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The IRS does not view NFTs as vehicles for hidden or untaxable financial activities. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Chainlink, Cardano, Stellar and other cryptocurrencies are assets that exist only digitally on the Internet, but the IRS views them as property for taxation purposes. We have written previously about IRS taxation of gain from […]
Category: Important Trends at IRS
The IRS made a large investment in personnel to accelerate investigation of potential abuses of micro-captive insurance transactions. Since 2014, the IRS has put micro-captive insurance arrangements under a microscope to uncover taxpayers and taxpaying entities that may be abusing associated tax benefits. We provided an article in 2019 about IRS settlement […]
Anyone who has received an IRS offer to settle a micro-captive insurance audit should immediately consult an experienced tax lawyer to understand the pros and cons of the offer before any deadline expires. The IRS announced on Sept. 16, 2019, its plan to mail settlement offers to a maximum of […]
A nontraditional focus was on cybercrimes, such as tax violations involving crypto and virtual currencies. On Dec. 5, the IRS issued the annual report of its Criminal Investigation Division, called CI, for fiscal year 2019. The report describes in detail CI’s priorities for investigating and enforcing tax crimes in the past year, […]
Anyone with a pending U.S. Tax Court syndicated conservation easement matter who has received a settlement offer from the IRS should speak with an experienced tax attorney as soon as possible to understand the pros and cons of this offer before it expires. The IRS is serious about stopping fraudulently […]
The procedures are complex and the agency appears fairly rigid in it enforcement of the law. While the law restricting passport access for taxpayers with serious tax debts has been on the books for a while, until 2018, the IRS had refrained from enforcing it. Everything changed in February, when […]
The agency is combining forces with other federal law enforcement agencies as well as foreign counterparts in allied countries to uncover Russian elite sanction evasion and illegal asset movements. The IRS Criminal Investigation (CI or IRS-CI) is the part of the agency that investigates federal tax crimes. Its focused expertise […]
The agency’s efforts will focus on cryptocurrency-related failure to report income that may result in civil or criminal liability. Virtual currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin exist digitally in intangible units called coins or tokens on decentralized ledgers. Despite the name “currency,” governments do not issue them. When people subject […]
The IRS publicized the holding of this closely watched appeal. In a highly anticipated May 2022 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit held that microcaptive insurance transactions can be abusive shams to avoid taxation, agreeing with the federal government’s long-held position. Today we consider the lessons of […]
The IRS has launched its new People First Initiative to ease tax-related pressure for some taxpayers through at least July 15, 2020. The IRS announced on March 25, 2020, that it will immediately provide relief to some American individuals and businesses mainly by temporarily freezing certain of its enforcement activities […]