case law, govern, but federal law leaves it to
