For weeks the talk in Washington has been about the debt ceiling, the legal limit on the amount the federal government can borrow. The debate has not so much been about the debt limit itself, but on the wider issue of deficit reduction. Several plans have been presented in Congress, but these have tended to…
New guidelines for audits of attorneys have just been released by the IRS. It focuses on several potential problem areas unique to attorneys and specifies how audits should be conducted in the context of those. Many of the particulars of attorney audits revolve around how attorneys are paid (noncash payments like stock or legal services…
A new bill, HR 1864: the Mobile Workforce State Income Tax Simplification Act of 2011, has been introduced into the House of Representatives. An identical copy to a bill introduced in 2009 that never came up for vote, HR 1864 would create uniform rules for handling state income tax of non-resident workers, replacing the current…
Every year the IRS requires taxpayers to disclose their offshore accounts and assets. The forms for doing so are called FBARs (that’s Foreign Bank Account Reporting) and this year they’re due by June 30th. Much like they did in 2009, this year the IRS is offering an Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) whereby taxpayers with…
For a family owned shop on Main Street, their sales tax situation is relatively straightforward. They are required to collect and remit to the appropriate authorities the applicable sales tax for their state, their city, and the other municipalities they may fall within. (This is tax we’re talking about, so the emphasis really needs to be on…
Most of us understand sales tax fairly well. Buy something in Illinois and Illinois sales tax will show up on your receipt, as well as other municipality taxes. Use tax is not generally as well understood, probably because, although we’ve all technically owed it for years, until its recent budget problems, the state of Illinois…
Plenty of people in Illinois are starting to wonder, in light of the changing tax landscape, if it might be beneficial to become a non-resident of Illinois, to relocate themselves or their business to another state to a sufficient degree to avoid Illinois taxes. While this may be a sound plan for some people (that…
Senator Durbin hasn’t introduced his national sales tax bill–his Main Street Fairness Act, which would allow states to charge sales tax on companies without a physical presence in the state–but the debate over sales tax continues to rise. Two states, Arizona and California, are now considering affiliate tax bills, like those already in effect in…
A few weeks ago Illinois became the fourth state to try to find a way to collect sales tax from online retailers like Amazon. To do so, the General Assembly passed a copy of a law first passed in New York in 2008. Under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling a state can only collect sales…
Yesterday the Senate passed H.R 4, the house bill that would repeal the increased 1099 reporting requirements introduced by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. The bill now goes to the President’s desk and President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law. Form 1099…
