From Paul Caron: Kwon: Four Difficult Ethical Questions for IRS Lawyers Michelle Kwon (Texas Tech), The Tax Man’s Ethics: Four of the Hardest Ethical Questions for an IRS Lawyer, 9 Cardozo Pub. L. Pol’y & Ethics J. 371 (2011): The article explores the disagreement, particularly among academics, about whether government lawyers have greater obligations to [...]
Tags: Court Cases · IRS procedure
WebCPA reports that the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) is asking the Internal Revenue Service to reconsider some of the fees it plans to charge for competency exams and fingerprinting as part of its tax preparer oversight program. The new fees would apply to individuals who are required to take the IRS competency examination in [...]
Tags: Announcements · IRS procedure · News · Regulation of Tax Preparers
Last year I wrote a post titled IRS Disbars CPA for Relying on Client’s Income and Expense Numbers about a disturbing trend by the IRS to draft private tax preparers and force them to work as IRS auditors without pay. Here’s what I said: Tax preparers are advocates for their taxpayer clients and do not work for the IRS. Even [...]
Tags: IRS Audits · IRS procedure · Regulation of Tax Preparers
Paul Caron discusses Danshera Cords’ Brandeis Law Review article Lien on Me: Virtual Debtors Prisons, The Practical Effects of Tax Liens and Proposals for Reform, 49 Brandeis L.J. 341 (2011): This Article discusses the harm that a notice of federal tax lien can cause an individual as a result of the effect of filing a notice of [...]
Tags: IRS Liens and Levies · IRS procedure · Taxpayer Rights
John Steele of the Wall Street Journal gives us A Short History of the Income Tax and JLP of All Financial Matters summarizes: Distilled into bullet points: After the Civil War, the government relied mostly on the tariff for revenues, which was basically a consumption tax that hit the poor much harder than the rich. An income tax [...]
Tags: IRS procedure · Politics of Taxes
Yes, you read that correctly. The Journal of Accountancy reports that the IRS plans to start fingerprinting thousands of tax preparers as part of its oversight program and run the fingerprints through an FBI database: The IRS released more details on its tax preparer oversight program on Wednesday, and said registered tax return preparers would now be [...]
Tags: Announcements · IRS procedure · News · Regulation of Tax Preparers
The following will come as no suprirse to anyone who has spent any amount of time dealing with the IRS and other government agencies. Michael Martinez of CNN writes: A new study by three universities shows that people holding positions of power with low status tend to demean others, one of the authors said. The [...]
Tags: IRS procedure · News · Taxpayer Rights
