Joe Kristan reminds us once again of why you should not use the sole proprietor form of business: A scary headline: “Freelance? An IRS audit may be in your future.” A Tax Court case yesterday shows why a Schedule C on your return might interest the tax man. A New York City taxpayer filed a [...]
Tags: LLC's · S Corporations · Tax Tips
In a 2009 commencement address President Obama jokingly threatened to audit Arizona State University for not giving him an honorary degree on the grounds that his record was incomplete (he had been President for just two months). Now it appears there may have been more than a kernel of truth in the joke: Virginia Republican U.S. [...]
Tags: Politics of Taxes
The AP reports that the IRS has continued to allocate more of its resources to the examination of the tax returns of the super rich: One in eight people earning at least $1 million annually was audited by the Internal Revenue Service last year, making them far likelier to be examined than those making below $200,000, [...]
Tags: Announcements · IRS Audits · News · Politics of Taxes
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration says the IRS needs to improve the quality of its audits of small corporations. Listen: TIGTA reviewed whether IRS examiners followed proper procedures and guidelines when auditing the returns of small corporations. The IRS defines small corporations as corporations with assets of less than $10 million. Many corporations in the [...]
Tags: Announcements · IRS Audits · S Corporations
WebCPA reports that the IRS increased the number of fraudulent tax refund claims it detected and stopped during the 2011 tax-filing season by 171 percent over the previous year: As of April 30, 2011, the IRS had identified 775,723 tax returns with $4.6 billion claimed in fraudulent refunds and prevented the issuance of $4.4 billion, [...]
Tags: IRS Audits · IRS procedure · Regulation of Tax Preparers · Tax Crimes
The tax gap – the difference between what taxpayers’ should pay to the IRS every year and what they actually pay – is estimated to be about $300 billion a year. Karen Hube writing for the Washington Post confirms what we have reported here: The IRS is stepping up its enforcement activities (emphasis is mine): [...]
Tags: IRS Audits · Tax Collections
“The funny thing is, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook.” - Andy Dufresne, Shawshank Redemption – WebCPA reports that an inmate in a New Jersey prison has pleaded guilty to bilking the IRS out of nearly $215,000 by filing false tax returns for his [...]
Tags: News · Tax Crimes
