IRS practice & procedure

President Donald Trump’s proposed FY 2018 budget includes a new proposal to give the IRS authority to regulate paid tax return preparers.

The 2017 appropriations bill passed by Congress includes $11.2 billion for IRS operations and enforcement. But it also includes specific directives prohibiting certain IRS conduct.

The details of a recent data breach affecting 100,000 taxpayers were revealed in testimony before the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington.

The IRS reported several large drops in its enforcement activities in fiscal year 2016, including a 16% drop in audits, a 40% drop in levies, and a 9% drop in liens compared to the prior year.

The IRS Office of Professional Responsibility has no authority or jurisdiction over a disbarred attorney/tax preparer or his tax preparation practice and cannot regulate his provision of tax advice a federal district court in Nevada has held.

The IRS issued its roundup of the 12 biggest tax scams that taxpayers should watch out for this filing season.

The IRS announced that as of Sunday it has suspended the e-Services accounts of users who failed to verify their identities in accordance with letters sent out in December.

The IRS announced that it will soon post online the registration information of practitioners who have preparer tax identification numbers, and the information will be available without charge to the public.

Tax return preparers are discovering that some state income tax returns for 2016 require information from a taxpayer’s driver’s license or state-issued identification card information before the returns can be e-filed.

A taxpayer whose lawyer used print-at-home postage when mailing a Tax Court petition timely filed that petition, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held, reversing and remanding the case to the Tax Court for consideration on the merits.

The IRS released its annual notice containing the 2017 inflation-adjusted amounts for the maximum vehicle values to determine the amount that is included in employees’ income for personal use of an employer-provided vehicle.

The IRS issued a notice that provides the requirements for a payee to make an election to not have the safe harbor for de minimis errors on information returns below certain amounts apply to a payer.