The IRS has served John Doe summonses to a number of banks in Belize, seeking information about American account holders, as the U.S. federal government continues its onslaught against offshore tax evasion. Long known as a tax haven, Belize has been a popular destination for wealthy individuals seeking to avoid […]
Many states have moved away from using the term “alimony” for court-ordered payments from one former spouse to another to provide financial support in cases of separation or divorce. But whatever these payments are called — alimony, spousal maintenance, spousal support or something else — they do have tax implications. […]
Over the summer, the IRS continued its fight against offshore tax evasion by reaching nonprosecution agreements with dozens of Swiss banks, bringing the total list of “facilitators” to nearly fifty. This list should continue to grow over the next few months. As part of the new reforms made to the […]
Nobody wants to be audited by the IRS, but most taxpayers have had nightmares of an agent showing up at their door, asking a lot of questions about their tax returns. While it is natural to worry about an audit, the reality is that audits are increasingly rare. As CBS News […]
Financial crimes such as fraud, money laundering or violations of the Bank Secrecy Act do not necessarily relate directly to tax law. Why then is the Criminal Investigation division of the IRS involved in enforcing these laws? In this two-part post, we will address that question. In part one, we […]
Let’s continue the discussion of tax losses we began in our previous post. As we noted last week, tax laws allow for certain deductions for investment losses. In this part of the post, let’s look at an example of a sophisticated strategy called tax-loss harvesting that some taxpayers use to […]
In the first part of this post, we noted that the Criminal Investigation (CI) division of the IRS is involved in the investigation of several financial crimes that do not directly involve tax law. These crimes include fraud, money laundering and violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. In our September […]
In tax planning as in life, success isn’t always about big victories. In many cases, it involves making the most of your losses. This can occur, for example, in the context of making proper use of tax deductions for casualty losses. We discussed that issue in our June 26 post. […]
Newly released statistics show that the IRS has been accepting Offers in Compromise at a higher rate than at any other time during the 21st century. During 2013 and 2014, the IRS accepted 40% or more of all submitted offers. An Offer in Compromise (OIC) is essentially an offer by a […]
The Department of Justice announced that a father and son team of tax return preparers have been sentenced for conspiring with clients to prepare false tax returns omitting the clients’ foreign financial accounts or foreign income. David Kalai has been sentenced to serve 36 months, while his son, Nadav Kalai, […]