Tax Blog/Blawg

Taxpayers should never be taxed on income they don’t receive.  But it happens.  It occurred in a recent decision, Koopmann v. United States, No. 09-CV-333 T (Fed. Cl. Sept. 30, 2020), and there are lessons that may be learned from what went wrong for the litigant in that case. 

In Koopmann, the taxpayer retired from United Airlines in 2000, and was covered by United Airlines' non-qualified deferred compensation plan.  About two years after the taxpayer’s retirement, United Airlines filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, which ultimately resulted in an approved reorganization plan ...

Hardly a day goes by when some politician or editorial person doesn’t suggest that we don’t need the IRS or should simply do away with it. Most of them come in connection with suggestions for changing the tax system to something like a national retail sales tax. What these people fail to understand, and this writer is not challenging the sincerity of their views, is that without the IRS, our tax gap would explode geometrically.

We call our system a “voluntary” one, but we remain short of “volunteers”: there are simply too many people and businesses who don’t get around to ...

Well for starters, the IRS won’t be very happy!  Beyond that, the IRS has several avenues it can pursue. 

In extreme situations, such as where a taxpayer owes a considerable sum of money and has not filed for several years, the IRS may consider pursuing criminal liability under I.R.C. § 7203, which makes it a misdemeanor to “willfully” fail to file a Federal Income Tax Return.  This is rarely applied unless a pattern of three consecutive non-filing years are present, but potentially any single willful failure to file could result in this prosecution.  There is a six-year statue of ...

In an article published in Pennsylvania CPA Journal / CPA Now on November 16, 2020, Chamberlain Hrdlicka Philadelphia-based Shareholder Phil Karter discusses what you need to know about the IRS audit process.

“Despite the generally low rates of audits, the IRS tends to gravitate toward certain hot button issues that can increase the chances of instigating an examination,” explains Karter. “These include unreported income (especially where there is nondisclosure of foreign assets), excessive business tax deductions (particularly for Schedule C businesses), loss ...

People are always asking how long the IRS can wait from the time you file your return to conduct an audit of your income and expenses.  The simple, most definitive answer is "it all depends," so let's take a look at the rules. 

The time in which the IRS must conduct its audit is governed by what's known as a "statute of limitations."  That statute doesn't begin to run until you actually file a return.  Once you file a return, the IRS has three years from the time the return was filed (or, April 15^th of the year in which you file, if it is filed early) to conduct and complete an audit.  That means that the IRS ...