Tax news and information - Journal of Accountancy

TOPICS

November 14, 2019

Taxes and Washington’s unfinished business

Tax planning and return filing readiness depend in no small part on the actions of Congress and the IRS and Treasury in the countdown to 2020. Ed Karl, AICPA vice president–Taxation, gives some inside-the-Beltway prognostications.

November 8, 2019

Automatic accounting method change procedures updated

The IRS released its updated procedures for automatic accounting method changes, which are accounting method changes that can be made without the IRS’s consent.

November 6, 2019

IRS posts 2020 inflation adjustments and tax tables

The IRS released the 2020 tax tables for individuals and estates and trusts, as well as the inflation adjustments for over 60 tax provisions for 2020 tax returns.

November 6, 2019

Retirement plan contribution limits increase for 2020

Annual contribution limits for 401(k) plans will increase from $19,000 in 2019 to $19,500 in 2020, and most other limits are increasing as well.

November 1, 2019

Updating the Statements on Standards for Tax Services

An AICPA task force is evaluating how these key guidelines for tax practices need to be updated to account for changes in technology and law.

November 1, 2019

Preparer’s forgetting to hit ‘send’ doesn’t excuse clients’ late-filing penalties

Taxpayers’ reliance on a preparer to e-file their extension request is not reasonable cause, a district court holds.

November 1, 2019

Line items

Prop. regs. update valuation limit for employee use of vehicle … Rules proposed for classifying cloud and digital content transactions … Nondiscrimination rules relief extended

November 1, 2019

Responsible person rules in the wake of Wayfair

As states impose sales tax collection obligations on more companies, individual taxpayers face a greater risk of personal liability if their organization fails to comply.

November 1, 2019

Mayo Clinic held to be an educational organization despite engaging in noneducational activities

A district court invalidates a regulation requiring educational activities to be an educational organization’s primary function and its other activities to be merely incidental to those activities.

November 1, 2019

Planning for Medicare taxes, premiums, and surcharges

Don’t neglect these basic health care considerations in clients’ retirement planning.

November 1, 2019

Taxpayers may revoke or make late bonus depreciation elections

Late elections or revocations made during the time prescribed in Rev. Proc. 2019-13 will be treated as automatic changes in method of accounting with a Sec. 481(a) adjustment.

November 1, 2019

Like-kind exchanges and personal property

A recent law change invites new strategies.

November 1, 2019

Alimony tax gap swells to $3.2 billion, TIGTA finds

The difference resulted in $248 million of tax underreporting.

October 18, 2019

TIGTA outlines IRS challenges for 2020

The memorandum lists 10 challenges in order of importance, ranging from data security to achieving operational efficiencies.

October 14, 2019

Taxpayers may deduct casualty losses in prior years

The IRS finalized regulations permitting taxpayers to deduct disaster losses in the prior tax year and removed the related temporary regulations that were issued in 2016.

October 9, 2019

IRS clarifies the tax treatment of cryptocurrency ‘hard forks’ and ‘airdrops’

The IRS ruled that a taxpayer does not have gross income as a result of a hard fork of a cryptocurrency if the taxpayer does not receive units of a new cryptocurrency, but does have gross income as a result of an airdrop of new cryptocurrency after a hard fork if the taxpayer receives units of the new cryptocurrency.

October 1, 2019

CFC downward attributions get safe harbors

U.S. shareholders who own stock in foreign corporations were given a safe harbor by the IRS, making it easier for them to establish that they are not shareholders in a controlled foreign corporation, or CFC.

October 1, 2019

Improving IRS practitioner services

The Taxpayer First Act embodies several principles for improved IRS customer service that have been central to AICPA advocacy efforts in recent years.

October 1, 2019

Taxpayer’s IRA rollover was timely

A rollover that took more than 60 days to complete due to a bookkeeping error was considered timely.

October 1, 2019

Line items

IRS writes taxpayers with virtual currency transactions … Nonemployee compensation gets its own Form 1099 … Olson offers winding ‘Taxpayer Roadmap’

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Build reusable Skills in Anthropic’s Claude AI

Instead of rewriting prompts each time, CPAs can turn routine tasks into reusable AI Skills. This Technology Q&A walks through how to build Claude Skills that process files, ask setup questions, and export clean Excel outputs.