Tax

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy will propose legislative changes to IRC section 183 to strengthen and clarify the hobby loss rule. The office agreed to do so at the urging recently of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which faulted the statute’s

The IRS will study reporting and compliance issues regarding like-kind exchanges of property under IRC section 1031. The move comes in response to a September report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration that faulted the IRS for what it called little oversight of the method for deferring capital

The IRS has updated the Collection Financial Standards used to determine a taxpayer’s ability to pay a delinquent tax liability. The changes went into effect Oct. 1. For bankruptcy purposes, the new tables are not effective until Jan. 1, 2008. The revised standards include some basic changes such as the

The IRS and Treasury Department issued proposed regulations that add patented transactions to Treas. Reg. § 1.6011-4 on reportable transactions. REG-129916-07 also makes conforming changes to IRC section 6111 on disclosure of reportable transactions by material advisers. Comments and public hearing requests are due by Dec. 26. The AICPA and

The IRS has improved its coordination among offices to collect approximately $45 million in delinquent payroll taxes owed by federal government units, plus that owed by state and local governments, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reported. The report followed a 2002 TIGTA audit finding that more than 12,000

Taxpayers who deduct as business expenses what the IRS might regard as spending on an unrelated hobby generally run a distinct risk of an underpayment assessment. In one recent case, however, the Tax Court accepted that two seemingly dissimilar undertakings could be treated as a single activity for purposes of

The decision in United States v. Textron gives taxpayers a boost in efforts to protect tax workpapers from an IRS summons, although the Service’s Chief Counsel Donald Korb cautions the victory “may be short-lived.” The U.S. District Court in Rhode Island said the work product privilege applied to the corporate

Employers now have an extra year, until Dec. 31, 2008, to bring documentation of nonqualified deferred compensation into compliance with final regulations under IRC § 409A, issued in April. Although IRS Notice 2007-78 also provided other transitional relief, it did not postpone the regulations’ Jan. 1, 2008, effective date.