Following a deal between the IRS and Swiss bank UBS AG, an institution in which accountholders from all over the world could hide their money from their country’s tax, the identities of American accountholders have been made available to the proper authorities. This has led to cases like that of Juergen Homman, a New Jersey businessman, who has pleaded guilty to failing to tell the authorities about a $6.1 million account he had with UBS.
 
Homman pleaded guilty in a New Jersey federal court to not disclosing the account on tax returns from 2001 to 2007 and to not filing the …read more

If Teresa Marty has ever prepared your taxes, I have some bad news for you. Marty, a Placerville, California based tax preparer, and her Advanced Financial Services business have been barred by a federal judge to act as a tax return preparer.
According United States Justice Department, Marty claimed more than $26 million in tax refunds for her customers. The problem is that the tax refunds were allegedly fraudulent. In fact, one single customer got a refund of about $2.7 million by fraudulent means.
It appears as if Marty’s fraud of choice was making up numbers to put on IRS 1099 forms. …read more

President Barack Obama hasn’t hid the fact that he wants Americans to save more money for retirement. To help Americans, Obama has instructed the IRS to offer a straight forward guide for retirement savings accounts and changes that are being made. That guide can be found at IRS.gov/retirement.
The IRS retirement savings guide has a few interesting points:
You can receive your tax refund as a United States savings bond. All it will take is to check a box on your return and the IRS will handle the rest! In the future, tax returns will be able to easily turn into I …read more

Options for discharging your tax debt.

The Department of Justice today released a statement about UBS client, Steven Michael Rubinstein, a chartered accountant living in Boca Raton, Fla., who pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return for tax year 2004. Rubinstein was charged with filing a false tax return that intentionally failed to disclose the existence of a Swiss bank account maintained by UBS of which he was the beneficial owner and failed to report any income earned on that account.
“Combating offshore tax evasion by wealthy taxpayers continues to be one of the IRS’ top priorities,” said IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. “The IRS is committed …read more

If your company has issued you a cell phone, you may have to start deciding whether or not you really need to send that email or text message, especially if you are watching your budget. That’s because the IRS has issued proposals to more strictly enforce a law that views company-issued cell phones as a taxable benefit.
Opponents of the law point out that it was passed in 1989, a time when cell phones were large, impractical, and only used by the most elite executives. Under the law, those who use company cell phones should keep a detailed log of their …read more

If you are scrambling to complete your income taxes for your small business and your personal return, you aren’t alone. Millions of people are frantically using their Easter break to navigate the maze of taxes to complete their tax returns. And you need all the help you can get.  Here are several resources to help answer your last-minute questions or help you prepare your small business tax return:
TaxACT is a free online tax preparation program.  You can use the free version to prepare your 1040 and also the Schedule C for your sole proprietorship or single-member limited liability company.  TaxACT …read more

Take-Two Interactive Software, makers of the popular Grand Theft Auto video game, paid $3 million to settle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week being charged with stock options backdating. The company neither admitted nor denyied the SEC’s allegations that they falsified financial records as part of the stock option backdating scheme.
The SEC charged Take-Two with backdating stock options for its officers, directors, and key employees. These options could be exercised at a strike price lower than what the stock was trading on the date the options were granted. Take-Two was accused of defrauding investors by failing to properly …read more

I recently received this question from a reader:
How do I check the status of my tax refund?
I admit it: I love easy questions like this. You can go to the Where’s My Refund? page on the IRS Web site. Put in your Social Security Number, your filing status and your expected refund amount. (You may need to check your copy of your 1040 to get this information.) Up pops your expected tax refund date, as well as what to do if you don’t get your refund as expected.
Things can get tricky, though, as I found out the other day. My …read more

You’ve been Ponzied. Now what? Taxpayers received good news from the IRS last week in the form of formal guidance on how to treat losses sustained from fraudulent investment schemes.
Fake Investments Qualify as Theft
The biggest change coming from the IRS is the idea that theft in the form of bogus investment schemes really is theft, and not regular capital losses.
In prepared testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on Tax Issues Related to Ponzi Schemes, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman detailed the tax relief provisions for taxpayers who sustained losses in certain investment arrangements discovered to be criminally fraudulent.
The IRS issued two guidance …read more