New clients and next season’s fees; CP504’s “real” meaning; cropping out; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers.
Price of fame
- Taxing Subjects (https://www.drakesoftware.com/blog): On what forms are preparers raising fees the most for the coming season? A new survey says…
- National Association of Tax Professionals (https://blog.natptax.com/): An upcoming workshop examines five ways to increase margins with your tax clients.
- Henry+Horne (https://www.hhcpa.com/blogs/): What to remind biz clients about the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which encourages hiring members of any of 10 groups facing barriers to employment.
- HBK (https://hbkcpa.com/insights/): What to remind biz-owning clients about qualified disaster relief payments, including what officially constitutes a “disaster” to how employers can help workers with more money without unintentionally creating a tax burden.
- Parametric (https://www.parametricportfolio.com/blog): This market’s enough to get anybody on edge. Tell ’em to keep calm and harvest losses.
Just a few questions
- Wolters Kluwer (https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/tax-accounting-us/industry-news): What’s the right mix for your firm’s goals in recruiting clients? And what makes business clients so much more attractive? Adding new business clients creates two opportunities: complexity and cross-selling.
- Avalara (https://www.avalara.com/blog/en/north-america.html): Electric vehicles are in the headlines right now (a complex new federal credit will do that…), but what about the tax questions banning gas cars creates, such as: Will electricity grids keep up with heightened demand? Are there hidden environmental costs to upping electric-vehicle production? And how will banning gas-powered vehicles affect fuel tax revenue?
- Procedurally Taxing (https://procedurallytaxing.com): The CP504 “Notice of Intent to Levy” is not a “real” notice of intent to levy for IRC Sec. 6330 purposes. It is, however, “real” for IRC Sec. 6331(d) purposes. What is the distinction, and when does it matter?
- Tax Pro Center (https://proconnect.intuit.com/taxprocenter/): A lot of cryptocurrency big-timers are still young, but one thing that isn’t virtual in this life is the passage of time. What are estate-planning considerations with crypto-based wealth?
- Gordon Law (https://gordonlawltd.com/blog/): Some acquirers attempt to shave risk off a merger or acquisition by offering alternative streams of revenue known as earnouts. What are these, and what are their tax consequences?
Ongoing sagas
- University of Illinois Tax School (https://taxschool.illinois.edu/blog/): Understatement of the Week: “The November 8 general election has been a keen focus for many organizations trying to be heard above the cacophony of political voices.” Although exempt organizations have a special place in the debates of ideas, they have to be careful in their activities. Three rules that churches and other 501(c)(3)s must follow to protect their status and avoid assessment of excise taxes.
- Peisner Johnson (https://peisnerjohnson.com/blog/): Storing inventory in a warehouse has historically been a surefire way for an online seller to create physical nexus for sales and use tax. In this age of Amazon and other marketplace facilitators, though, it seems two states may be re-aligning their definitions.
- Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (https://itep.org/category/blog/): In the wake of a successful Child Tax Credit, some lawmakers have decided that halving child poverty is not worth the cost if it means an ambiguous and negligible decline in GDP growth. Not just cruel, this is bad economics.
- Taxbuzz (https://www.taxbuzz.com/blog): A reminder for your clients who sell online that the IRS has drastically lowered the reporting threshold. Drastically.
- Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders (http://ritakeller.com/blog/): Firms’ “ongoing dress code saga,” once thought resolved by business casual, now moves on to the Battle of the Crop Top.
- TaxProf Blog (http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/): A recent lecture looks at how globalization increasingly alters the interaction between nation states and their constituents.
Cash FBAR
- Federal Tax Crimes (http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.com/): “The oral arguments were outstanding”: Initial impressions as the Supreme Court begins debating Bittner, with all the implications the case has for calculating FBAR penalties.
- Global Taxes (https://www.globaltaxes.com/blog.php): In Rost v. U.S., the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld tax penalties against a U.S. citizen who failed to report his personal-use Liechtenstein “Stiftung” (a non-charitable private foundation) as a foreign trust.
Technically speaking
- Summing It Up (http://blog.freedmaxick.com/summing-it-up): OpenSSL published Version 3.0.7 to address a buffer overflow vulnerability in OpenSSL 3.0. The vulnerability exploits a weakness in the certificate verification functions and can be used to write arbitrary information to system memory. What is the risk of the OpenSSL Punycode vulnerability?
- Sikich (https://www.sikich.com/insights/): How to advise clients (not to mention yourself, in these days of remote work) on thwarting cyberattacks on home offices.
- The Tax Times (https://www.thetaxtimes.com): After a suspension, IRS automated collection notices are returning. Mailings will be, thankfully, staggered, and not just 50 million notices shotgunned in one day.
- National Taxpayer Advocate (https://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/taxnews-information/blogs-nta/): The advocate recently got into the trenches of the mailroom to help the IRS shovel out its paper backlog. “It is difficult to envision what IRS employees face every day without standing in the middle of that massive space. As your eye scans the area, you see endless rows of carts filled with paper….”
