If you have not yet signed up for tonight’s webinar be sure to do so quickly.  This evenings continuing education live webinar will be covering filing tax returns for self employed individuals and the proper use of Schedule C.  Space is limited.  You can sign up by clicking here: Self Employment & Preparing Schedule C [...]

Just a friendly reminder that tonight’s webinar will be held at 5:30pm Eastern.  We will be covering Filing With Dependents, and will provide 3 IRS CE credits toward general tax topics.  If you have not yet signed up for a  continuing education package please contact us at (866) 357-2052.  You can register for the webinar [...]

This morning the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.  The most debated issue was the individual coverage mandate element of the law which levies penalties to taxpayers who are required to purchase insurance coverage but fail to do so.  Administration of the Affordable Care Act will be serviced by the IRS; [...]

The IRS has announced that it has begun to provide test results to tax return preparers who have taken the new return preparer competency test. The competency test to get your new designation, Registered Tax Return Preparer, is a 120 question test which has a perfect score of 500. Preparers must score a 350 or [...]

The first week of the tax season has seen some interesting actions taken by the IRS.  They have actively taken aim at both high fraud tax offices and check cashing facilities that seem to consistently be in the middle of of these problematic returns.  In prior years, the IRS has taken more of a reactionary [...]

The IRS’ PTIN website for renewing and obtaining Preparer Tax Identification Numbers has been a challenge this year, to say the least.  Ever since mid December, the PTIN site has been briken and under maintenance more than it has been up.  New PTIN applicants have not been able to complete the process and pay for [...]

The IRS has their preparers test in place and is now scheduling for preparers to take the examination.  To avoid having to take the examination prior to Dec 31st, 2013 preparers must act soon.  2011 PTINs expire on December 31st, 2011, and are now scheduled to expire on the close of each calender year going [...]

IRS statistics show that approximately 4% of all returns including schedule C income eventually get audited.  Half of these returns are audited due to a random selection and the other half are chosen based upon a scoring assessment based upon IRS standardization charts for different acceptable business expenses.  The IRS released that the most common [...]

PTIN renewal for the coming tax season is now available.  The 2011 system was made operational October 20th.  All paid tax return preparers must obtain or renew Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN). If you have a PTIN that was issued in 2010, the renewal fee is $63.00.  If you are applying for the first time, [...]

The IRS incorrectly distributed approximately 80,000 notices to taxpayers stating that they needed to begin repayment of their first time homebuyer’s credit.  Many of these mistakenly sent out statements were sent to taxpayers who purchased their homes in 2009, who do not need to repay the credit at all.  Also the IRS attempted to identify [...]